Visually exciting and so very well presented, this is an excellent introduction to the versatile noodle dish of Vietnam. From easy to more sophisticated recipes, all sound so good tasting and healthy. Recommended for any cook's reading shelf.

My husband introduced me to pho after a long while of hesitation on my part because I don't generally like Asian food or soup, but once he finally got me into the cute little pho shop by our house a few years ago it became one of my favorite restaurants. I have thought about attempting to make own pho ata home, but I have always been intimidated and besides finding recipes here or there on pinterest, I have never really found a good recipe. The Pho Cookbook not only have a plethora of recipes, but is very detailed on how to make the perfect bowl of soup. Nguyen examines everything from how to find the freshest noodles, to all of the spices and flavorings that need to be added to make pho the pure deliciousness that so many people love. The beginning of the book with the detailed explanation of each step is super intimidating, but once you get to the recipes section it doesn't seem as out of reach. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys experimenting in their kitchen or that really loves pho!

Ten Speed Press and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of The Pho Cookbook. This is my honest opinion of the book.

Pho is a staple in Vietnamese culture, with its deeply flavored broth, rice noodles, meat, and vegetables. Cookbook author Andrea Nguyen takes readers on a journey through her childhood and through history to find the origins and traditions that surround pho.

Filled with informative and instructional sections, The Pho Cookbook contains all of the necessary details, in order to replicate this hearty dish. A good portion of the book is dedicated to teaching even the most novice in the kitchen how to prepare this traditional dish. There are soups that are quick and easy, like Quick Chicken Pho (p. 40) or slow simmered classics, like Saigon-style Beef Pho (p. 61).

With interesting tidbits located in boxes scattered throughout the recipes, along with beautiful photographs, The Pho Cookbook gives readers an in-depth tutorial on how to prepare the recipes. Included in the book are inventive recipes using pho as a basis, such as Pho Fried Rice (p. 77) and Beef Pho Banh Mi (p. 89), as well as pantry staples, such as Homemade Hoisin (p. 102) and Garlic Vinegar (p. 106). The Pho Cookbook will appeal to readers of all skill levels, as this well rounded book will tantalize even the most discriminating palate.

TITLE: Love soup? Insist on home-made quality broths? Pho fan? Love this book!

I am a lover of soup. I am also drawn by all the flavors of Vietnamese cooking. So, there was no way I was passing up a single-themed recipe book on pho. So glad that this book delighted me! So glad it exceeded my expectations!

Just turning the introductory pages of this book, my senses were teased by the beautiful pictures, both action and still shots. (And there is a full page picture for every main recipe.) Pictures are colorful and vibrant—mouthwatering, too!

Even an insert to help the reader correctly pronounce pho and a page on how to eat it.

History of pho comes at the beginning of the book.

One chapter covers thorough explanations and pictures of pho ingredients: Noodles, spices, aromatics, bottled seasonings, sweeteners, herbs and garnishes. You will learn to select the best bones and the proper cuts of meat.

Plenty of helpful hints and tips. Do you ever read instructions and wonder why certain techniques or extra steps are included—and been left wondering? That will not happen with these recipes. You will learn how and why to char ginger and onions/shallots and parboil bones.

There are simple and quick pho recipes, meatless pho, pressure cooker pho and classic recipes.

Ingredients are not hard to find in well-stocked larger grocery stores. Of course, being near to an Asian market is helpful. But chicken, beef and pork meat and bones can be found almost everywhere. (But certain lamb cuts and bones, for instance, is harder for me to find at a regular grocery store in central and southern Texas, and an Asian market helps with that.)

Be aware that ingredient lists can be somewhat long. Do not let that daunt you! Prep work is easy and not time consuming. I have learned that gathering up ingredients gets to be less and less of a chore the more often I do it. If you make pho often enough, the shelf ingredients will migrate together and you won’t be wasting time gathering them from here and there. Just get past that initial long list and it will soon become second nature.

Each recipe provides the name of the pho in both Vietnamese and English. There is a short and interesting introduction and the reader will see approximate times for preparation. Recipes serve from 2 to 6, with most recipes serving 4 diners. Ingredient lists are concise and include both Imperial and Metric measurements. Instructions are broken into spaced paragraphs which help re-direct the eyes to where one left off. Instructions make sense and won’t leave an inexperienced cook wondering how to proceed.

I do use both a large and a small pressure cooker on occasion, so I found an entire page discussion of the virtues of a pressure cooker vs. a stockpot to be quite interesting. (My point here, again, is that valuable and worthwhile tips and hints are included in this book.)

