Chicken Pho

A beautiful, healthy, tasty soup!

This is a big hit at our house. It started as a simple Martha recipe, but I've changed it enough to call it my own. If you're wondering why I have cilantro and other odd ingredients on hand it's because we like to make Asian food and we like to make Mexican food. Oddly enough, both cuisines rely on some of the same spices and herbs. Cilantro is pretty cheap and adds great flavor to both stir-fry and to tacos or nachos. Fish sauce is also cheap and adds a ton of flavor to stir fry and soup. I always find it funny that Thai cooking relies on tamarind paste and so does some Mexican cooking. I think that maybe the initial investment for some of the more exotic things can be a shock, but when you can make delicious recipes at home, it really takes care of that.

Chicken (or shrimp) Pho

2 cloves garlic finely diced

1 inch piece of ginger finely diced

4-5 green onions, white part sliced, green part sliced lengthwise to form thin strips (use the green parts for garnish)

1-2 T. olive oil (or regular cooking oil)

Cook above ingredients in a large stockpot until fragrant. To them add:

2 boxes of chicken broth

2 T. fish sauce

2 T. soy sauce

Simmer for about 5 minutes

Add whatever cooked meat and vegetables you desire. Add chinese noodles. Continue simmering until noodles are soft and vegetables are cooked.

The beauty of this recipe is that you can use pretty much anything in it. We like fresh mushrooms and spinach for veg. Sometimes I put cooked, shredded chicken leftovers and sometimes shrimp. Usually I buy a small packet of BBQ pork and will cut up part of that for the soup, while serving the other part sliced for a side dish. I'll admit the array of garnishes can be astonishing, but they are well worth the effort.

Garnishes:

fresh basil left whole

limes, quartered

cilantro

thinly sliced onion

radish (I don't always include this, but if they are in season, they taste really good)

Sriracha sauce (super hot, so use this only if you are comfy with your mouth catching fire, I happen to really like this stuff)

Garnish

Chinese noodles, love that they come in a quaint little pink net bag

BBQ pork: the stuff they sell at the store is really quite good. If you buy a $2.50 (ish) package, you can slice some very thin as a side, and chop up some to put in the soup. Buy a bigger package and save the remainder for fried rice (if there's any left over.)