Phở Hà Nội

As tradition built it

Serves 6 to 8. About 8 hours, mostly unattended.

Ingredients

• 1 kg beef bones
• 1 kg pork leg bones
• 700 g beef brisket or flank (gầu giòn)
• 600 g beef brisket (nạm)
• 6 shallots
• 2 knobs ginger
• 2 to 3 cinnamon sticks
• 2 to 3 cardamom pods
• 2 to 3 star anise
• 3 to 4 cloves
• 1 segment sugar cane
• to taste fish sauce
• to taste rock salt
• to taste rock sugar
• to taste white rice spirit
• to serve bánh phở
• to serve spring onion
• to serve coriander

Method

1. Soak the bones 2 hours in water with 1 tbsp coarse salt, crushed ginger and a little white spirit.
2. Blanch the bones 5 to 7 minutes, drain and rinse.
3. Char the shallots and ginger directly over an open flame or coals until blackened on the outside, then rinse; this is the traditional method, more effective than an oven roast, and gives the broth its characteristic aroma.
4. Cook the beef brisket or flank (gầu giòn) and beef brisket (nạm) separately in cold water with ginger and onion, 1.5 to 2 hours, then remove, slice thinly and reserve.
5. Return the bones to fresh water with the charred aromatics and the spice mix, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, star anise, cloves and sugar cane (added partway through, not from the start, to avoid bitterness). Simmer 6 to 8 hours, uncovered, on low heat, skimming continuously: the more thoroughly skimmed, the clearer the broth.
6. Season with fish sauce about 30 minutes before serving, not earlier.
7. Blanch bánh phở briefly, top with the reserved meat, pour over the hot broth, and finish with spring onion and coriander at the table.

What a modern chef changes

Blanched and scrubbed, then clarified with a raft, not just skimmed harder

Rungs 1 and 2

Method

1. Blanch and scrub the bones properly, not a token rinse, and hold all salt back until the final thirty minutes of the simmer, exactly as the traditional method above already does; this is Rung 1's whole discipline, applied at full attention.
2. After the finished broth is strained and cooled, bring it back to a bare simmer with a whisked egg-white-and-minced-lean-beef raft floated on top. Do not stir once it begins to set; ladle the clear broth out from beneath it once it holds firm.
3. Serve the clarified broth tea-coloured and genuinely transparent, the direct, checkable difference between a competent home phở and the consommé-clear style praised at New York's diaspora restaurants built specifically around northern-style broth.