January 3rd, 2023

Boris Mann 4th January 2023 at 2:03am

Made pho for lunch at home with a spice paste I’ve been wanting to try.

Asian Home Gourmet Spice Paste for Vietnamese Pho Noodle Soup

The instructions from the back of the package:

Vietnamese Pho Serves 3

  • 1 packet Vietnamese Pho Noodle Soup Spice Paste
  • 3 cups (750 ml) water or unsalted beef or chicken stock
  • 1 onion, coarsely chopped
  • 250 g (½lb) beef, thinly sliced
  • 150 g (5 oz) dried rice noodle (to cook the noodles, follow pack instructions and portion into 3 bowls)
  • ¼ cup (50 g) bean sprouts, lightly blanched
  • Fresh sweet basil leaves, green lime, coriander leaves and cut chillies as garnish (optional)
  1. Bring water or unsalted beef or chicken stock, Spice Paste and onion in a saucepan to boil. Reduce heat; simmer for 5 minutes.
  2. Add sliced beef; bring to boil. Remove the cooked or medium rare beef and set aside.
  3. Place beef on noodles and pour soup over. Garnish with bean sprouts, basil leaves and lime. Serve hot.

Here’s a Chicken Noodle Soup recipe from the Asian Home Gourmet website.

Asian Home Gourmet has a whole series of spice pastes. We got a couple for my parents from Gourmet Warehouse to try out. There is also a whole display of this brand at Donalds, so I think pretty common.

I trimmed a small sirloin stack of fat, put it in a pot with a finely sliced half an onion and added some sesame oil. Sautéed until onions were getting brown, then added the water plus stock.

I added two extra cups of water to the called for 3 cups. It was salty because I did a teaspoon of chicken stock and a teaspoon of beef stock (both salted).

I chopped up a handful of green beans and thin steak slices.

I put the water on to boil for the rice noodles and cooked them for 6 minutes.

I put the steak and green beans in for about 3 minutes or so.

I shredded a half a bunch of Thai basil leaves.

Yes that was too many rice noodles but it was tasty. The anise smell of the fresh Thai basil came through, the green beans were only slightly weird, and the steak was fine ;)

The spice paste was good. It had that strong star anise background that I associate with pho.

More than adequate for a work from home lunch!