Cooking doesn’t need to be hard or complicated. Often, you’re simply looking for a recipe that gets you most of the way there with minimal effort, hence 80/20.

Check out full recipes at dougdoesdelicious.com 👨‍🍳

Today we’re 80/20ing Vietnamese Pho, turning what might normally take 5-7 hours to prepare over stovetop to a little over 1 hour in an InstantPot. Traditionally, making pho calls for many steps like parboiling beef bones, charring aromatics over open fire or in an oven, roasting spices, and skimming fat off the broth for many hours.

Not everyone has the luxury of time or energy to make pho in this way, and of course if you do have time, you can always stay true to some of the traditional steps to improve the clarity, richness, and flavor of your broth, but I want to show you that you can still make an exceptional bowl of pho at home even if you commit what seems to be a cardinal sin of omitting almost all those steps.

And to be very honest, I fully expected to run additional tests where I’d inevitably need to re-add some traditional steps, thinking that all the omissions would result in a very mediocre broth, but I was pleasantly surprised, and I think you will be too.

*Ingredients:*
2 lbs beef bones (900g)
2 lbs beef shank or brisket (900g)
6 inch knob of ginger (150g)
1 yellow onion, peeled & sliced in half (400g)
2 tbsp of sugar (25g)
2 tsp salt (12g)
10 cups of water (2400g) (fill to the max fill line in a 6qt instant pot)
1 bag of pho spices (details below if you can’t find the “oldman” spice bag in an Asian grocery store)
2 tbsp chicken bouillon (16g)
2 tbsp fish sauce (32g)
Fresh pho noodles (200g per serving)

*Spice Bag:*
2 cinnamon sticks (6g)
6 star anise (5g)
1 black cardamom pod (3g)
2 tbsp fennel seed (10g)
2 tbsp coriander seed (10g)
1 tbsp clove (3g)

*Toppings:*
green onions
cilantro
bean sprouts
lime
thinly sliced onion
basil

#easyrecipes #pho