Vietnamese Beef Pho

History

Pho was born at the turn of the 20th century in northern Vietnam, around Hanoi and Nam Định, at a time when French colonization and local tradition mixed together even in the cooking pots. Street vendors served this beef soup to laborers, at a moment when beef itself was rarely eaten in Vietnam before the French arrived. Some linguists hear an echo of the French “feu” from pot-au-feu in the word “phở”; others trace it to a Cantonese noodle dish. The debate has never been settled, and Vietnamese people find that rather amusing.

The country’s partition in 1954 carried pho south, where it picked up herbs, bean sprouts, and extra sauces. Then the boat people carried it around the world. Beef pho is now eaten in Paris, Montreal, and San Jose, but a Hanoi local will tell you the only real pho is eaten in Hanoi, early in the morning, perched on a plastic stool.

Ingredients — Serves 4

• 1.5 kg beef marrow bones plus 500 g short ribs
• 300 g beef fillet or rump, sliced paper-thin (served raw)
• 400 g flat rice noodles (“bánh phở”)
• 2 onions plus a large piece of ginger, charred over a flame
• 2 star anise, 1 cinnamon stick, 3 cloves, 1 tsp coriander seeds
• Fish sauce, fresh herbs (cilantro, Thai basil), lime, scallion

Step-by-Step Beef Pho Recipe

1. Blanch the bones for 5 minutes in boiling water, then rinse — the secret to a clear broth.
2. Char the onions and ginger over a flame or under a very hot broiler until the skins blacken. This is where the signature smokiness comes from.
3. Toast the spices dry for a minute, in a sachet or tea ball.
4. Simmer everything for 4 to 6 hours, skimming the first 30 minutes. Never let it hit a rolling boil.
5. Season with fish sauce at the end, then strain.
6. Assemble: rehydrated noodles, raw beef slices, scalding broth poured on top (it cooks the meat), herbs and lime on the side.

Cooking Method

Technique: a long-simmered broth, clarified by blanching, scented with toasted spices.

Traditional equipment: a big street-stall pot kept at a bare simmer all night; at home, a stockpot and patience.

What to look for: a broth that’s clear and amber, star anise and cinnamon present but not overpowering, meat turned pink by the hot broth right at serving.

Nutrition, per serving

Calculated from the raw beef fillet and rice noodles above, divided across four servings.

At 495 kcal per serving, pho is comparatively light for a noodle soup, and unusually low in fat — 7 g, with only 3 g saturated — since the beef actually eaten here is lean fillet or rump rather than the marrow bones and short ribs used to build the broth. Those bones render fat and gelatin into the liquid over hours of simmering in amounts that aren’t captured in the figures above, a genuine limit of costing a broth-based dish from its written ingredient list. Protein, at 19 g, is modest for a beef dish, since most of the bowl’s weight is broth and rice noodles: 83 g of carbohydrate, nearly all of it from the noodles.

Economic context

Beef itself was rarely eaten in Vietnam before French colonization, and pho’s early popularity rested on turning an unfamiliar, costlier ingredient into a cheap breakfast built mostly from bones, rice noodles and herbs — the meat is a relatively small part of both the bowl and its cost. That structure, a little meat stretched across a large pot of long-simmered broth, is why pho remains inexpensive street food in Vietnam despite beef’s historical status as a premium ingredient.

Source: World Bank / FAO, Food Prices for Nutrition database (Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet) v4.0, 2024 data, CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.57966/41AN-KY81. Retrieved 29 July 2026. This figure describes the cost of a healthy diet in Vietnam generally — it is not a costing of this specific recipe.

Who this dish suits

What About You?

Where do you think is the best place to try pho — or your go-to spot to make it at home?

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