Pho Ga

Image Credits: Ivo Senner

Things you need

Serves 4

For the broth

  • Chicken - 250g
  • An onion
  • Salt

For the spice bag

  • A piece of cloth or a paper bag.
  • An inch of cinnamon (dalchini)
  • Star anise
  • An onion
  • An inch of ginger
  • 4 coriander roots or 6-7 seeds (dhania)

The noodles

Final Serving

  • Chopped spring onions
  • Chopped lemon leaves or just some lemon juice

Recipe

To make this dish, you need to prepare: the broth, the spice bag, and the noodles, which you could very well do parallely.

The broth

  • Heat 2 litres of water enough for the chicken you want to make.
  • Add the chicken to this water, and leave it until it comes to a boil, oh! and also add salt.
  • The boiling would cause some froth to accumulate on the top, keep removing that using a strainer.
  • Add an onion to this, and keep the broth going like an hour and a half.

The spice bag

  • Heat up a non-stick pan
  • Put the spices listed above onto the pan : ginger, onion, coriander, cinnamon, star anise
  • Let them burn until their outermost layer starts turning blakc and charred.
  • Remove the ones that seem to have reached the corrrect level of “burnt”.
  • You should now get a nice aroma
  • Brush away the charred layer from the spices and pack them in the cloth or a paper bag.
  • Drop this into the broth and let the broth boil for another 30 minutes.

The noodles

  • Heat up enough water for your noodles (Hint: The noodles need to be completely submerged)
  • Let them get soft, use a fork to check that.
  • Once they are done, transfer the hot water to another container (We will use this in a later step)
  • Wash the noodles in cold water.
  • Finish up with cleaning in hot water that we saved from the earlier step.
  • Now spread the noodles to let it dry, the above step helps the noodles to dry quicker and thus not form a cake.

Bonus Muoi Ot (Vietnamese Salt)

  • Finely slice some red chilli peppers (not the dried ones) and crush them with salt.
  • This goes well with Pho, if you want to increase it’s spice.

The final serving

  • Remove the chicken from the broth and put on a plate
  • Shred the chicken a bit
  • Now add some noodles in a bowl and add the chicken and the chopped spring onions and lemon leaves to them.
  • Add enough broth to this mixture, and finally add Muoi Ot to taste to the Pho.
  • You are done !

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