Chicken Pho

by Jess on February 9th, 2010 in Asian, Chicken, Comfort Foods, Dinner, Noodles, Soups

Pho Ga (Chicken Pho)

Pho is Vietnamese noodle soup. When I was traveling in Vietnam last January, everyone ate pho pretty regularly in the morning. The portions were small and there were typically stalls on the side of the street where you squat on these little stools, cowering over your bowl. And it was cheap, maybe 20 to 40 cents for a bowl.

In Southern California, pho is extremely popular. There are Vietnamese restaurants everywhere. When I was going to UCLA, we’d always go down to Garden Grove, about an hour drive, to go grab a big hearty bowl of pho after football games. It always hit the spot.

I am not Vietnamese nor do I claim this recipe to be authentic. But, as a pho lover, I think this is a pretty good adaptation, and a healthy one at that. When I order pho in restaurants, I typically go for the extra large bowl of beef pho (pho bo) with all the other meat parts in it (yum tendon and tripe!) but for the sake of healthy living and weight loss, I converted the extra large bowl to a regular serving size and chicken was used in place of beef.

Ingredients
4 oz. dry thin rice noodles (banh pho)
5.5 oz. chicken breast, medium-sliced

Broth
2 cup non-fat chicken broth
2 cup water
1 1/2 scallion, chopped into one-inch pieces
1 oz. ginger, peeled
1/2 yellow onion, chopped into big rings
2 Tbs. fish sauce
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper or season to taste

Garnish
1 green chili pepper
1 cup bean sprouts
2 small lime wedges
1/2 scallion, chopped finely
5 leaves of basil
1/4 onion, sliced thinly
Sriracha sauce
Oyster sauce

Method

Put the onion used for garnishing into a bowl of water and leave it as you prepare the broth. Soak for at least 10 minutes.

In a pot on high heat, pour the chicken broth and water. Cut the ginger in half and press down with the flat side of the knife. This allows for the ginger flavor to dissolve more easily into the broth. Put the ginger, onions and scallion into broth and bring to boil. Turn heat to medium, add fish sauce, and let simmer.

Let the broth simmer for at least ten minutes, or until onions are soft, before adding salt and pepper. Put the chicken into the broth and let cook for two minutes. Take a straining ladle to remove and discard the onions.

Take the rice noodles and put into the soup for no more than 10 seconds. Rice noodles cook extremely quickly and you don’t want them all soggy and overcooked. Remove noodles and set aside in serving bowl.

Turn the heat to high and take the garnishing onions, put into straining ladle, and dip into hot broth for roughly 30 seconds, or until somewhat soft. Then place on top of noodles.

Remove the chicken and place on top of noodles. Ladle hot broth into the bowl, covering noodles completely. Sprinkle the garnishing scallions on top and serve with the rest of the garnishes on the side.

To garnish, place the bean sprouts, chili peppers and basil leaves into the soup. Squeeze the lime juice into the bowl and then combine noodles with garnishes. This usually means the noodles are pulled up from the bottom of the bowl and the garnishes are submerged into the broth to give it additional flavoring.

I personally mix the sriracha and oyster sauce together in a side dish and dip the meat and noodles that way, but in Vietnam, they didn’t have side dishes so it was common to just put hot sauce and oyster sauce together into the soup. It just depends on your preferences.

Serves: 1