Unqualified Offerings

Last night the Littlest Offering and I made the Steamy Kitchen Pho Bo recipe. (That’s Jaden’s picture at the right, though, not ours. Used by permission!) The very short version of the story is, the soup was astonishing. In fact, it was the best Pho Bo I have ever had - better than any of the DC Metro-area Pho shops we’ve tried, which is a half dozen or so. Why? I suspect it’s because we didn’t use this:

That’s a box of Pho (beef) base that the really very nice checkout guy at Hung Phat in Wheaton (I don’t name ‘em, I just shop there) suggested we could use if we didn’t want to make it all from scratch. (He was incredibly helpful - set us up with the right spice bag and kept us from going disastrously wrong on our fish-sauce selection) Probably, as Gene Callahan suggested in comments here last month, the restaurants are using commercial soup base. We bought a box just in case, but decided to go through with our plan to follow the instructions.

It’s a lot of work, I’ll grant you. We followed the instructions on parboiling and scum-skimming. We gave the stock its full three hours. We were very faithful to the instructions, with the following wrinkles:

* Our Whole Foods does not sell bones. Since my New Year’s Resolution was to buy only Certified-Humane meats for use at home - still sinning like Augustine when eating out - I sprang for about three pounds of ox-tail slices, which they do have. I added the optional (per Steamy Kitchen) pound of chuck steak.

* Our stock pot barely holds six quarts of liquid without fixin’s, so I dropped a quart and a half or so. Since I was using less meat/bones than Jaden calls for, this was probably good. I kept the spice portions the same.

* Yes, I charred the roots (onion and ginger) in the broiler.

* I used round tip instead of london broil.

* Neither TLO nor I are big on bean sprouts.

* I pulled the chuck steak out after an hour and a half to "be eating this meat later in the bowls." That did not work out! Why? Because I thought I would have just a taste of the chuck steak while the broth continued to cook. I did manage to forbear to eat two of the chuck slices, even though it was the best chuck steak I ever ate in my entire life. I mean, beef in anise and cardomom and so on - who knew?

* I stuck the round tip roast in the freezer for fifteen minutes before slicing to firm it up, but it still didn’t slice as thinly as I’d have liked. (It did still cook up in the broth.) Next time I’ll unwrap it first . . .

The stock itself was richer and tastier than any stock I ever made. I’m not any kind of stock wizard either. This was an impressively full-bodied broth, and the reason I’m claiming my soup as better than the commercial pho houses. I would absolutely serve this to guests. In fact, I may try to make some for the cousins in Illinois over Spring break.

So if you have half a day to kill and a taste for Asian cooking, give it a try.