How I Make Phở at Home: The Two-Day Method, the Spinach Nobody Talks About, and Why I'm Not a Purist

A Note Before We Start

This is not the traditional way to make phở. This is my way to make phở. I make a beef stock the day before with carrots in it, which isn't traditional. I sauté spinach and garlic and put it in the bottom of the bowl before the broth, which is very not traditional. I add a little sugar to my chili-garlic-fish sauce table condiment.

If you're looking for purist phở instructions, this is the wrong post. There are excellent traditional phở recipes online and they're worth reading. This post is what I actually make when I make phở at home, which is the version I prefer to eat. It came out of twenty-five years of cooking and a few hundred bowls of phở made over the last decade. It tastes the way I want it to taste. That's the whole point.

If you've never made phở before, follow a traditional recipe first. Learn the shape of the dish. Then come back and read this when you want to know how someone else, who also cooks daily, has chosen to bend the rules over time. My version isn't better than the traditional version. It's just mine.

Day One: The Beef Stock

The single biggest thing I do differently from most home phở recipes is that I make the stock the day before. Not in a "I started early" way — in a "this is two separate cooks" way. Day one is just stock. Day two is the phở.

The stock is built on:

• Marrow bones (16oz — the usual grocery store package)
• Beef knuckle bones (aim for 16oz — you don't want a whole knuckle, it's far too big, so this is a butcher-shop ask; if that's a hassle, English-cut short ribs are the substitute)
• Oxtail (16oz — not optional in our house)
• Marrow bones (large beef bones, the kind you'd ask the butcher for if you were making bone broth)
• Carrots (3 whole — yes, carrots, not traditional, I do it anyway)
• Celery (3 stalks)
• Ginger (4 to 6oz — one typical root)
• Onion (yellow, halved, skin on or off, doesn't matter)
• Garlic (a whole head, smashed open, skins still on)

Before any of this goes in the pot, I roast the bones — forty-five minutes at 400°F, until they're deeply browned. Sheet pan, foil-lined for cleanup, that's it.

Most traditional phở recipes have you par-boil the bones first to "clean" them — boil them in water for ten minutes, drain, rinse. The idea is to remove impurities and scum. I skip that step. I roast instead. The roasting does two things: it gives the bones a deep brown color that translates to color and richness in the finished broth, and it adds flavor through the Maillard reaction that par-boiling actively removes. More color, more flavor, in my opinion. The trade-off is that you'll have a little more skimming to do during the simmer. Worth it.

While the bones roast, cut the vegetables. Carrots and celery go on an angled bias into fifteen or twenty slices each — the more surface area, the more you pull out of them. Onion in thin slices, garlic lightly smashed, ginger sliced and smashed too.

Start the pot with a little avocado oil and sweat the carrots, onion and celery. When the bones come out of the oven they go straight in on top of the vegetables, then the garlic and ginger. Fill the pot about 80% of the way with cold water, and cook it on low for eight hours. Skim any scum — thanks to the roasting there shouldn't be much.

When the stock is done, strain everything out. The short rib meat is going to be falling off the bone — set that aside, it's going in the bowl tomorrow. The bones, you keep too, because some of them go back into day two's pot. The carrots, onion, garlic — those have given everything they're going to give. Toss them.

Let the strained stock cool, then put it in the fridge overnight. If a layer of fat solidifies on top of the cold stock, that's normal. Some people skim it off. I leave most of it on because that fat is doing flavor work in tomorrow's broth. Personal preference. Skim if you want.

Day Two: The Phở

The next day, the strained stock goes back into the pot. To that, I add:

• Oxtail (the dish needs oxtail — it brings a different richness than the short rib and marrow bones, and the bits of meat that come off the bone are some of the best meat in the finished bowl)
• The roasted onion (a fresh whole onion, halved, charred — see below)
• Ginger (a big knob, also charred)
• Rock sugar (a couple of small chunks — Vietnamese rock sugar from an Asian grocery, but regular sugar works in a pinch)
• Fish sauce (Squid brand — see below)
• The spice sachet (added later, see below)

I char the onion and ginger in the oven the day of. Whole onion halved, skin on. Whole knob of ginger, skin on. On a sheet pan or directly on a rack, at high heat — 450°F or so — until the cut sides of the onion are deeply blackened and the ginger has crisped a bit on the outside. Some recipes have you do this on a gas burner directly over the flame. The oven works just as well, and you don't have to stand at the stove watching them.

The fish sauce: I use Squid brand. I have used Squid brand my entire life because it's what we always used as a family. Three Crabs and Red Boat are both excellent fish sauces and you can absolutely use them. I use Squid out of pure habit and brand loyalty. The fish sauce world has trendy brands now and that's fine — but if you're new to Vietnamese cooking and you want to know what most Vietnamese home cooks actually have in their kitchen, it's Squid. It's the everyday workhorse fish sauce. It works.

How much fish sauce? Less than you think, at this stage — and this is the part to be careful about. Start with two to three ounces. Over twelve hours you lose water and the flavors concentrate as the broth reduces, so a pot that tastes right at hour one is very, very salty by hour twelve. Season it lightly now; you can always fix it at the end. Rock sugar, an ounce to an ounce and a half, goes in at the same time.

Bring everything to a simmer and let it go for twelve hours. There are no shortcuts here, and that's the point. The spice sachet doesn't join until the last couple of hours.

The Spice Sachet

Phở's flavor signature comes from the spice mix: star anise, cinnamon stick, cloves, fennel seeds, coriander seeds, sometimes cardamom pods. The exact proportions vary by household. The one rule that matters more than the ratio is that these spices need to be dry-roasted before they go in the broth, and they shouldn't sit in the broth too long or they go bitter.

