Pho Bo: My Ultimate Comfort Food

I didn’t even have to think about what I was going to make for my first ever recipe post. I felt there was only one dish that perfectly encapsulated everything that this blog is about, one dish that represents my idealized benchmark for what comfort food should be, a recipe whose concept (noodle soup) should be familiar to most Americans, but whose particular ingredients make it exotic and intriguing. I am talking about pho.

For those uninitiated, pho is a Vietnamese soup with thin, chewy rice noodles, paper thin slices of top round, fresh herbs, sliced onions and mung bean sprouts, all floating in a rich, aromatic, salty-sweet, crystal clear broth that takes hours to develop the proper flavor. It’s as soulful and comforting as Grandma’s chicken noodle soup, and even more flavorful and complex (sorry, Grandma). And it’s totally customizable: you can make your bowl taste however you want it to, building off the basic theme by adding a squeeze of lime juice, slices of chiles, a squirt of sriracha. And eaters are encouraged to dip their beef slices or noodles in a dish of hoisin sauce and/or chile paste for an extra flavor boost.

The heart of pho, though, is and always will be the broth, a deep brown, delicately spiced beef stock that gets added body from long-simmering beef bones (I used beef neck bones and oxtail, though you could also use beef knuckle, short ribs, or shanks, depending on what’s available at your local butcher’s counter).

I let mine cook for almost nine hours over the course of two days, letting it refrigerate overnight to the simplify the step of skimming most of the fat off, a necessary step to attain the desired clear, consomme-like broth. After the cooking process, you will need to strain out the solids…I passed mine through three different strainers of increasing fineness, finishing with a fine sieve lined with cheesecloth. A pain? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely.

And once the broth is ready and hot, you’re practically done. All you need to do is soak some rice noodles in boiling water to reconstitute them before finishing them in the bowls of broth, thinly slice some white and green onions, and put out a plate of raw slices of beef, a plate of garnishes (commonly included here are mung bean sprouts, Thai basil, cilantro, perilla, lemon or lime wedges, slices of chile) and some condiments on the side (I like hoisin sauce, sriracha, and garlic-chile paste).

To serve, put the onions and noodles in the bottom of deep soup bowls (if they’re shallow, the broth cools off too fast and won’t cook the noodles and raw beef), ladle the boiling broth right over the top, and serve immediately.

I used an adaptation of Ann Le’s recipe from her Little Saigon Cookbook. Following is her original recipe, along with some of my personal notes on where and why I deviated.

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 Ingredients

• 3 lb. beef knuckle or neck bones, with meat
• 2 lb. beef oxtail
• 10 cups water, or enough to entirely cover meat * (During the first couple hours of cooking, when the pot is uncovered, a surprising amount of the liquid evaporates, so I ended up adding at least six additional cups of water to the pot throughout the total cook time).
• 3 large yellow onions, peeled
• 1 ginger root, about half the size of your palm, roughly peeled
• 4 whole star anise
• 1/2 T. whole cloves
• 1 T. black peppercorns
• 4 cloves garlic, smashed
• 1 daikon, peeled and cut into 3 pieces
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 3 small shallots
• 1/2 cup rock sugar * (regular white sugar is fine, but I would add 1/4 cup, then gradually add more, to your taste)
• 1 cup fish sauce * (For me, the end result with a whole cup of fish sauce was just a bit too salty and too strong of a flavor; I found it wasn’t in balance with the beef, ginger and spices, so I would go with 1/2 cup to start…my mom told me once that, in cooking, you can always add more of something but you can’t take it out once it’s in there…)
• 2 T. salt * (I don’t recommend adding any salt, at least until the broth is otherwise totally done and you’re putting the final seasoning touches on it. You just never know how much your stock will reduce during cooking, and I think the fish sauce adds plenty of salt anyway…)
• 2 6-oz. packages flat rice noodles (bhan pho)
• 3/4 lb. sirloin or top round steak, sliced paper-thin
• 6 scallions, chopped into rings

Pho Salad Platter

• Sriracha chili sauce
• Hoisin sauce
• Fresh cilantro leaves
• Fresh limes, quartered
• Fresh mung bean sprouts
• Fresh Thai basil leaves * (Regular basil works fine, though it doesn’t have the same visual impact of the gorgeous purple stems of Thai basil)
• Fresh perilla leaves
• Fresh long coriander leaves
• Fresh whole red or green chiles

