Updated 03-14-18. There's nothing like enjoying a bowl of pho at your favorite pho shop with your pho companions. But there are times, for various reasons, you'd like to make pho yourself at home.
Most good pho recipes like Andrea Nguyen's or Didier Corlou's call for cooking the bone and meat in broth for up to 2.5 to 3 hours. Other recipes call for even longer simmering. Adding other preparation time, including the time to bring water to boil, drain and reboil, and you're looking at maybe 4-5 hours total cook time at least. So for those who want to take a shortcut and shave off a few hours, try the Quoc Viet Foods Beef Flavored "Pho" Soup Base option.
Looking for a solid beef pho recipe? Check out Lovingpho’s own Beef Pho Recipe infographic.
Quoc Viet Foods makes shelf storable soup bases, seasonings, coffee and tea. When it comes to authenticity, it's always a challenge to find ready-made food products, including Vietnamese pho. Yet Quoc Viet seems to achieve the impossible for pho, that is to "convert the traditional Vietnamese products into a convenient form" while maintaining the flavor expected of such product. This means for those who never made pho or tasted pho, they can now get very close to the real thing, easily.
You can read more about my other post on Quoc Viet Foods. But enough about the company. Let's get to the goodness of their Beef Flavored "Pho" Soup Base.
The package comes in a compact round plastic container. The wraparound label clearly describes the content and includes an ingredient list, nutrition information and cooking directions in English, Viet and Chinese. While the nutrition info states that there are 32 servings per container, the cooking directions indicate it makes 20 bowls. Confusing, but still very nice! At a price of US$ 6.99 per container, I'm paying US$ 0.35 for the broth in each of my pho bowls, excluding a few other ingredients of course.
Inside the container are the powdered soup base with marrow, and 2 bags of spices. I should point out that the soup base itself is not loose powder as you may expect. Rather, because there is beef fat included (to give you the correct flavor), what you have is actually more like a grainy paste with a greasy consistency.
But don't let my description scares you. This is normal and it is the good stuff. The soup base is the key part of the pho broth and is essentially your "instant" bone/bone marrow solution that you didn't have to cook for 2-3 hours. As already mentioned, it packs plenty of beef fats which you can skim off at serving time if you wish, but I wouldn't do that. It's the good stuff (I know, I already said this).
The spice bags are your normal star anise, cinnamon, and various other spices. What's awesome about the soup base/spice bag combination is they give you all you need for the broth, including all seasonings that you need-I added some fish sauce but it's really not required. The only other things you'll need are the ginger and onion which should be charred or grilled before use in the broth, and the meat.
Quoc Viet Foods Beef Soup Base
Quoc Viet Foods Beef Soup Base Nutrition Facts
Quoc Viet Foods Beef Soup Base cooking instructions
Quoc Viet Foods Beef Soup Base package content
The direction is very easy to follow. You'll have to buy your preferred meat to cook, but this whole process entirely does away with having to buy the bone/oxtail and cooking them to get to the marrow, and to purchase the spices separately. For my broth I bought 2.8 pounds of beef flank, a piece of ginger and a medium size onion. The required ingredients list and cooking directions can be viewed from the photos above, but here's a recap which is better to follow:
- 3-4 lbs, beef flank or brisket, cut into 4-5 inch pieces for better cooking,
- 1 lb, beef tendon*,
- 1 bulb, onion,
- 2 pieces, ginger.
DIRECTIONS:
- Blanch meats for 15 minutes. Discard dirty water and rinse meats.
- (Step not in package direction): Char or grill the onion and ginger pieces. I cut my onion in half, but it’s your choice to do so or not. You can char over open flame or broil in your oven. It’s okay to char (let burned or blackened) the outside a little bit.
- Put meat pieces in a large pot and add enough water to cover them. Bring to boil then simmer at medium flame for 1 hour. Add onion, ginger about half way through.
- After about 1 hour, add spice bags and content of soup base. Important: Do not tear spice filter bags.
- After 15 minutes, remove spice bags. Continue simmer at medium flame until meats are softened. Note: you can leave spice bags in longer for more pho flavor, and remove when you think ready.
- Remove meats, onion and ginger pieces.
- Adjust water to 2 gallons or to taste.
- Also add fish sauce per your preference. Remember: start with small amount and add more as needed.
- Bring to boil and serve.
* The meats and tendon are optional, or you can also substitute/add tripe, meatballs, etc. depending on your preference, just as you would order in a restaurant. See my “Tips on Ordering Pho Your Way.”
NOTE: The above constitutes recipe for the broth only. To serve a complete pho meal, you’ll need to separately prepare other ingredients such as the banh pho noodle, chopped scallions and cilantro, etc.
For me I ended up with so much broth that I had to divide into 3 smaller containers, put 2 in the freezer and enjoy the third portion over a few days. Again the key was the soup base which is all inclusive. There are no seasonings required as the soup base is super concentrated, and you can add water to adjust to taste.My total cooking time was about 3 hours, but that's just me because making and eating pho is a religion for me 😉 so I took my time. For others who just want to get quickly to a nice steaming bowl of pho with chopsticks and spoon in hands, you can probably do it in 1.5 hours or less. The determining factor will be how tender you want the cooked meat to be.
