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i am not vietnamese, but i've tried making pho a couple of times..the hardest part for me is finding thin enough beef! but i guess if you cut it yourself like your link says it wouldn't be too bad. I suggest using fresh noodles if you can find them...they are 100 billion times better, i promise! and I've always just used the pre-made soup paste or boullion for my stock, since making it from scratch seemed kind of difficult!
and make sure you have a big enough bowl to put it all in once your finished! we didn't have pho-sized bowls so we ate out of pots. lol. >.>"
Hiya!
Hehe. We have big big bowls :D
I'm definitely going to do the homemade stock. I grew up on homemade stock so it shouldn't be a big deal. The issue will be if I can find the right bones at American supermarkets. If not I might just have to hit the one local Asian supermarket and make do with whatever bones they have.
I have some oxtail at home but I know all oxtail won't cut it. It's not the right flavor.
Honestly, we don't even use oxtail bones in our pho at all. We use to own a restaurant and one of the things we had on the menu was beef, so we would use the trimmings that would normally get discarded for our pho at home. The recipe is definitely the real deal. But every family does it differently. One of the things that some recipes do is that they char the outside of the onion. We don't ever do that. But definitely put the spices in a cheesecloth. It helps so much when you have to take all of it out from the pot before using the broth for your bowl of pho. Man I am hungry just thinking about it. Thankfully my mom is making a huge pot for tomorrow lunch. To make the broth in our family is a 2 day ordeal. But it is oh so good no matter how much time is used. Too bad I will never get it just like my mom.
Here are some more links for really good pho recipes:
http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2008/10/pho-beef-noodle-soup.html
http://wanderingchopsticks.blogspot.com/2007/03/pho-bo-vietnamese-beef-noodle-soup.html
http://gastronomyblog.com/2008/09/15/ph%E1%BB%9F-chay-vegetarian-ph%E1%BB%9F/ (vegeterian version)
I forgot something else. An alternative to the cheesecloth for the spices is just a plain old paper coffee filter. A couple layers worth, not to thick and not to thin, so that the spice flavor can come out.
I'll be honest, I just eat the pho my mom and my sister makes. Here's my sister's recipe, in case you ever feel like trying another recipe:
broth:
9 cups water
3-4 lbs beef bones (I use beef shanks - no neck bones - they make broth muddy)
3 small onions, peeled
3-inch chunk ginger, peeled
handful of baby carrots (optional)
3 cinnamon sticks
1 tablespoon whole cloves
6 star anise
1 inch chunk yellow ro...ck sugar (optional)
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup fish sauce
other:
sliced beef (i just buy the sirloin tip steaks - easy to slice)
chopped green onions
sliced onions
chopped cilantro
basil
limes
Boil water, add beef bones. Return to boil. Boil over high heat for 10 minutes, skimming scum. Add whole onions, ginger, carrots, cinnamon sticks, cloves, and star anise (I put the cloves and star anise in one of those round wine mulling balls). Lower heat and simmer for 1.5 hours. Remove bones. Add salt and fish sauce.
Instead of doing that fancy soaking of noodles and dunking them in boiling water, I just cook the whole package of noodles in boiling water for 5 minutes.
P.S. Sorry, I think my sister's recipe is the same one Gerbera linked to! She might have cut out some extra steps though. :)
Oh, and my family uses these tea balls to put the spices in: 
I love pho!! vttp926 is right--you really can just use coffee filters for the spices--same idea. I usually char the outside of my ginger and onion before adding them to the pot. I always use oxtail because FI loves to eat the little bit of meat off of them. The recipe you have is good and the recipes vttp suggested are good too. Mmmm now I'm craving pho!
@vttp926: Thanks for posting the vegetarian version! I have a roomie who is vegetarian and I always feel bad that she can't have any pho when I make it. I agree with you...no matter how good my pho is...it just can't compare to my mom's!
No problem on the vegetarian version. The 2 sites I posted last are a few of my favorite Vietnamese cooking blogs.
I had my fill of pho today. Probably won't be a couple more weeks or months before we have it again. Funny enough, my family tends to eat more pho in the summer then the winter. Go figure, eating hot things during the hot weather.
haha my family eats more pho in the summer too. weird.
I'll have to check out those viet cooking blogs you posted....there's a few things I want to learn to make that my mom doesn't make and so I'm hoping the recipes are on those sites!
If you can't find the recipes, message me and I will do my best because I definitely have more food blogs in my arsenal that may have it.
If you have a Korean or Japanese market nearby they typically have thinly sliced beef packaged and ready to go, too.
WOW! Thanks ladies!
FI and I are itching to try and make this again! Last time we had issues finding cardamom pods and used ground instead. So this time we'll search a little harder for it. We have a cheese cloth so it's no issue to use it.
Now that I have a food slicer we can slice the beef way thinner! Last time we did it by hand and it was not thin enough we had to reboil it to cook it which totally made the broth murky.
And I think we are going to double the amount of spices as well. It just was not robust enough for us. And oh buy the noodles that are even one size thinner.
MMMMM Pho is in my top 5 things to eat. I had it for lunch yesterday! I may have it again today.
And oh my mom is convinced that eating/drinking hot things in summer actually cools you down more than drinking cold things. Hahah
Oh how I love pho!! Here's my pho recipe, complete with a time-saving cheat:
http://doublyhappy.blogspot.com/2010/01/diary-of-secret-housewife-pho.html
Doesnt Pho take like at least 5 hrs to cook? Thats what I heard, man i wish I knew how to make it or have the patience to, it just looks so hard!
