My fiancee and I cooked basically this recipe minus the anise & fennel since we don't like those flavors. It is VITALLY important to start with a good broth. One of the other reviewers commented that it took a lot of water to cover the carcass. My fiancee fixed this problem by taking out the largest knife he had and hacking the carcass in half and then in smaller pieces. It's also a good idea to do this for the larger bones too. Inside the bones is where a lot of the flavor and collagen(which thicken the broth) are. It'll fit easier in the pot and make a great broth. For those of you who already put too much water in, long cook times. Leave the pot on the stove for 2-3 hours and cook down the broth, concentrating the flavor until it tastes good. If you didnt use all the drippings for gravy, you could add a small amount in for a very intense turkey flavor.
I had a very large turkey carcass so I needed more than 8 cups of water to cover it. Perhaps that was the reason that the broth itself didn't have much flavor or maybe more cardamom pods cloves star anise pods ginger fennel and cordiander seeds are needed? I feel that I could have omitted the turkey carcass and the boiling for 2 hours and just used a carton of chicken broth since the flavor of the spices was so very subtle in the broth.
I added 4 cloves but kept all the other spices the same and just added them all into the pot and used a chicken carcass and it came exactly as my restaurant down the road. I didn`t do all that sauteeing and it was still excellent - my new pho base recipe!
This was awesome! The only think I changed was to add about 2 cups more of water to cover the bird completely otherwise I left everything else the same and it turned out perfectly.
This is a really good soup recipe. I left out the carcass/bones (personal preference) and the basil.
this was so delicious! i've only had pho two other times and this tasted just about as good. i took the advice of Callista and broke down the bones before putting them in the pot. i was worried that the spices were not as pronounced as i'd like them to be but i did forget to cook the spices before adding them (oops!). used half fish sauce and half soy sauce. cooked the noodles in the broth itself and garnished with green onions cilantro and sriracha.. ty so much for the recipe
This was SO good! I can't tell you how many times my husband said "honey this is a DO AGAIN!" while we were eating it! I did make a couple of adjustments. I had already made turkey broth from the carcass of our Thanksgiving turkey yesterday and picked the meat off of the bone before I discovered this recipe so here's how I proceeded: I went ahead and toasted the star anise fennel seed and whole cloves. I skipped the cardomom pod as I didn't have any. I removed the spiced to a piece of cheesecloth as sugested. I then charred the fresh gingerc and then added it to the cheesecloth as well. I charred two thick slices of onion in the pan but rather than adding those to the stock I just chopped them up to add on top later. I then made the sachet and added it to my already made broth brought it to a boil and continued to simmer while I prepared the rice noodles. I should also mention that I didn't have coriander seed so I just added about 1/4 tsp of ground coriander directly to the broth. We DID use the optional basil cilantro (which really makes the dish - so don't skip those). We served it with sliced lime and Sriracha. I've been wanted to make a Pho for quite some time now and I'm so glad I made this one. Will make again for sure!
The toasted spices in this recipe make the most flavorful broth. The soup was delicious. I will use the combination of spices for all my homemade broths. Thanks for sharing!
After quite a bit of tinkering around with this recipe it comes out to my liking. First of all I more than double the amount of spices called for. In addition to starting out with more in the beginning I also take out the small strainer I use and refill it with fresh spices about halfway through. I don't know if this makes sense or not but if this doesn't happen I end up with a flavorless soup base. I use tons of ginger (I have used the kind in the squeeze bottle and end up using about half the bottle!). Lastly I add a bit of brown sugar. I don't use as much fish sauce as the recipe calls for because intends up overpowering everything.
