Pho Bo

Well, it finally cooled down. Last weekend’s 105 cooled down to the seventies. whew. Our activity level was down this weekend as well – July turned out to be a a really busy month. But yesterday we just hung around and made special beef broth for Vietnamese Beef Noodle soup. Pho (“fuh”) is a wonderful treat and we’d been meaning to try making our own. I found this article and wasn’t surprised to discover it was from the SJ Mercury news – the south Bay Area probably serves the most Pho outside of Vietnam. So, the recipe at the end of the article looked pretty authentic, pretty in-depth, but not difficult. After a trip to the Asian market near our house (it rocks!) I was ready to begin.

We fired up our camping stove out on the deck and charred the onions and ginger as directed. That was fun! In they went to the stock pot along with beef bones, a few pieces of London broil and whole spices like star anise and cinnamon. It’s definitely important to plan ahead – the almost 6 quarts of broth were very hot and quite greasy – it needed to chill in the fridge overnight so I could skim off all that fat. By lunchtime today we’d worked up the usual Sunday afternoon hunger, so after I prepped the goodies, we assembled our bowls.

First, dipped the noodles briefly in the defatted, re-heated broth and put them in the bottom of the bowl. Added sliced onion, scallions, chopped cilantro, and pieces of beef – some cooked from the broth process, and some raw paper-thin slices from the market. Then, we ladled boiling broth over all, which cooked the beef on contact and softened up all the noodles and veggies. Just like the pho restaurants, we had our garnish plate with bean sprouts, lime wedges, sliced chilies and Thai basil. And, the all-important hoisin sauce and sriracha hot chili sauce. Yum!

If you’re up for a cooking adventure, I’d recommend this recipe. It’s more time consuming than difficult, and it seems that the main key to success is finding all the right ingredients at the Asian market. The broth recipe is huge (I’ll be freezing what’s left for a few future pho feasts!) and it’s a bit of a production so you want to get a lot out of it. It would make a great group/party supper, too, because it’s very basic and mild in flavor, and everyone can add what they like to customize their bowl.