Vegetarian pho, or phở chay, has never been about healthy eating in Vietnam. Now with pho very popular in the U.S. and the population more conscious about leading a healthy lifestyle, it’s only natural that restaurants offer vegetarian pho or pho chay on their menus. Temple chay foods are true vegetarian and healthy, but once vegan foods get to the restaurants, chefs spice things up to attract paying customers.
Quoc Viet Foods® specializes in manufacturing Vietnamese pho soup bases and other seasonings. The company is the first to use modern technologies to convert the traditional Vietnamese pho into convenient soup base form. If you’re looking for a quick pho recipe to make your own pho in less than an hour, it’s possible with pho products from Quoc Viet Foods. It’s a great option without giving up authenticity, taste and quality. Read more on how Quoc Viet Foods began its journey to bring pho to the mass.
The basil family of herbs is one of the oldest and most commonly used herbs in the world. The variety known as Thai basil is no exception; it is utilized so extensively in Indian and Southeast Asian dishes that it is practically considered a vegetable rather than a simple herb. In Vietnamese pho, Thai basil has a prominent place on the plate of garnishes that are served along with the steamy bowl of broth, meat and noodles, giving a peppery and sweet taste at the same time.
In Vietnamese pho, you are likely to find chopped cilantro blanched by the broth in your bowl. Many pho recipes that you will find either in Asian cookbooks or on the Internet also recommend using cilantro as an important ingredient. Cilantro in fact has a long history of its own. Cilantro never takes the center stage, but you can’t have pho without it.
Why is banh pho so important in a bowl of pho? One can say that pho is not pho without the correct banh pho rice noodles in it. You can eliminate the garnishing, but you cannot take banh pho noodles out of a proper bowl of pho. And you can’t have just few strands of banh pho floating in the broth, you have to have a whole lot of them. Here’s the run-down on the importance of banh pho in the pho dish.
Authentic beef pho recipes call for cooking the broth over a period of 3 or more hours. Properly done, this will get you the best pho broth the way it’s intended to be. But for those who want to take a shortcut and shave off a few hours, Quoc Viet Foods Beef Flavored “Pho” Soup Base is a great option. They’ve achieved converting the traditional Vietnamese products (including pho) into a convenient form.
Nowadays you can’t order pho without the plate of garnishing, which invariably include bean sprouts. Fans of Vietnamese pho have come to expect bean sprouts with their pho. Some even think that pho looks quite forlorn and incomplete without it. Pho and bean sprouts may look like an odd couple, but many pho eaters add them purely out of habits because it’s just natural to eat them together.
Culantro is often mistaken for its cousin cilantro, another pho ingredient. While most pho connoisseurs like to add culantro to their pho, it is really an optional item and the amount added is left to the tastes of the diner.
There’s no denying that the pho broth is the most important element of the Vietnamese pho dish. Pho broth is the soul of the dish. It is what makes the dish Vietnamese pho.
Ordering pho has always been a baffling matter to many. A pho menu seems like a mishmash of words that are as good as gibberish. Here’s how to get the most out of your pho menu.