1. Put the beef knuckles or bones and oxtail in a very large stockpot (I used an 8-quart pot) and cover completely with water. Bring to a boil and keep boiling while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
2. Cut two peeled yellow onions in half. Char each onion half by holding it with tongs over the open flame of the gas stove or place it directly on the electric burner for about 3 minutes. You do not need to light the onion on fire, but the charring will bring out the aroma and deepen the flavor of the broth. Repeat the process with the ginger. Putting the onion or ginger under a broiler will also work. Set aside. * (I used the broiling method, and found that it took about 10 minutes for the onions to begin to char; I just put the onions and ginger on the same roasting pan, rather than doing them separately, and they both started to char at the same time).
3. In a small skillet or saucepan, lightly toast the anise pods, cloves, peppercorns, and garlic for about 5 minutes, or until fragrant. Set aside to cool. Then wrap them in a piece of cheesecloth or put them in a spice bag or tea strainer.
4. Check on the bones in the stockpot and skim off any scum that has accumulated. (If this is your first time making a beef stock from scratch, you may be surprised by the amount of scum that builds up from the meat. It’s important to skim the top of the simmering broth in the first few hours of cooking.)
5. Add the spice bag, charred onion and ginger, daikon, cinnamon stick, and shallots to the stock. Boil for 15 minutes, and then bring down to a simmer.
6. Add the rock sugar, fish sauce, and salt, and stir well. Continue to simmer for 2 1/2 hours, uncovered. Check the pot periodically and skim off any scum or fat as it accumulates.
7. Through the broth will be flavorful after 2 1/2 hours and you may think it’s done, continue cooking on very low heat for up to 10 hours, covered. The broth will only get better.
8. Once the broth has finished cooking, removed the pot from the heat and let it cool a bit. Then remove all the solid ingredients from the broth. Do not discard the bones; set them aside to remove any meat remaining on them. * (I found that after hours of simmering, most of the beef had completely fallen off the bone and disintegrated into fine shreds, which isn’t ideal for pho, so I just kept it for another use.) Pour the broth through a fine mesh strainer to remove any scum and fat, then return the broth to the pot or a new pot. The broth should be clear.
9. About 15 minutes before you would like to serve the pho, bring the broth back to a boil. While you are reboiling, fill a large bowl with hot tap water. Soak the rice noodles in the water for about 10 minutes. They should soften just slightly; the hot pho broth will cook them the rest of   the way. * (Ten minutes wasn’t quite enough for the noodles I used, so I recommend soaking them for twenty minutes. Alternatively, you could cook the noodles in the pot of boiling broth. Either way, if you find your noodles are underdone, you can always put the whole bowl in the microwave, which will boil the broth as well as steam the noodles from the inside out, softening them up nicely.)
10. Drain the noodles and place them in six individual serving bowls. Slice the beef paper-thin against the grain, if your butcher has not done so. With your sharpest, thin-blade knife, try your best to slice paper-thin pieces. If the meat is very cold (even slightly frozen), it is easier to handle and to slice.
11. Slice the remaining onion paper-thin, preferably with a mandoline. Arrange the raw beef and onion slices and scallions over the noodles in each bowl. Slice the oxtail and add it to the noodles as well, in addition to any of the bits of meat taken from the bones.
12. When ready to serve, pour the boiling broth into the individual bowls. The broth will cook the beef as well as the noodles. Give it a few minutes to do so, then serve with the pho garnish platter. The herbs should be separated into their groups, not mixed together. Encourage your diners to take some fresh herbs, tear them with their hands, and throw them into the broth. A light squeeze of lime cuts the richness of the broth a bit. The hoisin sauce and Sriracha chili sauce can be added directly to the soup or poured into a side dish as a dip for the beef.

[Serves 6]

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The finished product...

Finally, a last note to anyone who’s read this far: 1) thanks, Mom; and 2) as this is my first post, I know the photos, layout, writing, etc. may not be perfect, so I would definitely appreciate any advice or feedback on how to make this a better blog overall. And, I’m always open for suggestions for new recipes/foods to try, so if you have a favorite comfort food, let me know and I’ll try to post about it!

Thanks for reading, tell me how you liked the pho, and I’ll see you for our next session…