@tammy,
I'm no Pho novice by any means. But the broth itself has to boil for 3 hours (per recipe I followed). So with all prep work and everything, yeah it can take up to 5hrs. But much of it is left unattended.
@hotcocoa,
Thanks for the tip about toast to suck up all the fat!
I think next time we make it we have to be pre-emptive and make the broth the night before so the fat can congeal.
The first bowl of Pho we ever made!
MMmmmm i could SOOOOOO go for some pho. I think I"ll make some tomorrow or Saturday! I'm lucky enough to live RIGHT by a korean market that sells a lot of other asian goodies too
@Gerbera, with the beef, use an electric knife and cut it when it's still partially frozen. That's how we do beef for korean recipes like bulgolgi (we don't eat it on the rib in our family). For your food slicer, it may work bertter partially frozen. I find that slicing beef thinly when it's thawed sorta makes a mushy hot mess out of the meat.
@ejs,
Yup! We always throw the meat in the freezer for a bit before slicing beef thinly. Learned the trick when we started making jerky a couple years ago. 
Oh, gotcha. Yeah it's not a trick anybody I know knows, but the electric knife really makes it work much easier.
And i am totally making this asap. I am seriously craving now. Mmmm. i really hope my korean market carries the spice packet.
use SHABU SHABU beef, they usually carry it in korean/asian grocery stores, very thinly sliced, high squality beef... it's perfect for the perfect pho recipe! ;)
@missjyc, is it frozen?
The frozen food section of my K market is....well....less than desirable. It's hard to see what's in there.
@ej, it's usually fresh and refrigerated at our k market... sometimes they might have it in the freezer, but it should still be cherry red meat! :D
@missjyc,
There's one good (big) Asian mart near me and I don't like their Shabu Shabu meat. It's usually cut too thick and extremely fatty and freezer burned most times! I only get it when I'm really desperate when we're all out from our NYC Chinatown stock and we're doing hot pot. Usually when we go back to NYC we bring a big cooler and stock it full of groceries!
Thanks, I'll take a look! Maybe they do have it...i'll have to ask. Their english is really really bad there, so I have trouble asking them if they have things in stock. It's so awkward.
Oh man i can't wait to make this. If i didn't have a client in town today, I'd go get it for lunch! Darn.
@gerbera, aww that stinks! i'm surprised that the korean/asian grocers around here (suburban michigan) have the good products they do have, i guess they get most of their shipments from chicago which is only a few hours away... they're actually opening up an "e-mart" which is going to be like a korean shop plaza... i'm super excited! :P
@ej - they'll understand shabushabu (hopefully).. LOL and im def craving PHO suddenly! :P
Oh my gawd I saw this thread and immediately started to salivate! My FI and I looooove Pho. I wish I had a stock pot large enough to attempt to make this. We are polish but my FI firmly believes we should have a large pot of this bubbling on the stovetop at all times! lol
@toastercat,
Hahhaha. Just because your not Vietnamese doesn't mean you can't luurrvve Pho! I swear FI can have Pho for dinner every night. The weird part is it doesn't' fill him up (except when we made it of course because then he'll have two big bowls!).
The Asian mart near me gets weekly delivery from Toronto so it's not bad. But you have to be there when they get their shipment. It's insane on delivery day. If you come even the next day 90% of all the fresh stuff is gone. I get really excited when we make time and money to go on delivery day. I always spend way too much. On delivery day they usually have fish! Whole fish! Not live alas but better than nothing. And oh crabs. I do so love crabs. Hehe.
@Gerbera, it fills us up, but only like for an hour, thereafter we would each like another big bowl!
I feel STUFFED after i eat pho'....all that liquid! It's so good! I can't leave any in the bowl. But then 2 hours later i'm like "food?"...haha.
We made Pho last night!
Along with decent bones with marrow and reducing the water to bone ratio the broth came out SO much better this time. Actually having coriander seeds and cardamom pods help a lot too I'm sure! And we went a little more robust with the spices like we like and toasted on the spices in a pan before hand.
And of course having a awesome electric slicer to slice the beef uniformally helped!
Way to go! Glad to see this post bumped up again, now I need Pho! Kudos to you and FI making your own!
definitely going bigger on spices is always great when it comes to pho. it really brings it out in the broth and to me the broth is where it is all at. even though i am one of those that add hoisin and sriracha on it. but i always gotta have sips of just the broth only before i add it.
Hi Ladies!So we've gotten our broth to the point where it's perfect for us. We have been doubling the spices. The broth flavor is great.
But we've noticed that by the time we add the cooked noodles ( I can't find fresh ones near me:( ) and beef the broth is so diluted!
Next time we plan to triple the spices to bump up the flavor even more. And I'm pretty sure we use about 1.5 times the bones needed and have had better luck lately finding the proper beef bones.
But do you ladies have any tricks to solve the dilution problem?
When we order it from the restaurant it's never diluted when we add noodles and beef.
Thanks!
Just saw that your respond so sorry to take a while to getting back with you. It could be the noodles you are using because I know we never have that problem with dilution. How are you cooking your noodles? It is harder to keep fresh noodles here in our house because we don't eat pho enough to keep it. So we always have the dried noodle. Normally we always soak the dried noodle in water before we cook it. But we do not cook the noodle in the broth. We always bring a pot of water to boil and cook the noodles separetly. So if you are cooking the noodles in the broth that may be why it is diluted. But otherwise I am not sure.
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Hi Girls,
I know we have a few Vietnamese girls among us.
FI and I LOVE Pho and have been talking about trying our hand at making some for a while. We'll we're finally going to this weekend! Yay!
Anyway, I found this recipe from HERE
Looks pretty good to me.
What do you think? What would you change or add?
Thanks!