Making Pho

One of the dishes which has always perplexed Smee is Pho and because I am of fake Viet variety , the only way Smee and I could get our fix of the flavoursome, warming, beefy, aromatic broth was to pay for it.  It is  cheap of course, but you know, it would be nice to be able to re-create this dish within one's own walls.

Smee had done much recipe researching on the interwebz and we (me as his little kitchenhand) had a crack at cooking it a few months ago.   We got the beef bones, ox tail, all the spices, grilled the onion and ginger and added an extra spice bag to boot.  It sure smelled  like pho, but....it was kinda bland.  We had not added MSG to our stock and deduced that unless we did, it would never taste like the restaurant version.  It was a little annoying to come to terms with the pho-MSG association.

Smee, never one to give up, checked out the pho spice offerings while we were in DC's Vietnamese area.  He came out with a tub of Quoc Viet's Beef Pho Soup Base.  We'd never seen such a tub being sold elsewhere before (only spice bags) and figured that it was worth a try.

The tub was foiled sealed (For freshness!  It claims to be preservative free.) and contained two components - a spice bag and from what I gather, dehydrated beef stock which if you think about it, is kinda like a giant stock cube but without the supposed MSG.

Smee replicated the stock from his first pho attempt and used Quoc Viet's soup base to supplement any blandness. By golly gosh, they must have something magical in their stock (or a tonne of salt and undeclared MSG) because this pho tasted exactly like the restaurant version!

The stock was a little darker than what is seen at restaurants but that is probably because they get the bulk of flavor from MSG.  Just missing a little bit of coriander and in my case, tripe and cartilage too! Mmmm squishy bits.....

Eating time!

Needless to say, Smee and I happily gobbled up our bowls of heartwarming goodness.  So to anyone wanting to eat pho at home, get your mitts on Quoc Viet's soup base!  Unfortunately, I think you can only get it in the US - boo!