I especially liked the chapter “Adventurous Pho”. It is designed to remind the reader that making pho is a creative process, and a recipe in a book is just a foundation, or a jumping off place, for experimentation. In this chapter there is a seafood pho and a lamb pho. One for rotisserie chicken, too! There are a few fried rice and fat rice recipes and a banh mi.

There are also recipes for appropriate dipping sauces, bowl add-ins, fried bread sticks and a helpful pho spice blend. I was happy to see a recipe for homemade hoisin, a chile sauce and a sate sauce.

Pho is more that noodles in broth. There is a chapter that contains a few stir-fried recipes, some pan fried recipes and deep fried dishes.

A final chapter is all about pho sides: Pot stickers, salads, slaw, rice paper rolls, more sauces, drinks. Even a Pho Michelada!

*I received a temporary download of this book from the publisher months before publication, so I have been working with it for quite a while. As you can see from the "Verified Purchase" tag up top of my review, I liked this book so much that I bought a hard copy to always have at hand.

Andrea Nguyen’s The Pho Cookbook is a must have for pho-lovers. Garnished with history and personal stories of her travels in Vietnam, it has an avenue for *every* cook to make pho at home. Quick or classic, vegetarian or not, the Pho Cookbook has it all. I can’t wait to fully dig in when my hard copy arrives. 5 stars.

I love trying new recipes and cooking things outside of my comfort zone. You should see my physical cookbook collection. I have cookbooks ranging from Scandinavian to Greek to Thai. While I like to cook pretty much anything, I usually gravitate to Asian for some reason. My family likes it and it’s not unusual for us to have Pad Thai or Fried Rice a few times a month. So when I saw this Pho Cookbook up for review I knew I had to request it. While Pho is something I knew about it was something that I had never attempted to make. We were not disappointed. It is something that I will be adding to my monthly menu planning.

The cookbook breaks Pho down into multiple sections. Each one more adventurous than the next. A quick flip through told me there were not just soup recipes in it. I quickly decided to make a soup dish and a non-soup dish as a starter into the cookbook. The next thing was the decide the soup. I chose a Quick Beef Pho. It looked tasty, quick and was one of the few that didn’t require beef bones to be cooked down or a pressure cooker. The smell that filled my house while it was cooking was AMAZING. The smell of fresh ginger mixing with cinnamon, clove and star anise is one that needs to be smelled by everyone at some point in their lives. The name quick is a slight misnomer. It took roughly 40-45 minutes to make it from beginning to end. There is a 30-minute simmer in the middle which allows you the freedom to go do something else, say fold laundry. The Quick Beef Pho was a huge hit with my family. My children did pick the green onions and cilantro out but that was to be expected. While they are pretty good eaters, green floaty things aren’t high on their list. The other recipe I cooked was a Beef Pho Bahn Mai sandwich. I cooked it for a family get together. Boy, was that a huge hit. I used the alternative cooking method of the oven since my mother doesn’t own a pressure cooker that can be used to cook food like that. Again, the smell of the cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and star anise filled the house. It was mouth watering. I cooked the meat in a dutch oven for 2 hours and stirred it at the halfway point. The meat came out fall apart tender. Everyone went back for seconds. My 3 year old inhaled her sandwich so fast I was afraid she wouldn’t stop at her fingers. All in all, both recipes were easy to prepare and were exceptionally delicious. I will be making both of these in the future and trying some of the other recipes as well.

