Hi guys!
I’m finally sharing Chicken Pho, AKA Pho Ga recipe with you all!! Thank you so much requesting and patiently waiting!! 😀
Pho is one of most popular Vietnamese noodle soup, and you probably had it from a restaurant or heard about it before. It’s based on very aromatic broth with rice noodles, proteins, beansprouts and lots of herbs.
It’s really delicious and comfort, especially for breakfast (more specially when you are hanover.. lol), when you are sick, rainy or cold days. It is petty much cure for anything and everything.
I mentioned on the video that it is very important to use great quality & very fresh chicken for this recipe. The broth taste will be different depending on the chicken quality. So I highly recommend you to use organic whole chicken or at lease free range whole chicken.
Hope you guys give this delicious Pho Ga recipe one day! 😀
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Phở Gà (Vietnamese Chicken Noodles Soup)
- Total Time: 2 hours 20 mins
- Yield: 4 to 6 1x
Description
Ingredients
Scale
For the Soup
- 1/4 of Saigon cinnamon
- 3 star anise
- 1 onion (approximately 10 oz / 290g)
- 2 thumb size ginger 9approximately 1 oz / 30g)
- 4 lb. whole chicken (possibly organic or free range)
- 12 cups / 3L cold water
- 1 Tbs. salt
- 1 heaping tsp. rock sugar, palm sugar, brown sugar or regular sugar (approximately 1/2 oz.)
- 2 to 3 tsp. fish sauce (possibly Vietnamese high quality fish sauce, such as 3 crab brand)
For Fried Shallot
- 1/4 cup cooking oil
- 1 shallot, very thinly sliced
To Assemble Pho Ga
- fresh rice noodles or dry rice noodles
- 2 green onion
- cilantro
- 1 to 2 chili, such as jalapeño, Serrano or Thai chili
- 1 lime
- beansprouts
- Thai basil
- culantro (Ngo gai)
- hoisin sauce
- sriracha
- sambal (chili sauce)
Instructions
- Toast cinnamon and star anise in a dry skillet over medium high heat to release their aroma, about 2 to 3 minutes.
- In same skillet, place whole onion and ginger and roast them over hight heat until their blackened outside and oozing their juice, about 10 to 15 minutes.
- Remove from heat; slice ginger into 1/4-inch thick and peel onion. Remove onion’s tip and root but make sure they are holding their shape so it will be easy to remove later on.
- Remove all of chicken gizzards and everything from inside of whole chicken and rinse under cold water. Place chicken in a large pot and pour 12 cups cold water, add salt, sugar, roasted onion and ginger slices. (We are not adding spices yet.)
Cover, bring it to boil. Hard boil soup for 10 to 15 minutes, and meanwhile skimming scums on surface of soup carefully without stirring soup. (Do not stir soup, it will make cloudy looking broth)
Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer for 1 hour. skimming as needed.
- After simmer 1 hour, remove chicken from soup and shock in a large bowl of ice water. This process will make chicken texture more pleasure and nice.
- Now, set aside cooked chicken and add toasted spices into soup along with 2 to 3 tsp. fish sauce to your taste. Simmer for additional 30 minutes, without cover.
- Meanwhile, prepare chicken, fried shallot, noodles and garnishes. You can either shred chicken meat, as I did in the video or slice them.
- To make fried shallot, heat a large skillet over medium heat; add oil and spread shallot into oil evenly. Cook until light golden, and you still see some white part of shallot, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat and place on a paper towel lined plate. Be careful not to turn them into brown to dark brown, their taste will be very bitter.
- Cook rice noodles by following directions of package you are using. If you are using dry rice noodles, it will take 5 to 8 minutes. After cooked, it needs to rinse under warm water to get rid of extra starch. If you are using fresh rice noodles, it will take less than a minute.
- Chop green onion and cilantro to sprinkle on top of soup. Slice chili if you are using any. Cut lime into wedges. Wash bean sprouts under hot water and drain. Also wash and set aside of all other herbs you are serving with, I like Thai basil, extra cilantro and culantro. In a serving plate, place bean sprouts, chili, lime and extra whole herbs to serve with pho.
