Pho (Noodle Soup)

Variations

• Pho ga: Made with chicken instead of beef for a lighter, clear soup.
• Southern style: Saigon style — sweeter, piled with sprouts and herbs.
• Northern (Hanoi): Clear and restrained, with simple garnishes.
• Quick version: Use store-bought beef stock plus the spices to cut the time.

Tips

• The pot runs three clocks and the recipe is the order they run out. Stocks and broths sets a ceiling per ingredient rather than one for the pot — beef bones at "four hours or more", with this broth named as its example, against 30-45 minutes for vegetables — and the spices are the shortest thing in it, which is all "pull them after about an hour" means. Nothing here is cooked until it is done; each thing comes out when it has given up what it has.
• The charring is the extraction, not a price paid for it. The blackened onion and ginger simmer for two or three hours and are then fished out, so none of the burnt surface reaches the bowl — which is why grilling files this apart from every other control it gives for a fire, where the charred face is the one you eat. On this pot its warning about soot landing on the food has nothing to apply to.
• Parboiling the bones and holding the simmer are the same instruction given twice. Galbitang separates the causes of a cloudy broth, and fat emulsified by a rolling boil is the one that cannot be strained out afterwards; Seolleongtang is the same beef bones taken deliberately to that result. Clarity is decided by what leaves in the first water and by never letting the pot beat air into the fat.
• "Only blanch them" is the whole of the noodle's cooking. Cooking noodles gives the reason: dried rice noodles "dropped into boiling water go to pieces on the outside first", so they soak 20-30 minutes in warm water and then pass through boiling water for ten to twenty seconds. The ten seconds are not a shortened boil — the soak already did the cooking.
• Parboil and rinse the bones for a clear broth; tossing the first water is the standard move.
• Charring the onion and ginger until blackened is the secret to pho's signature aroma.
• Don't steep the spices too long or they turn bitter — pull them after about an hour.
• Pour the broth screaming hot so it lightly cooks the raw beef and lifts the aroma.
• Pre-soak the noodles and only blanch them; boiling too long makes them mushy.