Dawn Loves Food

Local Eats in Lake Havasu City, Arizona

Easy as Pho

by

Pho is all around us living next door to Little Saigon and we go out on a quest for the best restaurants often. We have some favorites and I’ve made my own broth to rival theirs! Oh yes, even a seal of approval from a couple other palates have agreed, Easy as Pho is damn good. This is wonderful way to enjoy a family style meal together because you can pile all the fresh ingredients in the middle of the table and go to town.

Pho is a delicious Vietnamese staple dish. It’s light, aromatic and fresh. Slow cooking the broth gives it a rich deep, dark luscious intense flavor. It’s a terrific way to use your frozen broths or bones from a rotisserie bird. The magic happens when the tendons and marrow are used allowing the collagen to escape from the bones. Pho will have super-hot broth as the base, some type of meat, fish or tofu, thin rice noodles and it is topped with a variety of fresh garden veggies for color and texture like bean sprouts, basil, lime and green onion. I like to use beef that is cut razor thin as it will cook to a medium rare quickly right in your bowl. From there you customize the broth with chili flakes, hoisin, soy, minced garlic, sriracha.

Let this sit and simmer on low for hours, a day if you can. Allow the slow cooker to do its work. If you end up with the broth being too salty, if you went too far on the simmer you can always use it as a concentrate then dilute with water to your liking and stretch it out for another meal.

This is it, first post!

This creative project has been on my mind for over 10 years on and off. Not constantly on the forefront but enough to keep coming back and trying to find my point of view. A perspective I can stand behind, that I could see myself talking about that would be interesting to me, keep giving me additional content, be relevant and stand the test of time. I am not the first nor the last food blogger but I do plan on being different through my view, palette and personal stories. I want to keep testing, tasting and always improving in what I make and allow myself to share my thoughts, my dinner table and life with you.

I am diving into this without all the answers, without all the pieces of the puzzle in front of me. I may trip or meander off the trodden trail occasionally. That is the place where I find my own space; where everything is perfectly imperfect. Ultimately hoping when I look back on this one I won’t cringe too much, here we go!

 

Easy as Pho
Print

Easy as Pho Slow Cooker

Course Main Course, Soup
Cuisine Vietnamese
Keyword Broth, Pho, Slow cooker, Soup
Total Time 12 hours
Servings 6

Ingredients

  • 1 whole Roasted chicken carcass
  • 1 4 in Ginger
  • 2 c  Clam shell mushroom or button
  • 1 4 in Stalk lemongrass
  • 1 b Green onion
  • 1 b Garlic 12-14 cloves
  • 1 T Black peppercorns
  • 2 T Chinese 5 spice blend best short cut!
  • 2 T Pink Himalayan salt
  • 1 T Apple cider vinegar
  • 3-4 cups Beef bone broth or soup stock
  • 8-10 c  Water
  • 1 lb London broil
  • 16 oz Fresh rice noodles Banh Pho

Toppings for the table

  • 1 b Basil leaves
  • ½ lb Beansprouts
  • 1 b Green onion
  • 2 Limes
  • Hoisin Sauce
  • Sriracha
  • Chili flakes

Instructions

  1. Start by putting in the chicken carcass in the middle of your slow cooker, it should be frozen. Cut the ginger, mushrooms and green onion into chunks, roughly chop the garlic and bruise the lemongrass to release the oil. Sprinkle on the peppercorns, five spice and salt over the top. Add in the vinegar and broth, use the additional water to fill the cooker all the way to the top of your slow cooker. Give it all a stir around the chicken bones.

  2. Cook on low for 12 hours or more. When ready use a thin strainer or cheese cloth and drain off all the broth into a stock pot and discard all the flavor items.

  3. About 30 minutes before you are ready eat get your remaining items prepped. Thinly slice your beef, use a well sharpened knife to slice it up paper thin then fan the meat out on one plate.
  4. Prep the noodles as directed. Clean and rinse the fresh veg and put it all on another plate together in heaps. A heap of basil, bean sprouts and green onion. Cut the limes into wedges, have the hoisin, sriracha and chili flakes on the table
  5. Put all the raw beef, veggies and sauces in the middle of your table for a family style meal. Get the broth to a full boil right before you are ready to serve in the stock pot. In large deep soup bowls drop a nest of noodles (about a ½ cup prepared) and ladle in the broth scorching hot about half way up the bowl. Take your bowls with the noodles and broth to the table - be careful!

  6. Each person can customize their dish by adding slices of beef and submerge them all in the broth to cook right on sight to a medium/ medium rare. Top with a sprinkle of green onion, bean sprouts and basil. Use a squeeze or two of lime and fire away with the zippy sriracha and chili flakes to taste. For a sweet element, you can add a touch of hoisin or have it on the side to just dip the meat in. Have fun with it!

Recipe Notes

  • The longer you leave the pho broth in the slow cooker you may need to add in a little water as it boils off
  • For the beef you can freeze it for an hour or so ahead as this helps to get those super thin slices
  • I used a fresh Banh pho noodle vs dry. I just had to warm them up with the broth- no cooking time. If you use a dry noodle I would cook it very al dente as they may overcook in the hot broth. Usually this type of noodle is gluten free but verify on the packaging.
  • I did use a Chinese five spice as it has all in one for the aromatics of Pho including star anise, cloves, cinnamon, fennel and pepper. This does give the broth a darker color than the authentic versions.