Bún bò NO Huế!

So I haven't written to this blog in quite a while, but my mum finally showed me how to make the noo-do beef soup of Huế, so I made an exception.

Like most grandmas and mas, when you ask them for their recipe, they just say, throw this and this in there and if it don't taste right, add this or a half a cup of fish sauce.  Maybe not the last ingredient...

Nevertheless, you don't get a proper recipe until you make them make it in front of you. 

Along with spring rolls and phở, I made my mum show me step by step with my lousy new Pixel photo phone on how to make some bún bò Huế...

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As I suspected with phở, it's BS that you have to boil bones down to oblivion over night or over stupid to getta tha juice.  Complete dummy time.  

Bún bò Huế. Two hours.

I showed up to the Citrus Heights joint at 11:00 am, and I ate at 01:00 pm.   Ate too much cartilage and thick knuckle skin, and yes, the blood hunks.  I then napped it out on the couch in the living room watching the new weird Price is Right, where Drew Carey directs people to get the away from him and stand on the dollar sign six feet away from him, while I point out to my dad that Drew Carey seems to be wearing lifts on his white Oxfords.  

From here, I woke up at  02:00 pm and gathered my soup and my hound.

and here we go...


Aside from the blood in the lower right, the rest goes in a boiling pot making sure that the whole chicken (for sweetness) is covered.

Clock-wise is beef bones, roasted pork bones (can be neck or trotters), and a whole chicken (sliced off the breasts because they can be used for chicken salad [another recipe]). Chuck roast is there and will be cubed up for later use.  Never you mind the blood cubes.

So those items get thrown into the oversized pot, covered in water above the chicken breast bone, and meanwhile...

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"marinate" the cubed up beef chuck roast:



with:

1 tbs (maybe 2) anchovy paste

a mess of garlic, shallot, ground lemongrass, and
some ground black pepper

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then it looks like this:




next!

Into the pot goes this batch of this stuff: (but not all [ma has it prepared, but not organized well]) a whole onion (cross-cut), a charred 3" piece of ginger (not shown), two hunks of rock sugar, three diced shallots (also not shown), probably about 3 tablespoons of minced garlic, three dandy stalks of lemon grass tied together with a zip tie...

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Oh, and then that marinated beef (maybe 20 min.?) goes into the pot...



Beef gotta get tender while it cooks with the bone jumble...

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While that stuff is going at a full boil, the following is sautéd together:


Ground lemon grass, chopped red onion, some chopped garlic, and gochugaru ([dried Korean chili flake] not Vietnamese, but it's what all the South Sac Viets use for color and "heat")

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Meanwhile, steep some anchovy paste in hot water:

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This sauté mix goes in after one hour (for some reason).

The anchovy juice that was being steeped earlier is poured in.

Taste.

Add 1/2-1 cup fish sauce...to taste...

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Let go for 1–1-1/2 hour or however long to get the beef chuck tender.

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Cook ya thick bun noo-do (the thick noodles) at the end, and place it in a melamine soup bowl.

Dish in all the meat hunks and blood cubes to your desire with the boiling broth, and top off with:

Your chopped red onion, green onion, cilantro and stuff...



Then the other cabbage, lime, mint, basil.  Maybe Thai chili to freak ya mouf...

Then turn your the head away, and the "traditional" addition of cabbages, mint, and an anchovy paste/chili oil mixture in a mini-tub, which suddenly appeared, appears with lime wedges.

Taste it first before you add the lime and anchovy/chili before the soup cop shows up.