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.
@Jessica: One big difference about pho ga is the chicken/chicken bones are much faster to cook than the beef/beef bones. So your cooking time will be shortened considerably when you make pho ga. Another factor is you want to make sure your spices and seasonings are used properly/less in pho ga, otherwise you will mask out all the delicate chicken flavors that you have. Whichever pho you are making, the seasoning and spices should already have been adjusted for that particular pho type in the recipe you are using. If you put the recipe side by side, for example, you may notice that pho bo has more star anise, but less cardamom, or pho ga has cinnamon whereas many pho bo recipes do not call for it. I hope this helps, and you’ll do fine. Even if your first one does not turn out that great, your next one will be much much better.
@Judy: Thanks for the tip. Toronto has a large Vietnamese and Chinese community so there should be plenty of supplies from the markets there. I’ve visited Totonto myself a few years back and I liked Totonto very much. I know you will enjoy your home-made pho, and you’re right, you can’t help but have your home permeated with this beautiful fragrance of pho simmering in your kitchen. And here’s the bonus: don’t worry, you house will not smell bad. The delicious pho smell will not linger and make your house smell really bad like maybe fish or curry does. More reason to enjoy pho! 😉
Not sure if everyone already knows this but the Quoc Viet 4 pack (2 beef and 2 chicken) is now carried at Costco. Best part, It’s only $16.
@Quan: I’ve read about it but have never seen them at any Costco. I would expect Costco to carry them in certain markets only and not at all stores. In any case, care to share which Costco you saw them at?
wouldn’t cooking the meats for an hour make the meat very tough? i
@scott: cooking the meats for an hour is definitely not long enough. You probably missed the step about simmering until meat is soft and tender, and meat flavor is extracted in the broth. This is why good pho broth takes time to make. Quoc viet soup base can help cut simmering the bones, but you still have to tenderize the meats.
Can anyone tell me if this soup base has any clove in it? I do not like the flavor of clove in my pho and have had that in some restaurants.
Thanks!
@Jung: Wow you must be very sensitive to even detect clove in the broth; most people don’t even know what clove is and what it may taste like. It is not known if the spice bag in the Quoc Viet soup base has any cloves. You may want to contact the company directly at http://www.quocvietfoods.com/contactus.html