Recipe: Vietnamese Pho Tai (Beef Noodle Soup / pot-au-feu / A Pot Of Fire)

This is recognised as one of the Vietnamese national dishes, it’s often made with chicken instead of beef. This version is made with slow braised short rib and oxtail and is topped with rare sirloin steak. It’s seasoned with fish sauce then topped with chopped herbs, thinly sliced onions and lime juice, which add wonderful fragrant notes to the meaty noodle broth.

I like to make mine with shredded cucumber instead of noodles, with gives the broth a fabulous light summery flavour, traditionally it's made with rice noodles.

ingredients for the beef pho (serves 6)

for the stock

3L water

2 chicken stock cubes

75g  ginger (cut into 4 slices & charred)

2 large onion (cut into 8 & charred)

6 star anise

2 cinnamon stick

4g cardamom

25g rock sugar (or brown sugar)

12 small oxtail segments (2pp)

3 short ribs (1/2pp)

100ml fish sauce (to taste)

40g lime juice (1 or 2 limes)

for the pho 

600g fresh noodles (100g pp)

or 3 cukes (shredded)

500g sirloin / ribeye (80g pp medium rare)

i.e. 2 large steaks!

for the garnish

10g thai basil (4 leaves pp)

20g coriander (10 clovers pp)

4 spring onions (cut into rings)

1 red onion (cut in half, then semi circles) [REF flageolet image 741?]

2 chillies (cut into rings)

fish sauce (tsp pp)

1 lime (1/6 each)

equipment

knife

large boiling pot

method

stock

OK, the first step seems counter intuitive, but it results in a clearer broth!! Boil the oxtail and short ribs separately for 5-10 minutes, until it stops releasing scum. Once they stop, discard the water it was boiled in, and rinse the meat under a cold tap.  

Char the ginger and onion on a griddle pan, this adds a nice flavour, giving a more complex broth.

Put all the ingredients into a boiling pot, bring to the boil, then turn the heat down to simmer. (Volume knob to 3 or 4!)

Simmer for 3 hours, skimming scum off the top of the broth constantly as it’s cooking. This helps produce a clearer broth.

Take the steak (for the tai component) out of the fridge so it’s at room temp when you cook it.

Salt it (a couple of pinches of salt on each side - evenly distributed) and leave it in a takeaway box. (or similar)

pho 

Just before the stock is ready, remove the short ribs and place on a chopping board. 

Cook noodles for 2 minutes in boiling water, then strain and place in hot serving bowls.

Add a glug of oil to the steaks, turning them to cover both side.

Place them into a hot pan, and brown on both sides, turning once after 2-3 minutes.

Remove and place on a chopping board. Leave them there (to rest) while prepping the garnish & assembling the pho.

to serve

Remove the meat from the short ribs by cutting along the flat part of the bone. Slice the meat thinly.

Prep the garnishes as shown. Share out the oxtail and broth into bowls, slice the steak and garnish!!

Good to go!!

thinking ahead (aka for when you really can’t be bovered)

Put the stock, including oxtail and sliced short rib, in a resealable plastic bags. 600g / bag.

Bust it out of the freezer when you want a pho!

Nuke it for 10mins (800W microwave). Make the noodles and steak while it defrosts!

Great hangover cure with minimal effort!

Out take from upcoming book . . . . I mean . . when I say upcoming . . .  I'm working on it . . .  it's been a background task for over 10+ years . . . 

Post re-written image of pho at Fernandez and Leluu