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michaelswarm wrote:My wife loves pho, and asks me to make often. I find store bought vegetable broth tends toward muddy in color and makes all the soups taste the same, so I like to make my own. Making broth is ridiculously easy, requiring only shopping and chopping. With all the vegetables, it makes a hearty vegetable soup.
For my broth I use 3 roots, plus corn, broccoli, mushrooms and either apple or pear. For roots onion, raddish and carrots are easy to find. I’ve used leeks and daikon radish, and used shitake or other fancy mushrooms (but not white or portobello mushrooms.) I steam the hard vegetables in the pressure cooker first, then add to big stock pot. Then steam soft vegetables like broccoli and mushrooms, and again add to stock pot. Then add water to cover and simmer.
Then prepare toppings like noodles, bakes tofu, sprouts, jalapeños, cilantro and sriracha sauce, and finally assemble.
Willijan wrote: This sounds wild. I make all my own vegetable broth, and it is better than any storebought I have found. But it is still very bland. So am going to try some of your ideas. I will likely just put everything in the Instant Pot.
michaelswarm wrote:Willijan wrote: This sounds wild. I make all my own vegetable broth, and it is better than any storebought I have found. But it is still very bland. So am going to try some of your ideas. I will likely just put everything in the Instant Pot.
Steaming allows me to control the amount of water in the broth. The broth from steaming is very concentrated. After steaming, in the big pot, I still add water, but am careful not to add too much, since water dilutes the concentrated flavor. I make quite a few soups. This one is interesting because it has no spices. No ginger, no garlic, no whole or powdered spices. The mushrooms give body, the fruit sweetness, and red radishes give the whole thing a nice clear pink color.
The toppings themselves add plenty of flavor.
For other soups, I usually add a separate flavor step, blending a handful of spices and vegetables in the blender, and mixing that with the vegetable broth. But this soup has no such extra flavor.
Let us know how it goes.
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