Vietnamese Chicken Soup

Name: Vietnamese Chicken Soup (Faux Pho)
Yield: Makes 16 cups (4 l) broth; 12 to 16 first-course servings, hot or gelled, without noodles, or 6 main-course servings with noodles
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Ingredients: ½ cup narrow strips Thai basil, holy basil, or sage; ¼ cup (15 g) chopped Thai chilies or serrano chilies; 3 tablespoons kosher salt, or less if using commercial broth; 1 large bunch cilantro, coarsely chopped; 2 limes, each cut into 6 wedges; ½ pound (225 g) mung bean or other large sprouts; 8 medium scallions, trimmed and thinly sliced across; 12 leaves culantro, cut across into narrow strips, optional; 2 pounds (900 g) ⅛- inch- (30- mm-) wide rice stick noodles, soaked for 20 minutes in warm water and drained; ⅓ cup (80 ml) nuoc mam (fish sauce); 5 quarts (5 l) Extra-Rich Chicken Stock, Basic Chicken Stock, or commercial chicken broth; 5 tablespoons sugar; 6 black peppercorns; 4 whole cloves; 4 medium onions, 2 unpeeled and quartered, 2 thinly sliced; 6 star anise; Two 4- inch (10- cm) pieces ginger, halved lengthwise

Faux Pho

Preparation info

Makes 16 cups 4 l ) broth;
12 to 16
first-course servings, hot or gelled, without noodles, or 6 main-course servings with noodles

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Soup

By Barbara Kafka

Published 1998

About

Mai PHAM, chef and owner of Lemon Grass Restaurant in Sacramento and the author of The Best of Vietnamese and Thai Cooking, kindly gave me her recipe for chicken pho. There is a recipe for the more common beef version. I have repaid her generosity by tampering with her recipe. This soup is not traditional, in that it doesn’t use actual chicken pieces in the soup. But with noodles, it is substantial enough

Ingredients

Americas
Asia
Vietnam
United States
China
Starter
Main course
Soup
Southeast Asia

Ingredients

Method