First time making homemade pho

So for Thanksgiving, I decided to try to do the cooking.  Last year I did the turkey thing, and then we had turkey everything for the next four weeks.  I guess we just don't eat a lot. This year, I decided to make homemade pho from scratch.  The recipe is not that difficult, however, it is very time-consuming.  As it was my first time, I spent a lot of time adding things to adjust the taste.

What I used for the stock:

• 2 lbs beef bones
• 2 lbs ox tail

My aunt told me that the key to good pho is the clarity of it. The night before, I washed the bones and ox tail, and then placed them in a pot of boiling water.  When the water returned to a boil, the water was dumped and the bones washed once again.  There was a lot of crap and oil drawn out of the bones.  I put the bones back into a clean pot with fresh cold water and waited for it to boil, once again.  When it did, I let it boil for another 30 minutes or so, scooping out the surface oil as they surface.  Then I stuck the pot into my thermal vacuum cooker overnight.  

The next morning, I took out the pot from the cooker and simmered the contents on low heat, while scooping out the oil at the surface.  I ended up scooping about two cups of oil... sooo gross 8)  This went on for another 3 hours or so.

I scooped out the bones onto a plate, and poured the stock into a deeper pot, avoiding the brown "dirt" that accumulated at the bottom of the pot.  I put the stock back onto the stove, and added some boiling water to increase the volume.  While waiting for the contents to boil, I charred an onion and a piece of ginger (size of three fingers), bundled up a bunch of green onions, and gathered bits of star anise, cinnamon sticks, cloves, coriander, fennel, cardamom in a simmer cloth.  I purchased them in a single packet labelled "Pho spices".  I believe most people just use these packets tho.

in hindsight, this was prolly not a good idea...

When the soup boiled, I plopped the seasonings, onion, ginger and green onion.  Also added fish sauce and rock sugar.  Apparently, the fish sauce causes sweetness after boiling for a time.  I took out the seasonings after 30 minutes of simmering.  At this time, the soup smelled like star anises, which caused me to panic.  I stuck the bones back in, making sure the heat was set on low, to decrease the breaking down of meat which causes cloudiness.  After another 30 minutes or so, it actually tasted good!

Here is the finished product.  I cooked the noodles, sliced up some beef, garnished with basil leaves and bean sprouts, and scooped piping hot broth on top of it all.  The soup must be hot, to cook the beef.  I like to add chili pepper slices and fresh lime juice as well.  Oh, of course can't forget the ox tail!

It was definitely an experience, from hunting down the beef bones, to boiling the thing a million times over.  The cooking process took from 4 am til 4 pm the next day.  It was, however, totally worth it in the end when my family sat down to enjoy their bowl of my homemade pho :) 

Hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving weekend!