Go Back

Authentic Beef Pho in 4 hours

This recipe provides the essential steps and ingredients for making the most perfect broth.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 4 hours 15 minutes
Cuisine Vietnamese
Servings 4 people

Equipment

  • Stock Pot
  • Air fryer or oven

Ingredients
  

Broth and meat

  • Bo vien (beef meatball)
  • Beef brisket (approx. 5x5x5cm cube)
  • Pho noodles (banh pho)
  • 2 kg beef bones
  • 2 whole brown onions
  • 2 peeled French shallots
  • 1/4 sliced ginger
  • 3.5 L of water

Spice Bomb

  • 1 piece Cardamom
  • 4 pieces Star anise
  • 1 pinch Whole cloves
  • 1 pinch Fennel seeds
  • 1 stick Cinnamon bark
  • 2 tbs Coriander seeds

Garnish

  • Sliced brown onions
  • Green onions
  • Coriander
  • Culantro
  • Thai basil
  • Bean sprouts blanched in hot water
  • Fresh chilli
  • Hoisin sauce
  • Lime or lemon wedges
  • Ground black pepper

Instructions
 

Spices & Aromatics

  • Crush (with a bat) cardamom, star anise, and cinnamon bark in a bag separately then combine all spices from the spice bag ingredient list in a spice infuser.
  • Roast spices, ginger slices, 2 whole onions, and 2 shallots in the oven for 5 minutes at 225◦C. After 5 minutes, remove spices and continue to roast shallots, onions, and ginger for another 5-10 minutes until lightly charred.
  • Soak beef bones in cold water for 2 hours and discard water.
  • Starting from cold water, cook the beef bones from cold water. Once the water is boiling, cook the beef bones for another 10 minutes. Discard water

Broth

  • Add 3500 mL of water in a big pot and turn on high heat. Add 2kg of beef bones.
  • Keep on high heat for 15 minutes while simultaneously skimming off debris from the broth. Then reduce heat to a simmer. DO NOT feel tempted to increase the heat.
  • Add roasted spices, shallots, onions and ginger into the broth once all debris is removed from the broth. Add 4 small chunks of rock sugar and 1 pho spoon-sized amount of salt.
  • Quickly rinse raw beef brisket in cold water.
  • Add beef brisket to pho broth and cook in simmering pho broth for 1.5 hours. Remove beef brisket from pho broth after the 1.5 hours. Do not cook beef brisket in pho broth for longer than 2 hours, this will cause the beef brisket to combine too tender.
  • Place beef brisket in a bowl of cold water with ice.
  • After cooking the broth for a total of 4 hours, turn off the heat.
  • Slice cooked beef brisket into approx. 2-4mm thick slices.
  • Before serving, taste the soup and gage how much fish sauce to put in. (About 1-2 pho spoons of fish sauce).
  • Boil the beef meatball in the pho broth before serving.
  • Serve pho with pho noodles, beef meatballs, beef brisket and garnishes.

Notes

Instead of roasting the spices in an oven, they can be toasted in a pan instead.
Hoisin sauce is optional, but personally, I like to add 0.5 teaspoons of hoisin to my pho broth. Some people like to dip their meat in the hoisin sauce instead.
The beef brisket can be added to the boiling broth any time during the 4 hour simmering time, but it should only be cooked for less than 2 hours.