It’s not really pronounced “FOH”, but rather “FUH.” It’s my son’s favorite food and a blast to watch my husband and his friend James cook!
What is it? It’s a Vietnamese soup and a flavor explosion of yummy goodness!
If you’re up for the challenge and a new experience for your taste buds, here’s the recipe!
Vietnamese Pho
Soup Base:
1 gallon water
Beef bouillon
Chicken bouillon
7 tsp sugar
4 tsp fresh ginger
2-5 onions
9 whole star anise
13 small Asian cinnamon sticks
7 tsp whole cloves
Put water & enough bouillon of each kind (beef & chicken) to compensate for that amount of water into a large stock pot and bring to a boil. {this is a matter of taste, but our friends put more beef bouillon than chicken–totally up to you, though.}
Cut onion & ginger and roast in oven until slightly charred.
Put all spices in a spice ball or cheese cloth and drop into broth. Boil for 10 minutes. At the same time, add onion and ginger and sugar.
After 10 minutes, remove all ingredients from broth and set aside.
Keep broth boiling!
Fixings for Soup:
rice noodles, cooked
fresh bean sprouts
fresh basil
onion & ginger from broth
beef round (sliced paper thin and raw!)
Condiments:
limes (quartered)
Sriracha sauce (spicy)
Hoison sauce (sweet)
Layer the noodles, sprouts, basil, onion, ginger, and beef (in that order) in a large bowl. Our friends purchased small mixing bowls to be our traditional pho bowls. The kiddos each get smaller, but still deep, bowls.
Ladle boiling hot broth over the top of the fixings, filling nearly to the brim of the bowl.
You literally watch the meat cook (this is why you want the beef paper thin and the broth boiling hot!)
When meat is browned and pho is cool enough to eat, add a squeeze of lime and sauces of your choice, spicy or sweet or both! Grab a spoon AND a fork (or chopsticks, if you dare!) and dig in!
ps-if you have an Asian market nearby, utilize it! WAY cheaper! Also, have your grocer cut your meat paper thin for you, unless you happen to have one of those nifty meat slicers at home.
Rachel says
Oh my goodness Amy! This sounds wonderful! I’ll have to try this recipe as soon as I can get to our local Oriental Market. I have found that ours is not only cheaper for the “oriental” foods like sauces and interesting veggies, but the meat there is also usually much less expensive and there is an actual butcher on site to cut everything to order, unlike most of our “regular” grocery tores around here!
Thanks for sharing the recipe, can’t wait to try it out.
~Rachel
Grace says
As we say around here,
“YUMMERS!!!” 😀
Jessica says
How much ginger?
Amy says
So glad you said something! I missed putting that in! 4 tsp 🙂
Dusti says
Thanks so much Amy! I have star anise that my DH picked up on accident last month when I asked for something else- and haven’t known what it is used for!
By Word of Mouth says
Just followed you, but now I want to actually come over and have dinner 🙂
Kyle Suzanne says
We love Pho! A friend of ours brought it to us after my second pregnancy. We eat it about once a year but wish we could eat it more often. I have been searching for a recipe to make it because we tend to be frugal and it’s expensive to take the whole crew to the resturaunt and daunting with two babies! Thanks girlie!
Kyle Suzanne
Tonya @ My Homey Haven says
Oh wow! This soup sounds delicious! I can’t wait to pick up the ingredients and give it a try. We’ll be headed to the International Market soon so I’m sure I won’t have any problems finding exactly what I need. Thank you for linking up to my 10 Days of Warm Winter Soups link-up! 🙂