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Phở bò

A six-hour broth and a five-minute bowl. Do the first on a Sunday.

Hands-on
40 min
Cooking
360 min
Total
400 min
Difficulty
hard

The broth is the whole dish. Everything after it is assembly, and assembly takes no time at all, which is the arrangement that makes phở worth the Sunday.

Ingredients

6servings

Broth

  • 2 kg beef bones , marrow and knuckle
  • 1 onion , halved, charred
  • 80 g ginger , halved, charred
  • 6 star anise
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 60 ml fish sauce
  • 25 g rock sugar

To serve

  • 400 g flat rice noodles
  • 300 g beef sirloin , sliced paper thin
  • Thai basil, coriander, lime, chilli , to taste

Equipment

  • stockpot, 8 litre

Method

  1. Cover the bones with cold water, bring to the boil, boil hard five minutes, then drain and rinse. This is the step people skip and the reason their broth is cloudy.
  2. Char the onion and ginger directly over a flame until blackened in patches.
  3. Return the bones to the pot with 4 litres cold water, the aromatics and the spices. Simmer very gently, never boiling, skimming for the first hour.
  4. Strain. Season with fish sauce and rock sugar until it tastes like more than the sum of its parts.
  5. Soak the noodles, divide between bowls, lay the raw beef on top and pour the broth over boiling hot. It cooks in the bowl.

Per serving

  • 520 kcal
  • 14 g fat
  • 62 g carbs
  • 36 g protein

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