Making of Phở

It took me a few days to find all the ingredients for the first attempt to make Phở. I first tried to go to the Citimart grocery store for the ingredients but I could not find everything I needed. I then asked my awesome building manager for help on finding the right place to shop. We planned a morning trip to her local market. The next morning came and we were off on our motobikes zooming through traffic to the local market. Trying to follow her on her motobike was almost like playing cat and mouse but with cars, buses and thousands of motobikes to dodge. I don’t know how I even drive in this town. A few minutes later we are at the local market and park out motobikes. First impressions of the local market as of any other the smell is about normal for a local market that I am still getting used to it. The local store is small store that has one side with fresh greens and then the other side has fresh meats and in the center has some dry goods. She shows me what greens to buy for the Phở and I do notice a few of the proper items by looks but some of them I missed all together until she points them out. She shows me the ropes of the purchasing of the veggies here in Vietnam. I am still on the US measuring system not on the metric system yet. Notice that the scales are all in grams and sold by the gram weight. Kinda makes me feel like I am dealing drugs that are bean sprouts haha. We pick out several green veggies and a few other veggies like small romma tomatoes and cucumbers. We then go to the other side of the store to pick out some beef for the Phở. Yeah I was not too pleased about the sanitary conditions for the mixed meats but I know the meat is going to be cooked when the boiling water hits the slices of meat. We pay for the groceries and they were not more than about 3 meals at the local restaurant’s worth so that is not too bad if I get four or more meals out it then it was worth the costs. I really should be able to get at least 8 or more meals out of the groceries. We get back on the motobikes and play real life frogger with traffic on motobikes to the next store that sells milk. She purchases some soy milk where I purchase normal milk. She also buys some treats and they are banana ice cream. Then back on to playing frogger on motobikes back to the building.

After washing all the green veggies and placing the water to boil and adding beef broth, sugar, salt to the pot. Bring them to a boil and then slicing the eye of round beef (this time not thin enough) and rewashing the veggies again and adding the rice noodles to the bowl and slicing onions to the bowl. Bringing everything together in the boiling broth and adding the green veggies to the bowl then letting the beef slices cook in the broth. My first attempt at making Phở was not too bad I would have to say there is some room for improvement. My Phở did not look like the pictures that I see on the Internet but when does ever look like the pictures on Intagram? Lol I would have to say that the meal was filling and not bad on the nutritious scale either.