Quick Pho
Adapted from LevanaCooks, using Levana Nourishments Mushroom Medley
Pho is a wildly popular Vietnamese noodle soup
It includes broth, rice noodles, vegetables and meat.
Pho has traveled beautifully, and has become a complete meal comfort food in many homes and restaurants around the world.
It usually uses as its base beef bone broth that cooks overnight. If you have time to make it, more power to you. I will not go here into the making of a beef bone broth. Certainly not because I don’t think beef broth is wonderful and wonderfully nourishing, but because my goal here is to encourage you to make pho on short notice.
So my solution to a bone-broth-less pho is miso paste, and a good splash of sake
There are no hard and fast rules to what pho should include, but some key ingredients are always in place:
- Very thin sliced meat. The meat practically cooks on contact, in seconds, and is added all the way at the end of cooking. Seitan or tofu for a vegetarian version.
- Sprouts, lime, cilantro and scallions are added just before serving
I think of Pho as the culinary love child between miso soup and pad thai.
Indeed many ingredients included in miso soup and pad thai are showcased in pho, and the recipe is just as elastic as for these two great favorites.
I will include some of my favorite ingredients, and you will play with your broth and your vegetables as you see fit
Attention Vegetarian friends:
Pho is for you too! Simply skip the sliced beef, and add seitan strips and/or firm tofu cubes
Ingredients
- 8 cups water
- 3 thin carrots, sliced very thin
- 3 ribs celery, sliced very thin
- 1 pound shitaki, caps only, sliced very thin
- 5-6 ribs nappa cabbage, sliced very thin
- 2/3 cups miso paste
- 1/2 cup dry sake (skip if you can't have alcohol)
- 1/4 cup toasted sesame oil
- 1 green or red jalapeno pepper, minced
- 2 pouches Levana Nourishments Mushroom Medley
- 1/2 pound rice noodles
Garnishes:
- 1 1/2 pounds London broil, well chilled, sliced very thin (vegetarian: use strips of seitan and/or diced firm tofu)
- 2 cups soy bean sprouts
- 6-8 sprigs cilantro, tough stems discarded, minced
- 8 scallions, sliced very thin
- 2 limes, cut in wedges
Instructions
Bring all soup ingredients to a boil. As soon as it is boiled, turn off the heat. Discard the cheesecloth bag.
While the soup comes to a boil, divide all the garnishes evenly between 6 soup bowls. Pour the boiling soup evenly over the garnishes. Serve hot.
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