hot salad & other stories: New Year’s pho
A throwback to New Years Eve. It’s half snowing half raining. We’re standing outside watching the fireworks over a tiny mountain town called Ouray. It’s chilly, but with a drink in hand and a belly full of warm pho broth we braved the weather and rang in the new year. It’s a recurring theme that I’ll write about a warm, brothy bowl of noodles or soup that is the best thing to eat on a winter evening. Expanding the list of soups you have in your mental recipe box allows you to call on any number of cuisines and find the perfect thing for your dinner or event. This pho broth is based on Kenji Lopez-Alt’s recipe, who wrote the Kitchen Lab, The Wok, and a lot of content for Serious Eats. Pho broth usually has fish sauce in it too, which I left out and this was still the best I’d ever made. It’s good with poached chicken, raw thinly sliced steak, meatballs, tofu, or braised short ribs, or meatless, too.
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PHO BROTH
2 medium onions, split in half
1 large piece ginger (about 5 inches long), split in half lengthwise
5 pounds of bones (approximately. I used a mix of beef shin and others)
3 whole star anise pods
1 cinnamon stick
4 cloves
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
2 cardamom pods
2 tablespoons brown sugar
salt
In the bowls: rice noodles and a meat of your choice
On the table: thinly sliced white onion, bean sprouts, cilantro, mint, basil, lime wedges, sliced serrano or jalapeño, sambal, and hoisin.
- Over stovetop flames or under a broiler, char the onion and ginger until they’re pretty dark all over.
- Place the bones in a large stock pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and boil for 15 minutes, a lot of grey scum should float to the top. Dump the bones and water into a sink. In the end, this will help you have a super clear broth without all the grey stuff. Rinse the bones, and refill the pot with cold water.
- Add the charred onion and ginger, star anise, cinnamon stick, cloves, fennel seeds, coriander, cardamom, sugar, and 1 tablespoon salt to the water.
- Simmer the broth for 3–5 hours, never letting it come to a full boil (important for stock clarity!). Skim off any fat or floaties that rise to the top. Taste and season with salt or sugar if needed.
- Strain through a fine sieve, and return to the pot. If you want, trim off the good bits of meat from the bones and reserve. Discard all the spices, bones, onion, and ginger.
- When ready to serve, cook your thin rice noodles and distribute between large soup bowls.
- Arrange the herbs and other sauces on the table, along with raw meat, if using.
- Ladle on the hot broth and serve! Everyone gets to choose their own meats, herbs, and sauces to add to the broth or to dip noodles in.
OTHER STORIES
VinCO: I am the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board’s new intern! I attended the annual Colorado wine conference last week, called VinCO. The days at VinCO were full of viticulture talks and legislative updates, meeting wine makers and other representatives from the wine industry, and ended with wine tastings of champagne or cold-hardy hybrid grape wines. This is a really good basis for the sustainability work and future event planning that I’ll be doing in my internship.
CostCo: Similar name, VERY different thing. Even though CostCo seemed to be a commonplace trip for the Midwest, my family never went (we’re not big box food people, but I do think that buying in bulk is very smart!) In the end I felt it was like Ikea without the fun playhouse part. I left with only a giant box of rolled oats and a CostCo hotdog, which was actually pretty tasty.
