Quick Beef Pho Recipe With A Tea Broth

Pho with a Twist: A Tea-Infused Broth for a quick yet rich pho.

A New Twist on Classic Pho with a Tea Infused Broth

Have you ever considered using tea for cooking?  We’re diving into the world of tea-infused recipes and cooking with tea leaves with a unique twist on a classic Vietnamese dish: pho with a black tea broth.

Pho is a fragrant Vietnamese soup known for its long simmered broth made with beef bones, spices, and lots of aromatics. Overflowing with noodles, herbs, and delicate flavors, this traditional soup recipe is a beloved comfort food for many. 

This fast pho recipe maintains the classic pho flavors with a broth that takes just 10 minutes to make! 

We were first introduced to this idea by Mark Bittman (one of our favorite cookbook authors). We had tried to make fast pho broths before without much success. The introduction of black tea seemed to be the missing component to creating a short cooked broth with a rich complex depth of flavor.

The Secret Ingredients of a Great Pho

Before we dive into the recipe, let’s explore what truly makes pho so irresistible:

• The broth: The soul of a pho lies in its aromatic broth. Warming spices like star anise, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger are essential, along with a hint of sweetness to balance the flavors.
• The noodles: Rice stick noodles offer the perfect slurp-ability and a satisfying texture.
• Freshness: A generous pile of fresh herbs like cilantro, mint, and basil, along with lime wedges and spicy chilis, brighten and elevate every bite.

This tea broth pho recipe keeps all of these elements. 

The Benefits of our Tea-Based Broth

Using a rich, smoky black tea like Russian Caravan is the twist that sets this quick pho recipe apart. It makes this pho recipe:

• Quick: This soup comes together in about 20 minutes. The actual broth takes just 8 minutes to make. 
• Flavorful Weeknight meal: We often make this soup on a weeknight – not something that happens with a traditional pho reci
• Deep Flavor: the inherent smokiness and tannins of the black tea leaves add layers of flavor you simply won’t achieve with any other quick cooking

Ingredients.

Seasonings.

Tea.

Black tea adds a touch of astringency and complexity to the pho broth, complementing the savory notes from the beef and spices. Russian Caravan Black Tea is a great choice for this recipe as its blend of keemun, oolong, and smoky lapsang souchong teas creates a deep hearty broth.

Chinese Five Spice

One of the concerns we had when making a tea broth is that the whole spices wouldn’t have time to impart their flavor. Taking that into consideration, we used Ground Five Spice instead of whole spices. 

SpiceTopia’s Chinese Five Spice brings together cinnamon, fennel, sichuan pepper, star anise, and cloves to create a spice blend with notes of sweet, sour, pungent, bitter, and salty. In this recipe, this one blend mimics the whole spices used in authentic pho recipes. 

Learn more about Five Spice Right Here

Ginger. Fresh ginger is best for this recipe. Cut it into thin coin shaped pieces and add it to the tea steeper. If fresh ginger is not available, use just ½ teaspoon of Dried Ginger Powder as a substitute for the fresh.

Find all these teas and spices along with 100s more at SpiceTopia!

Produce or Veggies!

Fresh Herbs. This recipe calls for 2 cups of fresh herbs. Cilantro, basil, and mint are the herbs traditionally served with pho. If you can find it, culantro and thai basil bring even more flavors than cilantro and sweet basil. If neither are available to you, no worries – use what you have. 

These herbs are served on what is called the garnish plate and are meant to be added as you eat your pho. Add as many or as few as you like! 

Fresh Chili Peppers. Use a chili pepper of your choice. Jalapeno or serranos are readily available where we live in Southern California, so that is what we use. You’ll want a mild to medium heat chili – unless you like your soup really spicy! Half of one of the peppers will go into your broth while the rest of the two chili peppers will be added to your garnish plate.

Green Onions. In an authentic pho soup recipe, onions and other aromatics are charred and then added to the broth. This recipe skips that step because we are not simmering a broth for a long period of time. A few sliced green onions added to your soup when serving, give the soup just a touch of onion flavor.

Limes. Quartered limes are an essential part of the pho garnish plate. Squeeze the juice into your broth and then add the lime pieces directly into the soup.

Noodles

Rice Noodles are the traditional noodle used in pho. You’ll want to look for rice sticks or rice vermicelli. They are thin noodles and come in bundles inside of a bag. You’ll sometimes find them in your grocery store. 

If shopping at an Asian grocery store, they will be labeled as Chao Ching or Bún Gao Kho No 1. In Chinese, Chao Ching means stir fry noodles. In Vietnamese, Bún Gao Kho means rice vermicelli. The noodles could be labeled as any of the above. 

If none of these are available to you, feel free to use your favorite thin noodle that cooks quickly. 

Sauces

Fish Sauce. Fish sauces adds a deep umami and salty flavor to the broth. This balances out the sweeter notes of the spices. 

Hoisin Sauce. We love a few squeezes of hoisin sauce on our rice noodles as well as a squeeze on our garnish plates, so each bite of meat gets a dip!

Oil

This recipe calls for both a high-smoke point neutral flavored oil like avocado or grapeseed oil as well as sesame oil. The neutral flavored oil allows you to cook your beef at a high temperature and sear and brown the outside while keeping the inside of the steak rare. If rare steak isn’t your thing, don’t worry it will finish cooking in the broth later in the cooking process.  

The sesame oil adds a touch of nutty flavor and a rich mouth feel to this Vietnamese inspired recipe.

Technique. How to Make Tea Pho.

Start by searing your steak in your soup pot. The outside of the meat should brown while the inside of the steak stays extremely rare. The steak will finish later in the hot broth. 

After your meat is seared, use the same pot to toast your spices before deglazing your pot to get all those delicious bits of browned meat into your soup broth. 

Then add the remaining water and fish sauce. Bring to a boil. 

Use a large tea pot infuser or a bouquet garni https://www.spice-topia.com/product/cotton-tea-spice-bags/188 to hold the tea, ginger pieces, and slices of about ½ of one chili pepper. 

After the water comes to a boil, remove from the heat. Allow to cool down and all the bubbles from the boil to dissipate. Add the tea infuser and allow to infuse for 5 minutes. Promptly remove after 5 minutes. Do not allow the tea to sit and infuse for longer than 5 minutes or the broth will become bitter. 

Place back on the stove and bring to a boil. After it comes to a boil, turn off the heat and add the rice noodles. The noodles will soften in 2 -4 minutes. 

After the noodles have softened, divide between your soup bowls. Add the beef to your noodles. Ladle the broth over the noodles and beef. 

Serve with a garnish plate of herbs, chili peppers, limes, green onions, and hoisin sauce.

Let’s Get Cooking!