Making my own Phở
One of the trade offs for moving back to a very small town is that while we no longer have to deal with Austin traffic, we no longer have the access to the Austin culinary ecosystem.
Thankfully, I've worked in restaurants, not as a cook but I've been shown how the sausage is made when it comes to things like Korean food. I can make Galbi, Bulgogi, and Birthday/New Year soup but getting the right cuts of meat and ingredients is a challenge.
Our Walmart at least carries bok choy and nappa cabbage, several flavors of Buldak, and various other basics. But I have to drive an hour or so to get good kimchi, specific sauces, and cuts of meat. Yes, I can buy whole pork belly and brisket and hand slice it all but that's time consuming and mildly dangerous.
In Austin I could run to HEB and get cross cut ribs, thin sliced beef, six kinds of onions, radishes, fresh ginger, etc all without issue. Asian grocery stores had frozen rice and fish cake waiting to be thrown into soup. Whenever I get a chance in Dallas I'll hit up H Mart and buy everything I can imagine.
So anyway, back to the title of this blog. I am going to make Phở in a few weeks. (No, it's not Korean but it has the same sourcing logistics issue.) Last year we ordered a side of beef from a local ranch and between the 6 of us have eaten nearly every part of what we got since last March. The only things left? The bones, heart, and tongue. I have like, 30lbs of bones in my freezer. What can you make with beef bones? Soup. What's the best beef soup? Phở.
I've made it before, not with whole bone chunks, but tail bits and it worked out splendidly. With fresh bones from a cow that lived 20 minutes from here should be mind blowing. But making bone broth isn't enough to make phở, you need the seasoning and noodles. I've got the basil and onions growing in my garden but I can't exactly make the right kind of rice noodles.
So I went online and put in an order for the seasoning kits (basically a packet of star anise, cinnamon, etc ready to use that costs vastly less than if I went out and bought the dried spices individually), dried noodles, and about 50lbs of rice because not all rice is created equal, and a few other fun things but I'll post about those later.
While we always get the raw sliced beef at restaurants, I'm not an ultra fan of doing that at home. If I do I'll get the thin sliced ribeye from the store that I use to make bulgogi. It's not as thin as I'd like it to be but it would do the job if I boiled it a second in the broth before adding it to the soup just to make sure it was done for the kids.
I'm stoked. Going out for phở (if it was an option) would be expensive for the 6 of us and two of the kids won't really finish a whole bowl. This way I can portion it out and we can store some of the broth base for later.
waits for package to arrive