2024 the best chicken noodle soup recipe review

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JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER • With this comprehensive cookbook, Vietnam’s most beloved, aromatic comfort food—the broth and noodle soup known as pho—is now within your reach.

Author Andrea Nguyen first tasted pho in Vietnam as a child, sitting at a Saigon street stall with her parents. That experience sparked a lifelong love of the iconic noodle soup, long before it became a cult food item in the United States.

Here Andrea dives deep into pho’s lively past, visiting its birthplace and then teaching you how to successfully make it at home. Options range from quick weeknight cheats to impressive weekend feasts with broth and condiments from scratch, as well as other pho rice noodle favorites. Over fifty versatile recipes, including snacks, salads, companion dishes, and vegetarian and gluten-free options, welcome everyone to the pho table.

With a thoughtful guide on ingredients and techniques, plus evocative location photography and deep historical knowledge, The Pho Cookbook enables you to make this comforting classic your own.

From the Publisher

Quick Chicken Pho

Serves 2 - Takes about 40 minutes

Great for pho beginners, this recipe is also terrific for cooks in a hurry. It involves less than 45 minutes, during which you’ll doctor up store-bought broth so it says, 'I’m pho-ish'.

The keys to this streamlined approach include toasting spices and dry sautéing the ginger and green onion, which help to extract flavor fast. Poaching the chicken in the broth adds savory depth. You’ll practice some fundamental pho techniques that you can apply elsewhere, too. Choose a broth that tastes like chicken, such as Swanson brand, which is less fussed up and easy to manipulate. You need two 14.5-ounce (411 g) cans or one 32-ounce (907 ml) carton.

Recipe

Peel then slice the ginger into 4 or 5 coins. Smack with the flat side of a knife or meat mallet; set aside. Thinly slice the green parts of the green onion to yield 2 to 3 tablespoons; set aside for garnish. Cut the leftover sections into pinkie-finger lengths, bruise, then add to the ginger.

Coarsely chop the leafy tops of the cilantro to yield 2 tablespoons; set aside for garnish. Set the remaining cilantro sprigs aside.

In a 3- to 4-quart (3 to 4 l) pot, toast the coriander seeds and clove over medium heat until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the ginger and green onion sections. Stir for about 30 seconds, until aromatic. Slide the pot off heat, wait 15 seconds or so to briefly cool, then pour in the broth.

Return the pot to the burner, then add the water, cilantro sprigs, chicken, and salt. Bring to a boil over high heat, then lower the heat to gently simmer for 30 minutes.

While the broth simmers, soak the rice noodles in hot water until pliable and opaque. Drain, rinse, and set aside.

After 5 to 10 minutes of simmering, the chicken should be firm and cooked through (press on it and it should slightly yield). Transfer the chicken to a bowl, flush with cold water to arrest the cooking, then drain. Let cool, then cut or shred into bite-size pieces. Cover loosely to prevent drying.

When the broth is done, pour it through a fine-mesh strainer positioned over a 2-quart (2 l) pot; line the strainer with muslin for superclear broth. Discard the solids. You should have about 4 cups (1 l). Season with fish sauce and sugar (or maple syrup), if needed, to create a strong savory-sweet note.

Bring the strained broth to a boil over high heat. Put the noodles in a noodle strainer or mesh sieve and dunk in the hot broth to heat and soften, 5 to 60 seconds. Lift the noodles from the pot and divide between the 2 bowls.

Lower the heat to keep the broth hot while you arrange the chicken on top of the noodles and garnish with the chopped green onion, cilantro, and a sprinkling of pepper. Taste and adjust the broth’s saltiness one last time. Return the broth to a boil and ladle into the bowls. Enjoy with any extras, if you like.