I gave this cookbook 5 stars. The cookbook was well designed and easy to understand. The only thing that might make it less accessible for some people is the type of ingredients and cooking methods. Most of the recipes called for lamb bones or beef bones to make a broth with. I live in Northern Michigan where the nearest place for me to get good quality things like that is not just a quick jaunt down the road. With a quick glance back through the cookbook most recipes call for Star Anise. A .5oz bottle at Meijer costs $8.00+, while its a one time cost until you need more it’s still a steep price. Also, a fair amount of the recipes calls for a pressure cooker to speed up the process. I do not own one and it’s not something that is readily available in most homes in my opinion. Some of the recipes she does give an oven opinion and how to do it that way, but it’s at the end and under a NOTE: section. Don’t get me wrong, I loved this cookbook and I will be using it regularly but just something to keep in mind if you are thinking about purchasing this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ten Speed Press for allowing me an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
            Pho (pronounced faww) is a very popular soup of fragrant broth, noodles, meat, and what ever else you wish to put in it basically.  When I go to the mall (of all places!) there is a stall that sells beef pho, and I can get a large bowl with bean sprouts,  basil, jalapenos, and lemon and lime on a side dish to add as I desire.  Whenever I have a really bad day, that's dinner.  The broth is perfection, sweet and savory scents melding together in a way that I cannot find anywhere else.  I love the large amount of noodles, and the perfectly sliced strips of beef.  I like that much of the seasoning is decided by me, the customer.  I will squeeze the citrus and add beansprouts, ignoring the jalapenos to make the perfect soup for me.    When I lived in KC,  there was a small pho restaurant where you could get many different types: chicken, beef, seafood, gluten free and vegan to name only a few.  It also sold fried pho noodles, and bah min with pho noodles.  There are so many different variations!
            What drew me to this cookbook, besides the draw of being able to make my ultimate comfort food, was that I could learn about all the side dishes, and other things you could do as well.  There are recipes for the broth from scratch, or with cheats like canned broth.  It teaches to make one's own hoisin sauce, and how to do side dishes like lovely rice-paper rolls.  I loved that it explained all the components,  and the tools that would be needed, as well as fixes for common place issues. 
           My only draw back was that it went on at length to tell us about the origins of Pho and how it went through the ages.  While interesting at first, it quickly lost appeal.  This is probably just a personal preference thing.... but I was actually wanting to skip pages so that I could get to recipes (and there are links through the eBook to do just that, but as this is a RFR book, I felt I should read it all).  Still, with the easy explanations that recipes that will take you from novice to harder recipes, I would say this is a four star cookbook.  It's concise and easy to follow with many varying ideas.

This book is well researched and informative. Nguyen presents a thorough history of the origin, historical significance, and development of pho in Vietnam and other countries. There is a comprehensive ingredient list, including tips for finding ingredients in local markets and recipe variations. Step-by-step instructions help create perfect pho right at home, including different meat, vegetarian, and kids varieties. The bulk of the manual is divided into five recipe chapters:
1. Master Pho - foundational recipes for preparing pho at your own pace and schedule

2. Adventurous Pho - pushes the limits a bit to inspire your pho creativity

3. Pho Add-ons - offers guidance on extra toppings, garnishes, and sauces so that you may personalize your pho

4. Stir-Fried, Panfried, and Deep-Fried Pho - makes the most of wide pho noodles

5. Pho Sidekicks - includes rolls, dumplings, salads, and drinks to help you plan a special pho meal

I look forward to trying my hand at this delicious delicacy, and I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to experience authentic Vietnamese cuisine right in their home. I received this as a free ARC from Ten Speed Press on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Loved, this book. Not only do we get some great recipes, but we also get some interesting background on the entire "pho" loving. I also really like the detailed look at the individual ingredients that go into PHO.

As always, I struggle to read recipes books on Kindle and I may end up buying this one "live".

The historical and cultural information in this book really display the wide applications of the iconic dish and really goes a long way to inform western readers (like myself) to the depth of meaning and cultural significance behind something as approachable as delicious food.
The recipes are very well laid out and approachable. I made the basic chicken pho to resounding success. It was tasty and simple to make, and certainly left me wanting to try the more complicated recipes. If Vietnamese food and culture at all interest you, this book is worth perusing.

I love this book and I flew through it on the first day of having it on my pre-read list. I love Pho and getting to delve in the history of its people and where it came from was amazing. The whole feel of the introduction is rich and warm, sinking into your skin and your stomach, readying you for every delicious recipe on the pages that follow it.

I, for one, can not wait to try many of these recipes for the Pho, for fried Pho Noodles, and even the surprise Pho Cocktail at the end.

Vietnam's favourite food can be made in our kitchen with the help of this cookbook. I am delighted to know about numerous variations in Pho.

I really enjoyed the chatty nature of The Pho Cookbook. I have Andrea Nguyen Dumpling book so was excited to see this edition. I have yet to cook anything but I will very soon. The beautiful photography makes me want to cook all of the recipes.

This is an outstanding cookbook. I love pho and have eaten many bowls, and I love to cook. I am fortunate enough to live in Southern California, where an authentic bowl of pho and an Asian grocery store are a car ride away. I am also a follower of Andrea Nguyen's blog, Viet World Kitchen. I was very excited to get the Pho Cookbook so I could improve on my previous home attempts at pho.