My method:

1. Dry-roast the spices. All of them, in a single dry pan over medium-low heat, for about ten minutes. Until they're fragrant and you can smell the cinnamon and cloves opening up. No oil, no butter, just spices in a dry pan.
2. Make the sachet. Lay out two or three layers of cheesecloth like a flat piece of paper. Pile the toasted spices in the middle. Pull up the corners to make a bag. Tie it shut with butcher's twine or any cooking string.
3. Add it to the broth for the last couple of hours. Not before. Earlier than that and the spices over-extract and the broth turns bitter.

The cheesecloth sachet matters because it keeps the spices contained — you can pull it out exactly when you want to, and there are no broken star anise pieces or whole cloves floating in the broth at serving time.

The Spinach Thing

This is the one truly non-traditional move I make and it's the one I'd most defend.

Right before serving, I sauté a generous handful of spinach in olive oil with a little garlic. Until the spinach is wilted and the garlic is just barely golden — maybe two minutes total. I put that at the bottom of each bowl, under the noodles, before any broth goes in.

Is this traditional? No. Is it phở-purist-approved? Absolutely not. Do I do it anyway? Yes. The garlicky spinach hits the broth and adds a green, slightly bitter, slightly garlic-forward note to each spoonful that I love. It doesn't overpower the broth — there's not enough of it for that. It just adds a layer. I started doing it years ago because I wanted more greens in my phở and bean sprouts weren't doing it. Now I can't eat phở without it.

If you want to make phở exactly the way Vietnamese grandmothers have made it for generations, skip the spinach. If you want to make phở the way I make phở, sauté the spinach. The dish gets better.

The Bowl

When you're ready to eat, the assembly happens fast.

Noodles: I use dry banh phở noodles. Three Ladies brand, which is what my family has always used. I don't bother with fresh noodles — they're hard to source consistently and the dry ones, when prepared right, are indistinguishable in the finished bowl.

Here's the trick with dry noodles: boil water in a kettle. Put the dry noodles in a heat-safe bowl. Pour the boiling water over them. Let them sit for five to ten minutes depending on how hot the water is. They'll soften. They don't need to be perfect — they'll finish cooking when the hot broth hits them. Don't start this step until you're almost ready to eat, because once they're hydrated they need to go in the bowl quickly or they'll get gluey.

The bowl, layered from the bottom up:

1. Sautéed spinach with garlic (skip if you want traditional)
2. Drained, hydrated banh phở noodles
3. Thin slices of raw eye of round beef on top of the noodles (it'll cook in the broth)
4. The cooked meats from the broth — short rib meat, oxtail meat, and any marrow that comes out of the bones (the marrow is one of the best things in the whole pot, save it)
5. Sliced raw onion, very thin
6. Chopped scallions
7. Cilantro, roughly chopped

Pour the broth over. Boiling hot. The heat is what cooks the raw eye of round in the bowl and brings everything together.

Serve with: Thai basil, lime wedges, jalapeño slices, bean sprouts. All on the side, so each person can add what they want.

Table condiments: Sriracha and a small bowl of garlic-chili-fish sauce-sugar mix that I make. I mince a few cloves of garlic, slice a habanero (or whatever chili I have — habanero is what I usually have), and stir it together with a few tablespoons of fish sauce and a little sugar. The sugar isn't a lot — just enough to balance the heat and the salt. That mix goes in each bowl as I eat, a spoonful at a time. I don't use hoisin personally. I have it available for guests who want it.

The One-Day Version

If two days isn't realistic, you can compress this. I've done it. The phở is still good — just a step less deep.

One-day stockpot version: Skip the day-one stock. Roast the bones as before. Add them with the charred onion and ginger, fish sauce, and rock sugar to a stockpot. Simmer for six to eight hours — fewer than the twelve the full method gets, which is exactly what you are trading away. Add the spice sachet for the last couple of hours. Same assembly.

Instant Pot slow-cook version: Same ingredients, same order, but use the Instant Pot on slow-cook mode. The slow cook setting works well for this — the temperature is low and steady, no risk of boiling, and you don't have to babysit it. Takes about the same total time as the stockpot version. The flavor isn't quite as deep as the two-day method, but it's very good.

The two-day method is better. But the one-day version is still better than 80% of restaurant phở. Don't let perfect get in the way of good.

Why I Don't Care That This Isn't Traditional

Here's the take that this whole post is really about: unless you own a restaurant, cook the way you want to cook.

Phở has a few hundred years of tradition behind it. The way northern Vietnamese grandmothers made it in Hanoi is not the way southern Vietnamese grandmothers made it in Saigon. The way Vietnamese-American cooks made it in the seventies and eighties isn't quite the same as either. The way I make it in my kitchen in Kansas in 2026 — with a beef stock that has carrots in it and a layer of sautéed spinach at the bottom of every bowl — is also different.

That's fine. Cooking traditions are alive. They evolve when people who actually cook them every day adapt them to what they like, what they have available, and what works in their kitchen. The version of phở I make tastes the way I want phở to taste. That's the entire criterion that matters when you're cooking for yourself.

If you've never made phở before, follow a traditional recipe first. Learn the structure. Get a feel for the broth, the spices, the assembly. Then start changing things. Add a carrot to the stock and see what happens. Try the spinach. Use a different fish sauce. Cook it longer. Cook it shorter. Use a different chili in your table condiment. The dish belongs to you the moment you start making it.

The only cooking rules I really follow are food safety rules. Beyond that, the kitchen is yours.