Ingredients 3⁄4-inch (2 cm) section ginger 2 medium-large green onions 1 very small (.5 oz | 15 g) bunch cilantro sprigs 1 1⁄2 teaspoons coriander seeds 1 whole clove 3 1⁄2 to 4 cups (840 ml to 1 l) low-sodium chicken broth 2 cups (480 ml) water 1 (6 to 8 oz | 180 to 225 g) boneless, skinless chicken breast or thigh About 1⁄2 teaspoon fine sea salt 5 ounces (150 g) dried narrow flat rice noodles 2 to 3 teaspoons fish sauce About 1⁄2 teaspoon organic sugar, or 1 teaspoon maple syrup (optional) Pepper (optional) Optional extras: Garnish Plate for 2, 1⁄3 cup (90 ml) Ginger Dipping Sauce

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ten Speed Press; Illustrated edition (February 7, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 168 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1607749580
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1607749585
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.3 x 0.7 x 9.3 inches
Reviewer: I Do The Speed Limit
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Love soup? Insist on home-made quality broths? Pho fan? Love this book!
Review: I am a lover of soup. I am also drawn by all the flavors of Vietnamese cooking. So, there was no way I was passing up a single-themed recipe book on pho. So glad that this book delighted me! So glad it exceeded my expectations!Just turning the introductory pages of this book, my senses were teased by the beautiful pictures, both action and still shots. (And there is a full page picture for every main recipe.) Pictures are colorful and vibrant—mouthwatering, too!Even an insert to help the reader correctly pronounce pho and a page on how to eat it.History of pho comes at the beginning of the book.One chapter covers thorough explanations and pictures of pho ingredients: Noodles, spices, aromatics, bottled seasonings, sweeteners, herbs and garnishes. You will learn to select the best bones and the proper cuts of meat.Plenty of helpful hints and tips. Do you ever read instructions and wonder why certain techniques or extra steps are included—and been left wondering? That will not happen with these recipes. You will learn how and why to char ginger and onions/shallots and parboil bones.There are simple and quick pho recipes, meatless pho, pressure cooker pho and classic recipes.Ingredients are not hard to find in well-stocked larger grocery stores. Of course, being near to an Asian market is helpful. But chicken, beef and pork meat and bones can be found almost everywhere. (But certain lamb cuts and bones, for instance, are harder for me to find at a regular grocery store in central and southern Texas, and an Asian market helps with that.)Be aware that ingredient lists can be somewhat long. Do not let that daunt you! Prep work is easy and not time consuming. I have learned that gathering up ingredients gets to be less and less of a chore the more often I do it. If you make pho often enough, the shelf ingredients will migrate together and you won’t be wasting time gathering them from here and there. Just get past that initial long list and it will soon become second nature.Each recipe provides the name of the pho in both Vietnamese and English. There is a short and interesting introduction and the reader will see approximate times for preparation. Recipes serve from 2 to 6, with most recipes serving 4 diners. Ingredient lists are concise and include both Imperial and Metric measurements. Instructions are broken into spaced paragraphs which help re-direct the eyes to where one left off. Instructions make sense and won’t leave an inexperienced cook wondering how to proceed.I do use both a large and a small pressure cooker on occasion, so I found an entire page discussion of the virtues of a pressure cooker vs. a stockpot to be quite interesting. (My point here, again, is that valuable and worthwhile tips and hints are included in this book.)I especially liked the chapter “Adventurous Pho”. It is designed to remind the reader that making pho is a creative process, and a recipe in a book is just a foundation, or a jumping off place, for experimentation. In this chapter there is a seafood pho and a lamb pho. One for rotisserie chicken, too! There are a few fried rice and fat rice recipes and a banh mi.There are also recipes for appropriate dipping sauces, bowl add-ins, fried bread sticks and a helpful pho spice blend. I was happy to see a recipe for homemade hoisin, a chile sauce and a sate sauce.Pho is more that noodles in broth. There is a chapter that contains a few stir-fried recipes, some pan fried recipes and deep fried dishes.A final chapter is all about pho sides: Pot stickers, salads, slaw, rice paper rolls, more sauces, drinks. Even a Pho Michelada!*I received a temporary download of this book from the publisher months before publication, so I have been working with it for quite a while. As you can see from the "Verified Purchase" tag up top of my review, I liked this book so much that I bought a hard copy to always have at hand.

