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