Can we talk about Pho?
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Anonymous
| FUH with a rising tone of voice |
Anonymous
Vietnamese pronounce "the" like duuuth. Do you enlighten them too? |
Anonymous
| Good pho needs a lot of work. I make it a few times a year at home. The recipe is from Andrea Nguyen's excellent book on Vietnamese cooking. It's not complicated, just involves a lot of steps. I have most of the ingredients on hand anyways. |
Anonymous
+1. I totally agree. Sometimes I make a slapdash version at home with comparable ingredients, but always lower my expectations  . never do i expect it to come close to what i'd get at a pho shop.
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Anonymous
| So, when you go for good pho? I live in Falls Church City, surrounded by pho places, but I've found the Yelp reviews to be unreliable.... |
Anonymous
^^sorry, "where do you go..." |
Anonymous
| Yep, a couple of times a year, my husband and FIL will spend 2 days making a huge amount of pho, but if we don't have any of that in the freezer, we go out. With pho, if the recipe is easy or quick, it's probably not worth trying. |
Anonymous
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You certainly can make pho at home - here are some advice from my Vietnamese grandmother:
Make chicken pho because it only takes a couple of hours. Beef taste good, but you should be prepared to cook and skim broth for a day. If you want to make beef pho, use a lot of bones. Ox tail makes a great pho, but has become expensive. Make pho like you make broth - skim constantly to keep a clear broth. You can add beef slices to the chicken broth. Roast the meat/bone and burn the onion/ginger/star anise to add a more complex flavor. use rock sugar and Vietnamese fish sauce (like soy sauce, fish sauces from different countries tastes really different). These will give the pho a more interesting, fuller taste compared to cane sugar and table salt. make the broth saltier/stronger in taste than you like because noodles will absorb a lot of flavor. don't boil the noodles - soak in warm tap water and let the hot broth do the rest of the cooking. PS - I have tried the flavor packets. The more expensive one (like this http://www.amazon.com/Quoc-Viet-Foods-Beef-Flavored/dp/B000XDJU0A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391795619&sr=8-1) are actually pretty good, but as previously mentioned, the cheaper ones are just MSG mixes |
Anonymous
Please do so the next time you order "the" |
Anonymous
Xe Lua @ Eden center. |
Anonymous
| thanks to this thread I went there for lunch. yay! |
Anonymous
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Years ago when we lived in Richmond, we used to go to a pho house in Richmond and they wore shirts that said "It's pho-cking good!"
I didn't get it at first because I was mispronouncing the word, but then NPR did a story about pho one morning which included a tutorial on how to pronounce it. 
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Anonymous
Where? |
Anonymous
My white Indiana chem lab partner said " Ah, I get it! f**k it! right?" when she saw my T-shirt that I bought in Phuket, Thailand. |
Anonymous
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I use this recipe.
http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2010/07/chinese-spicy-beef-noodle-soup-recipe-niu-rou-mian.html I think the star of anise is what gives the broth that pho taste. Warning: If you pronounce it FUH and have teenagers they say K right after you say FUH. So I say PHO. 
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