Reviewer: Russ
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: One of the best Pho books I have read
Review: Okay so In the headline I said book, because this is a book. It takes you through a historical journey through the ages of Pho and how important this dish is. It's amazing and compelling. This book is a must read for everyone. Now, for the recipes. It is by far, one of the most in-depth Pho recipe books I have come across. It takes you from traditional Pho, the types of Pho, the quick Pho's and the odd Pho's. It's a must have. I can't recommend this enough for any Pho lover.

Reviewer: Cyn
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: I can’t believe I made delicious Pho
Review: I had very low expectations but this taught me everything I needed to know! I had been craving Pho and where we moved I couldn’t find a place so I decided to make it and it was perfect. I was pleasantly surprised and so impressed with myself and the instructions. She detailed everything you need and it’s so easy to go to an Asian market or online to find the ingredients she recommends. I learned a lot and this really made my family happy. So satisfying being capable of making it myself!

Reviewer: Elessar
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Yes, you can make great pho at home, here's how
Review: What does this cookbook do right? A lot! The author starts out with a discussion of pho, its history, and what makes it such an important element of Vietnamese cuisine. I like that she includes the Vietnamese name of the dish alongside the English--you'd be surprised, but I own another Vietnamese cookbook that only lists the English equivalents and not the Vietnamese, so it's nice to see it included here. Then follows a listing of the key ingredients that comprise pho: bones, meat, noodles, spices, and garnishes. The recipes themselves are divided into "standard" pho (chicken, beef, and vegetarian versions are offered), "adventurous" pho including seafood and lamb, and other recipes that take the pho theme and flavor profile and expand it to other popular dishes, like banh mi and fried rice. There's also recipes for homemade hoisin and sate sauce, and Vietnamese coffee--not to be missed! I could live on that stuff.The recipes are quite good, and have convinced me that yes--it IS possible to make delicious pho right at home. The author offers two traditional long-simmered versions from Hanoi and Saigon, each with a slightly different focus and flavor profile, and quicker versions you can make in the pressure cooker or with a quick simmer on the stove. The Fuji apple that the author calls for really does provide just the right note of sweetness that was missing from my earlier efforts. It is interesting that the author starts her pho chapters with the chicken versions, rather than the beef--which dominates the menus at my favorite Vietnamese place down the street, and the chicken is secondary. I like that the author offers versions that you can make with store-bought broth and that there's considerable space devoted to optimizing pho for the pressure cooker, something that's become a staple in my household to get dinner on the table quickly for 2 little ones.I deducted a star for the layout and styling of this cookbook, which detracts from an otherwise 5-star read. IMO, the text is too small, and the visuals are uneven. There's many lovely photos of streetside cafes and kitchens in Vietnam, but not enough of the dishes themselves. When I'm cooking an unfamiliar cuisine, I like to have a visual cue to what the finished dish should look like. Some dishes are photographed, but others are not. IMO a cookbook that is calling for techniques that may be unfamiliar to the novice (or even experienced) home cook, like charring aromatics and skimming broth, should be replete with pictures to show you what to do. There are other curious design choices that end up detracting from the finished product. All of the pho spices are varying shades of brown, but they're photographed on a dark brown wood background, making them difficult to see. Likewise, the page that lists the rice noodles has them nicely arrayed...on a neutral background. The chart comparing stockpot vs. pressure cooker simmering has white text on a grainy peeling background, which makes it difficult to read. I suspect the stylist was going for a rustic look with the photos, which I guess makes sense because pho is a homey and comforting dish, but it doesn't really work.

Reviewer: Billy Cairns
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: It was easy to follow instructions.

Reviewer: tparrott
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Great book

Reviewer: Sand
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Detailed book on infamous, but less explored Vietnamese Pho! The quality of print, photos, content is superb! You will find every information you desire about this dish. Absolutely recommended!

Reviewer: Ralf Reske
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Wirklich gut gemachtes Buch über die vietnamesische Kultsuppe und ihr Umfeld.Hauptproblem, wie immer, wo bekomme ich die Zutaten her.

Reviewer: Mrs. Lyn Docherty
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Very happy with my new cook book a beautiful colourful book easy 2 follow Thank u