Recipe: PHO - Quick & Easy

Last night I made pho for dinner. It rained yesterday and nothing makes me feel better than some warm homemade food. Pho is a traditional Vietnamese beef and noodle soup dish, but growing up my mother used pork, and since my husband and I are planning not to eat a lot of red meat or pork, I use chicken. Traditionally, you're supposed to let the broth simmer for hours, but the following recipe is a quick version that anyone can whip up for dinner after working all day.

Here's my quick recipe:

For broth:

1. In a big pot, fill it with water (3/4 full) and put it on high heat

2. add your choice of meat and let it boil for 30-45 minutes, until done
    a. if you use chicken – 1 lb of drumsticks and 1 1b of boneless chicken thighs is a preferred choice, the 
        meat is much tender and tastier

    b. if you use pork – 1-2 lbs of pork shoulder or small pork roast chopped into 3-4 inch pieces

3. after meat is done cooking, take out and let it cool in a bowl

4. add a quartered white onion to broth and 3 beef bouillon cubes and 2 chicken bouillons cubes and let it cook, stir so that the cubes dissolve – feel free to add more water so that your pot is 3/4 full

5. let onion cook for 10 min. at the most then take it out of the pot

6. continue to let broth simmer, turn down heat to low

For meat:

1. after it cools down, you can slice the pork into thin slices/pieces or tear the chicken thighs and drumsticks to pieces, discard bones

For noodles (you can buy from any Asian store - look for packaging that read BANH PHO)

1. soak your pho noodles in very hot water until limp (I do this at least 3 times, draining in between and adding more hot water)

For quartered onion:

1. tear onion into 1-2 inch pieces and set aside

For condiments:

the following is used to flavor the pho – you can add as much as you want for your tastes

• salt
• black pepper
• chopped Thai chili peppers (I have like 2 big bags full at home - from my mom's garden)
• soy sauce
• fish sauce
• oyster sauce
• sriracha sauce
• hoisin sauce

For your bowl of pho:

1. add a good amount of noodles to fill the bowl (once the broth is added, it’ll condense)

2. add a handful of meat (to your liking)

3. add a handful of onions (to your liking)

4. add all condiments (NOTE: at most Pho restaurants, they bring the broth with noodles and meat out to you and you can add all the condiments after – I prefer to add it before pouring the broth on)

5. pour broth over to fill bowl completely

6. add garnishes like bean sprouts, lime, and herbs (scallions, mint, Thai basil, cilantro, culantro – scallions can be sliced or slivered, mint, basil, and cilantro leaves can be used whole) – as you desire