Bryan Martin's one-pot wonder: Beef noodle soup

As far as supposed one pot meals go, this one is close to top of the tree. That said I did use a least three pots, an oven tray, a pressure cooker and thought long and hard about firing up the sous vide circulator. My family stays clear of me when I'm in my "one-pot meal" mode, knowing full well that I'll make such a mess of our kitchen and use just about every utensil and gadget I own.

It's worth it though, if all I owned was one pot I reckon I could still make a version of this dish, but I feel that you can improve on the theme by breaking the technique down and getting the best out of all the ingredients.

Even though this is quite an elaborate process, I still find it easier than actually ordering the dish from the many, and growing in number, pho noodle bars. They are popping up everywhere and generally come with some sort of hilarious pun with business names such as "Good pho you!"' or "Unphogettable".

I'm not sure if everyone has this linguistic issue with ordering this noodle soup. No matter how I say it, the server still looks at me with a puzzled frown. To make matters worse, it's generally all they sell.

The conversation generally goes like this:

"May I have a bowl of pho, please?" as I point at the picture of a steaming bowl of noodles.

"A fear?"

"No, a pho…"

"Fur, what is a fur?"

"May I have a bowl of P.H.O. please.."

"I'm sorry, we only sell pho here, what would you like to eat?"

Enough of this phonetic tomfoolery, I'll make it myself.

Beef noodle soup

Prepared stock, brisket (see below)
About 100g thin rice noodles per person
2-4 small and green red chillies, chopped
limes, one per person, quartered
Thai basil, leaves only
Fresh coriander, leaves only
spring onions, finely sliced
Fresh bean sprouts
fish sauce
grapeseed oil

Make up a garnish plate of the limes, herbs, chilli, spring onions and the bean sprouts. Everyone can finish their own noddles.

Bring a pot of water to the boil and blanch the noodles for one minute and cool under cold water. Place noodles in each bowl. Bring the stock to a simmer and add enough fish sauce to bring out the flavour.

Meanwhile, heat a wok with a little oil in it and fry the shredded brisket until it just starts to caramelise. Add a generous amount to each bowl and pour over the hot, seasoned stock.

Serve immediately with the garnish plate and extra fish sauce.

Stock base and brisket braise

1.5kg brisket, trimmed
1kg chuck bones
1kg ox tail
1 head garlic
100g knob ginger
2 onions, sliced
3 star anise
1 quill cinnamon
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp cumin seeds
6 dried shiitake mushrooms
Salt, oil

Season and lightly roast the bones, oxtail, head of garlic and ginger in a hot oven, just until they are just starting to caramelise. In a stock pot – or pressure cooker – heat a little oil and saute the onions with the spices until you have some good browning going on. This will ignite the aromas of the spices and give the soup base a pleasing oniony sweetness. Once completed and the stuff in the oven is ready, combine it all together, peeling the garlic and ginger first, cover with water, add the mushrooms and bring to a simmer. An hour and a half in a pressure cooker at high pressure is plenty. In an unpressurised environment, you'll need to carefully simmer this for about 5-6 hours.

Either way, once finished, strain and chill so you can scrape off the congealed fat. Chuck the fat unless you feel strongly about using it for other purposes. Heat the stock to a simmer for the next stage.

This next stage is to cook the brisket, set the oven at 110C, lay out the brisket in a roasting pan and add enough stock to completely cover and then seal with a lid or foil. You'll need to watch this while it cooks as the first thing a brisket does is curl up, expand in thickness and shrink in length so it'll look like a beached whale in a kid's swimming pool.

I'll generally have another deeper pot ready to transfer the new shape into. The important thing is to keep it always covered in hot stock. Cook until the meat is very soft, this will take about eight hours, the slower the better. Let the meat rest and cool down in the stock for a bit and then take to it with a pair of forks to shred into long stands. Collect these and strain the stock. Now you have the two main components of your pho ready. Strain and degrease the stock again. You'll need about 1½ cups of soup base per person, thin down with water as needed.