Fiddling With Pho, Part 2: Broth

 

It's a tricky thing to get the kind of flavor development you want in a comforting bowl of soup without muddying up the flavors themselves. Pho is no different in that respect, but it has some more interesting aspects that require vigorous balancing. The additions and techniques themselves are fairly simple, but the adjustments and quantities are largely up to you. In some ways, part of the process is rather like making stock... twice. You make it, and then you make it again using the first stock in lieu of water, compounding the flavor development.

• Salt. Yes, it's obvious, but it does merit a mention. Underseasoned food means the flavor suffers, irrespective of how well that flavor has been developed.
• Reduction. Slowly and deliberately evaporating a portion of the water will leave behind the flavor compounds and concentrate them.
• Gelatin. This is one that doesn't get a lot of play, but for a richer and more viscous mouthfeel, an extra envelope of unflavored gelatin will get you places you could never otherwise go.
• Fish sauce. It's got a lot of names (including some nasty ones if you spill or break the bottle), but it's a necessary fundamental to a proper bowl of pho. It's not vigorously salty, but it adds enormous depth and body.
• More spices. You're going to want to infuse even more flavor- that means ginger, galangal, coriander, star anise, cinnamon, and all manner of other aromatic enhancements.
• Sugar. Yes, sugar. Ideally dark brown sugar or palm/coconut sugar for their more complex flavor profiles, this adds a great deal of intensity in a way that salt and pseudosalts cannot.

Now if you cook a lot, there's one that you might expect to see but don't: booze. I can't say for sure why that is, but my personal hunch is along the lines of "Why not just drink it?". Drinking culture is quite normalized in Vietnam, and anecdotally homemade booze is also not uncommon, particularly among the more rural mountain communities. I don't know the necessary minutiae of Vietnamese history offhand, so I can't help but jokingly wonder- can we partially blame the French for that?
For once though, I doubt it.