The Thai Street Food Beef Noodle Soup you can make at home | Marion's Kitchen

I hit another ball. I ate mine in like five minutes. I agree, I think it's great. So we're less than a kilometre from Khao San Road and we're right near Thammasat University. And I actually often think that universities in Bangkok are a really good place to find great local food. And we're at this beautiful old beef noodle soup spot. This is like a 67-year-old restaurant. So if you come and have a look. I'm gonna go with sen mee. And I'm gonna, I want all of the bits. So we have braised colon. This is like tendon, beef tendon. And then we have some of these pieces here. This is the heart and the liver. And then this one here is like the intestine. So I love that. You don't have to order all those things. And then also we have a stewed, a little bit of stewed beef and some of the beef balls as well. So we're gonna get everything. So I ordered sen mee. So that's this style of noodle. It's a rice vermicelli noodle. Other options at these places often include sen yai, which is like a wide rice noodle. Or sen lek, which is sort of like a very thin, very thin like one to two mil kind of pad thai noodle. You'll probably be more familiar with. Let me get in here. I want to try some of this beautiful braised beef. That looks so good. Oh, it's so good. It's like so soft and tender. They cook the beef for like three or four hours. You get that really beautiful, soft, tender texture. This looks like some of the, it's either liver or heart. I'll tell you in a minute. That was heart. It doesn't have a really strong flavor. It's probably more of a textural thing, but I love it. It's beautiful. Such a nice flavor. And this is the colon. The flavors here are so deep and beautiful. But the thing that's really beautiful about this soup is the broth. Now that liquid. So the beef was stewing in there. The flavor is so intense. It's like beefy, soy sauce, fish sauce. Like you can taste kind of like aromatics, like garlic in there as well. I'm assuming, I'm guessing all of these things by the way. The only way I can describe it is that it's an excellent Thai beef noodle soup. I would travel halfway across the city for this bowl. I do have a way that you can make something beautiful and comforting like this bowl of soup at home. First of all, let's talk about the hard part. So I'm going to give you some options here. If you have a look, I have my selection of beef bits and pieces here. I'm just going to call them bits and pieces for the moment because some of it can look a little bit gory. What I have on this plate is the beef and the tendon that I need to kind of simmer for a long time to give you that soft braised beef that we tried at the shop house. So I have here a cut of brisket. So a nice little piece of brisket. I also have another piece of beef here which is just like a chuck beef or a gravy steak or any kind of secondary cut of beef that's really good for braising. And then here, this one is the beef tendon. Now that's probably something you'll need to ask your butcher for. But I would say that the tendon is optional. So if you don't have that, it's not crucial. And here I have my beef balls. These are Asian beef balls. They're available in the freezer section or fridge section of any Asian grocery store. I also have just some thinly sliced steak. Like a rump steak would be fine here. And then down the bottom, another optional here. So this is finely sliced beef liver. Now if offal and liver is not your thing, totally fine. Just leave it out. Alright, so we're going to start off with making the braised beef and the broth first of all. I've got my boiling water here. I'm going to add in my brisket and my other braising beef and the beef tendon. Now remember when I was at the shop house and I was commenting on how beautifully clear the beef broth was. So we're going to try and do that here. So what you want to do is bring this up to a simmer and then once everything's bubbling away like this, you'll often get a little bit of kind of like scummy stuff coming up to the surface. No other nice way of putting that I don't think. So just skim that off. Now I can put in the aromatics. So I'm going to start off here with some coriander root. So coriander root is just the bottom section of your bunch of coriander. If you can't get the kind of root end, just use a whole bunch of the stems. I know a lot of supermarkets cut the bottom end off. You guys have told me that in comments. So if you can't just use the stem. And some garlic, soy sauce, fish sauce, palm sugar and some salt. Now you'll notice I'm getting a little bit more of that scum coming up the top here. So as this braises, I'm just going to keep scooping that off. So I can try and get a lovely clear broth at the end. Now this is boiling. I'm going to turn the heat down and then partially cover it and let it simmer for an hour and a half or until that beef is really beautifully fork tender. We're off to a good start now with our braising broth. But now I'm going to add some really beautiful spices. I think this is what sets this beef broth apart from all the other kind of noodle soups that you variously have in Thailand. So it's about the dried spices here. So what I have is some dried galangal, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, star anise and some Chinese five-spice. Now as I said, I am trying to keep my broth as clear as possible. So I'm going to put my five-spice into this little muslin bag as best I can. Just scoop a little bit more of that gunk at the top off. Now turn the heat down and just partially cover that broth. Just so we can get a little bit of evaporation and intensity happening there. Let that simmer for an hour and a half or until that braising beef is really lovely and fork tender. At this point, things should be smelling so amazing. You should be getting all of those spices and the aromatics. Let's have a look at this beef. Oh yeah, looks really tender. It's just so fork tender. It's beautiful. Just cut it into little chunks. Same with the other piece and also with the tendon. Now look at the colour of that tendon. It's really turned into like translucent kind of lovely golden colour. I think it's lovely anyway. But it has a really lovely texture. It's like kind of like a soft texture but a really intense beefy flavour. I really like it. So now we have our braised beef bits and pieces ready to go. Let's keep working on the broth. Just need to strain the broth. Wow, and look at that colour. All of that hard work, keeping the broth lovely and clear. It smells so beautiful. Yum, that's so cool. Okay, so now let's finish up with the noodles and building our bowl. I'm going to cook my rice noodles. I'm using some dried rice noodles here. I do have my little hawker basket. But if you don't have one at home, don't worry. You can just boil it in water and use some tongs or a spider to get those noodles out. Then you can add in your other bits and pieces here. So I've got my beef balls and some of my slices of beef. Some slices of the liver. You just want to cook that in that boiling water. I can see that the beef and the liver have just cooked through in there. So I'm going to add in some bean shoots. I just like to give them a quick blanch so they kind of lose their raw edge. And I also have some Chinese celery here. So that's available at Asian grocery stores. Or you can just use some celery leaves as well. That goes into my noodle bowl. And now my hot broth goes over the top. And now let's not forget our braised beef as well. So I'm going to pop in some choice little bites of these pieces and the tendon as well. And there you go friends. My Thai beef noodle soup done in that beautiful shop house style. That original kind of like beautiful old school style. Look at that. I'm going to add in some of the bits and pieces that you would find at the table at a shop like that. I've got some chilli powder. A little bit of sugar. Some fish sauce. Just give that a good mix. I wish you guys could smell this right now. It smells so beautiful. Ah that broth. Ah wow. The complexity of flavour is just outstanding. Like it's so beefy and the aromatics. And that beautiful like kind of whisper of Chinese five spice through there. This is definitely the kind of like last meal noodle soup for me. Ah so good. Some of that braised beef. It's so tender. I'm a slurper when it comes to noodles. I think you're hungry. I am hungry. It's really good. I'm not leaving until I finish this bowl now.