The recipes are straightforward and easy to understand. I especially loved her pictures of the products she likes to use, which are very helpful when you're surrounded by 100 bottles of fish sauce labeled in languages you don't speak. It's also helpful if you don't have access to an Asian grocer and need to order online. It's helpful that she provides substitute ingredients for the ones that may be too hard to get depending on locale.

Andrea gives a lot of options to make pho...quick, classic, adventurous and pressure cooker (my favorite so far) and she gives a lot of options for proteins as well...beef, chicken, seafood and vegetarian. Her recipes for the garnish plates and additions are really helpful too, because the additions make each bowl of pho different for whoever makes it.

The non-soup recipes are a revelation! Different recipes using rice noodles that take pho into new and delicious directions. I can't wait to try the Chicken Pho Noodle Salad and a mash-up of two of my favorite Vietnamese foods, Beef Pho Banh Mi, a Vietnamese french dip, and the Deep-Fried Pho Noodles.

I highly recommend this book, and I'm cooking my way through the entire thing! It's an excellent addition to my cookbook collection.

I am an Aussie who discovered the joy of pho a few years ago. I've yet to meet and eat a bowl of pho I didn't like! I've been interested in making it myself, but have been a little nervous to try, as it seemed so overwhelming!

However, having read this book, I've been so inspired to try it someday soon. Andrea's writing and instruction is really simple and easy to understand - and I was particularly thrilled to see a pressure cooker option, as I've one I haven't used for years...so I'm really motivated to get it out now and try this recipe!

The book is also just beautiful to read...the photos of both the dishes and Vietnamese life are so vivid and engaging and makes working one's way through the book absolutely delightful!

If I didn't work in a secondary school library, I'd definitely purchase or recommend this title - as it is, I'll recommend it to my local public library, so hopefully many others can enjoy it!

I'm not sure if I've ever said this before, but please don't ever buy the e-version of a cookbook. They are never formatted correctly, no matter which app you use and the page references are all messed up. Unfortunately, The Pho Cookbook was not the e-exception.

Parts of the text were suddenly a light gray color, which made it very difficult to read against the white background while other parts of the text were black. I really shouldn't have to change the background color in the app just so that I can read the text all the way through. The page references (the author refers to other recipes in her book) are all off because the page numbers never match up on the electronic version. Sometimes pictures are cut off in the middle of a page and sometimes you get text saying that a recipe is continued in the middle of the page because it was in the hard copy version of the book. I would absolutely love it if editors/publishers could edit the books so that they were formatted correctly ... even if they say something like we recommend using such and such app for correct formatting.

I found the book itself to be okay. I liked the basic beef and chicken recipes and the "quick" versions were a neat idea, but they fell flat in taste. Plus, the "quick" versions only serve 2. Pho takes a lot of time and a lot of ingredients. Even if you're only making the "quick" version that takes about 40 minutes to cook, it's going to take longer to prep the condiments, toast the spices, etc. Do you really want to go through the expense and time of doing something like that for only 2 servings? Personally, when I make pho, I make it in a huge pot so that I can get at least 2 meals out of it for the family. Here's my recommendation: don't bother with the quick version. Make a huge batch of the real pho (yeah, you'll have to set aside a weekend day to do it), eat some yummy pho, freeze the remaining broth and then just reheat that when you want some more pho. Your pho broth will taste so much richer and be so much more yummy than the fake stuff made with store bought broth.

The other problem I had with this book is the pressure cooker recipes. I hate it when recipes call for special equipment that aren't found in most homes. The other issue is that unless you have a large pressure cooker, you're not going to be able to make enough broth for a family of 4 to have 1 meal. Again, if you're going through the expense and time to make the pho, just make a huge batch.

I did find the section on other things to do with pho interesting. There were many items that I had never heard of, like the chicken pho noodle salad. I wanted to try the homemade hoisin sauce, but it required ingredients that I don't usually have on hand (miso paste, Japanese rice vinegar, tahini, rice flour), so I haven't tried it yet.

All in all, this was an okay book, but nowhere as good as the Banh Mi Handbook.

Disclaimer: I received a free e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review from NetGalley. This book will be released February 7, 2017.

Andrea Nguyen shows us how pho came to be in Vietnam and how to successfully make it at home in your own kitchen. Each recipe is well laid out and presented. From the simple broth to salads and vegetarian and gluten free recipes. Great cookbook with beautiful photographs.

I love the ideas and easy yo follow recipes. That's for teaching people about the Vietnamese culture.