Actually, the 3 hours that I spent to create the large volume of broth means that the next time I want to eat pho at home, I can have it as fast as I can prep the ingredients, cook the noodle, and re-thermalize (fancy word for reheat) the broth. Awesome!
To speed up cooking time even more, an alternative is to cut smaller pieces of beef (hence cutting down cooking time further) and/or use pre-cooked meatballs instead. The latter option means that you wouldn't be cooking any meat in the broth at all, as you depend totally on the soup base for the flavors. By the way, for those unfamiliar with meatballs, you don't cook them in the broth for the whole duration. Just heat them in the broth just before serving.
Finally I rate my pho broth creation using Quoc Viet Foods' Beef Flavored Pho Soup Base as follows:
- Quality and taste: 8/10.
- Convenience: 10/10.
- Affordability: 10/10.
- Total value (quality & affordability): 9/10.
You can find this and other Quoc Viet products in many Viet and Chinese food markets in the 50 U.S. states, Denmark, Canada and Japan. Quoc Viet's website indicates their products include
- Chicken Flavored "Pho" Soup Base
- Beef Flavored "Pho" Soup Base
- Beef Stew Seasoning
- "Hue" Style Beef Flavored Soup Base
- Chicken Flavored Soup Base
- Pork Flavored "Hu Tieu" Soup Base
- Pork Flavored Soup Base
- Tamarind Soup Base
- Vegetarian Soup Base
- Crab Flavored Soup Base
- Thai Tom Yum Soup Base
Unfortunately Quoc Viet is a wholesaler and does not sell directly to consumers over the Internet. The company is also very active at local demos, festivals, and charity fund drives, so if you're lucky you can catch them in action serving pho to hungry pho fans at these events.
Hi Blaine: For the spices, I left mine in for various amounts of time, depending on my mood 😉 Sometimes 15 minutes as stated in this article, other times longer if I want a little stronger fragrance. One time I got distracted and forgot it until about 50 minutes later. No big deal, just a little stronger spice taste, no one will know. Others above may have found their own preferences. So I don’t think there is a perfect time, because each individual is different. The restaurants cook for the mass so they have to choose one time (arbitrary but to their preference) so that the broth they serve stays consistent from one day to the next. At our Ui-Cha! Pho and Ca-Phe I think we use 45 minutes.
Charring onions and ginger is pretty easy. Either stovetop or grill or any other open flame would work. Charring in an oven at high 450°F can also work. The main thing is high temperature, dry heat, and give it enough time to burn the sides and edges. Just be sure to wash them thoroughly first. You can cut them up so they have more charred surfaces which results in more of that burnt flavor, and/or smash or crush them before going into the broth to help with the extracting of the flavors.
With respect to beef knuckle, yes that would be nice, or better yet if you can find ox tails, then that would be even better. The bones with marrow in it will give you great pho flavors, but then you’d be defeating the purpose of using the Quoc Viet soup base, because they have the marrow in there already. The idea is QV products save you time in cooking the bones. Good luck Blaine, hope this helps.
Well I made it and it was pretty damn good! I would have to rate it almost as good as my favorite restaurant, but not as deep in flavor. I did leave the spice packet in for about 45 minutes and I used a combination of ox tails and beef short ribs in making the stock. I think next time I will add additional star anise. I definately give the brand a two thumbs up!!
Blaine: congrats on getting what you like. Good choice on the ox tails, but I’ve never seen short ribs! BUt a little tweaks here and there will get you what you like, your own pho recipe so to speak.
Hi! I’m making pho for the first time using this base and had a question. Can I just use one spice packet and half the base? If so how much water would I use? Also, it says to blanch the meat – in just water? Really I’m just concerned about how much water to add once I cover the meat – I’m using flank – and I don’t want to make it too watery. I’m cooking for 5 so I’m hoping to just use half and save some for the next time. Any more direction would be appreciated!
Stephanie: Yes of course you can scale it any way you want. I think the instructions say the final quantity is about 2 gallons if you use the whole container, so if you use half container then your final stage should have water added to achieve 1 gallon total. When blanching the meat, just boil water and add your meat for 15 minutes as instructed. Some people feel that may be too long so they adjust down to 5-10 minutes. The idea is to wash off impurities outside the meat before you really simmer it for an hour or so to get the flavor out. I’d say flank would taste very nice.
But why not just make the whole batch one time and put the unused broth in the freezer; pretty much standard practice to store any kind of broth or soup. The next time pho craving calls out for you, it’s just a matter of thawing and reheating. Good luck with it, but you really can’t go wrong. If you don’t like the way it tastes on first trial, I am sure your second one will be much much better as you know what to do and what to expect by then.
I’m making the chicken pho, Pho Ga. Anything different about using chicken over beef? This is my first go at it and read all of the beef suggestions, just would like advice if any on chicken. Thanks 🙂
I’m making the pho right now and I did buy this mix and am cooking it with bone in beef shank. I got the mix in Toronto, which I had read in the previous comment that they couldn’t find a place. It’s an Asian grocery at 1105 Wilson Ave in North York for your Canadians! 🙂 Its simmering as we speak and smells delicious…thanks for this posting! I’ll let you know how it turns out. This is my absolute favourite soup…