- By the time your soup suppose to be done. Take all solid ingredients out from soup.
- Now, let’s assemble Pho Ga!
In a large serving bowl, place cooked rice noodles. Place chicken pieces, chopped green onion and cilantro. Pour soup, enough to cover noodles. Sprinkle fried shallot right on top and serve with a vegetable plate and sauces.
Let your guest to assemble rest of soup by adding any vegetable of their choice and sauces. I like to dip my meat pieces into sauce, but you can also add into your soup.
- Prep Time: 20 mins
- Cook Time: 2 hours
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21 comments
This Pho’s recipe is my WINNER !!!! I searched this taste for many years testing many recipe without success. But now I got it ! It’ s just delicious and my kids love it ! The only difference I made is that I added a citronnella stick to the broth …
Thanks !
Kelly
WOOTWOOT!! ❤️ You made my day Kelly!!! So glad you gave this recipe a try and it’s the WINNER~!! Winner winner chicken dinner!!! 😀
Hello
my daughter very much would love to make this for her family…. but there is one problem. Her hubby is deadly allergic to any kinds of fish or seafood.
Is there something else that could be used instead of the fish sauce ?
Hello Laurie! You can just season with salt instead! The flavor might slightly different, but it still would scrumptious! 😀
Are you supposed to do something later with that whole onion and ginger? Also I modified the recipe for a single person. So I hate bean sprouts, so omitted them. But after removing chicken, I added chopped up water chestnuts and bamboo shoots. I also dried fried jalepenos with the onion and ginger. I gutted out the seeds(allergic to) and chopped up, put aslde. Also I blanched chopped up bok choy in the microwave for 10 to 20 min, drained, added to the soup. I also omitted that cilantro(couldn’t find it anyways) When veggies were done, I added the shredded chicken back in the soup.
You just discard the onion and ginger, they did their job and no flavor left in them. 🙂
Thank you so much for sharing this recipe. My boyfriend loves Pho. I am going to make this weekend. I just have one question. Can I use chicken stock instead of homemade chicken soup? I expect the taste will be different, but is there any way to make it taste almost the same?
Hello Cassey. You can use chicken stock, but can I ask why? Because by cooking the whole chicken, you will get the meat and soup both. Also it will brings all the flavors that pho should have during the cooking time.
Just tried this Pho Ga recipe tonight and it was so wonderful! Also tried your Thai Basil Pork and Larb recipe as well and they were all so great! Thank you so much for making cooking easy and fun! 🙂
Hi Helen!
I’m so happy to hear that, you have no idea!!! I really appreciate that you shared your experience with my recipes.. 🙂
Thank you so much! Made it. Love it!!
Just made this recipe to the T and it was delicious! Thank you 😀
Getting ready to make Pho Ga for the first time based on your recipe!! Husband LOVES Pho and hopefully I can make it live up to the reviews!!
love the look of your recipes,but why are they unprintable???
I just made this for the family tonight. It was AMAZING, we all LOVED it, thank you so much for sharing the recipe:)
This recipe is truly awesome and easy to make. It was a bit hit with family who don’t even like Pho. It is definitely worth trying if you haven’t yet.
The broth was delicious – you can taste the star anise, ginger, onion…very clean and not fatty. Using a whole chicken made it SO much easier than trying to track down bones & marrow & what not for a beef broth dish. What made this a 5 star recipe was the fried shallots. They elevated the flavors. Thank you!
I have this recipe committed to memory. I have made it easily 20+ times now, I’ve lost track! I use chicken quarters or whatever’s on sale for sanity’s sake, but wow. Phenomenal recipe. I up the salt, sugar, ginger and onion and omit the shallots but it’s always a hit in our household!
I have not made this yet, but have had Pho Ga many many times in Vietnam and other SE Asia countries. I love it! Can’t wait to make this as it looks like the Real McCoy! Love Seonkyong’s recipes!!
Oh Seonkyoung! No MSG? Everyone knows that is the secret ingredient for a really great PHO! And, yes, you can substitute salt for the fish sauce. However, use a good salt, not normal table salt.
I will divinely try cooking this one. Thanks for the video.