El Secreto de Pho, Sopa Pho Vietnamita de Pollo (Pho Ga)

Hello friends, today I bring you the secret of Pho, one of the most famous soups in Asian cuisine that you have to try. Today we will make the chicken version or Pho Ka, don't miss it. We start by putting the biggest spices to toast, cinnamon stick, black cardamom and star anise. When they start to release their aromas, we add the smallest ones. We use clove, coriander seeds and fennel seeds. We also toast until its aromas release. We let it cool a little, put it in an infusion bag and reserve. Next step, we put the onion and ginger to roast over low heat. If you also have shallot, great, until they are like this, burnt on the outside. Don't be scared, that's what we need. Now we remove the burnt part. I'm going to leave it a little bit to get the smoked flavor, which is one of the characteristics of this soup. We clean it very well and reserve. We prepare the soup. We put the chicken in a pot with water and time to cook over high heat. When it starts to boil, we let it cook for 5 more minutes, we remove all the water. We clean the chicken very well, we put the chicken back in the pot and cover it with water. The previous process is used to eliminate impurities and get a cleaner soup. We put the onion and ginger again. We let it cook over high heat and when it starts to boil, we lower it to low heat. We remove the impurities again and the fat appears. We add fish sauce, salt, sugar and let it cook for 1 hour. I'm using normal white sugar, since it's easier to get. But if you have rock sugar, much better. It is important to cook without covering so that the water does not boil, so we get the clearer soup. 30 minutes before finishing cooking, we put the bag of spices so that it does not lose so much its aroma and in the meantime we prepare the rest of the ingredients. We put the rice noodles to hydrate. We finely chop the onion and put it in water to soften its flavor. We separate the whitest part of the chive and cut it into thin julienne. We put it together with the onion. We chop the leaves together with the coriander and reserve. After 1 hour, this is how our soup has been. We take out the chicken, let it cool down a bit and separate its meat. I'm going to cut the thigh in pieces, leaving the skin. We simply separate the chicken breast and the rest with our hand. In boiling water we cook the rice noodles, it will take only 3 to 5 seconds to cook. We put the chicken on top, the onion and the chive. Also the leaves. Now we add the broth. And if you like spicy, very fine chopped chili. It is optional. Finally, a touch of black pepper. With this, the pho is already delicious to enjoy. But if you want to get to another level, we serve it with hoisin sauce and sriracha, along with vegetables and aromatic herbs. Here I have bean sprouts, hot green pepper or jalapeño is also delicious, Thai basil and coriander leaves. I hope you liked the recipe. Thank you very much for all your wonderful comments and see you in the next recipe.