Phantastic Phở

Last night I tired making one of my favourite Vietnamese dishes, Phở, which is essentially a spicy beef noodle soup. It's a dish that at its core has a very flavourful broth with many complex flavours, which proved fairly difficult to replicate. It takes a lot of time and love to create this stock, which carries the flavour for the whole dish. Unfortunately for me, I did not have too much time that I could invest in making an awesome soup from scratch, so I ended up following this 5 minute recipe. I also lacked a fair few of the key ingredients. Alas, I did not let this be a stumbling block for me, I improvised! This is how I made my quick and easy Phở.

Ingredients needed to get started:


1. 2 packets of egg noodles (I didn't have rice noodles as required, so I substituted)
2. Beef, very thinly sliced
3. ½ brown onion, sliced
4. 1 clove of garlic, crushed (couldn't find the crusher, so I chopped finely)
5. 1 knob of ginger, crushed (as above)
6. 2 hot red chillies, sliced
7. Beef stock cubes, crumbled (you're really supposed to make your own from beef bones)
8. Soy sauce (not quite a good substitute, but as close as I could get to hoisin sauce)
9. Allspice (Chinese 5 spice is bettter)
10. Coriander leaves
11. Spring onions, sliced

Step 1: Prep the ingredients

Start by defrosting the meat for a few minutes, just to remove the ice from the meat, but still keeping it fairly firm (help in cutting slices thin).

In the meantime, slice up all the vegetables (onion, garlic, ginger, chilli, coriander, spring onion)

Check the meat. If it still has ice on it, then leave it in for a little longer.

Slice up the meat, as thinly as possible. You only need 5-10 slices.

Step 2: Start cooking

Heat up 2 cups of water in pot.

Crumble in 2 cubes of beef stock. Stir and bring to the boil.

Add the vegetables, less the coriander and spring onion, and allow to simmer for 5 minutes.

In another pot, bring 4 cups of water to the boil.

Drop in the noodles.

Don't leave them in for too long, we only need to remove the starch from the noodles. They will continue to cook once removed from the heat.

Step 3: Layer the bowl

Phở is made by layering in semi-cooked and raw ingredients in a bowl, then pouring hot soup on top, so that they cook in the bowl, and are consumed as fresh as possible. Bring the beef stock to the boil again. Then, start by layering in the raw beef.

Add in the hot noodles.

Top with the coriander and spring onions.

Drench the bowl with the piping hot soup, then mix well.

And there you have it, a cheap and quick home made Phở! To be honest, it's pretty terrible compared to the real deal, but it was fun to make anyway. It lacks the real Phở taste, and is more like a soupy 2 minute noodles with beef :P This is probably due to the fact that I didn't use real beef bones to make my stock, and I lacked a majority of the essential ingredients. It was a great experience nonetheless!

- WeCannotCook