Nothing satisfies my deepest cold weather food cravings like a big bowl of piping hot pho. Unless you have a favorite Vietnamese spot nearby, however, it can be difficult to get your hands on a bowl. Which is why I developed and posted a full pho recipe on The Woks of Life back in 2015. For those looking for a quick an easy option, I also posted a quick 20-Minute Chicken Pho recipe.
It’s hard to beat the flavor of a beef-based pho broth, however. But alas, it can take at least 6 hours to make, or much longer if you simmer the broth overnight as some Vietnamese families do! Enter: The Instant Pot. Our new favorite kitchen toy, this programmable electric pressure cooker has been in use more and more these days, whether it was to whip up a quick dinner for a crowd over the holidays or to make wintry soups and stews in enough time for a weeknight dinner.
This Instant Pot pho has the satisfying flavor a long-simmered broth, but it can be made in less than half the time of pho broth simmered traditionally on the stove.
A Quick Note On Instant Pot Size
Now, tools like the Instant Pot (or its opposite, the slow cooker) aren’t necessarily always practical for making soup stocks and broths because size is a limiting factor. We have one of the larger Instant Pot models.
That said, if you’d like to use a smaller Instant Pot for this and just make soup for 1-3 people, you can cut the recipe in half or by a third. Simply reduce all the quantities accordingly. For large single ingredients like the cinnamon stick, simply break it into a smaller piece.
Pressure Cooker Broth: The Color is Different!
You’ll also notice that my broth looks darker than a traditional pho broth, which is generally clearer and lighter, while still being full of flavor. Pho broth is traditionally simmered very slowly, at a very light bubble (if bubbling at all).
With the pressure cooker, however, the broth is cooked much faster. But I do believe that the flavor of the broth is still rich and delicious, and you can be slurping away at a bowl of noodles in much less time, which isn’t a bad thing!
If you’d rather go with the low and slow method, visit my original tried and true stovetop Pho recipe. But if you’d like to take your Instant Pot out for a spin and get the job done faster, then you’re going to love this version!
Instant Pot Pho Recipe Instructions
Start by charring your ginger and onions. Use tongs to hold the ginger and onions over an open flame, or place directly on an electric burner. Turn until they’re lightly blackened and fragrant about 3 minutes. Rinse away the blackened skins and set aside.
Place the bones and beef chuck in large stockpot and add water to cover. Bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes. Drain in a colander and rinse. This process will give you a much cleaner broth.
Set aside your beef chuck in the refrigerator for use later. Transfer the bones to your Instant Pot, along with the charred/cleaned ginger and onions. Add the scallions, fish sauce, sugar, and salt.
Now toast the spices (star anise, cloves, cinnamon stick, black cardamom, fennel seeds, and coriander seeds) in a dry pan over medium low heat for about 3 minutes, until fragrant.
Use kitchen string to tie up the spices in a piece of cheesecloth, and add it to the pot.
Cover everything with 3 ½ quarts of water.
Seal the Instant Pot and place on the manual high pressure setting for 120 minutes. Allow the pressure to release naturally (15-30 minutes). Add the beef chuck and put back on the meat/stew setting for 30 minutes.
Use the Quick Pressure Release, and when the Instant Pot is once again safe to open, skim the broth for excess fat and impurities. Adjust seasoning by adding more salt, rock sugar, and/or fish sauce to taste.
To serve, boil the rice noodles according to package instructions. Add to a bowl. Place some slices/shreds of the beef chuck on the noodles. Cover with broth, and garnish with sliced onion, bean sprouts, and Thai basil, and be sure to squeeze some fresh lime juice over the top! You can also add some cooked beef balls or thinly sliced eye round if you like.
Instant Pot Pho
Ingredients
For the broth:
- 2 3-inch pieces ginger, cut in half lengthwise
- 2 medium onions (peeled)
- 4 pounds beef marrow and/or knuckle bones
- 1 1/2 pounds beef chuck
- 3 scallions (cut into 4-inch lengths)
- ⅓ cup fish sauce
- 2 ounces rock sugar (or 3 tablespoons granulated sugar)
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 3 star anise
- 5 cloves
- 1 small cinnamon stick
- 1 black cardamom pod
- 2 teaspoons fennel seeds
- 2 teaspoons coriander seeds
- 3 1/2 quarts water
To assemble your pho:
- Dried pho rice noodles
- Thinly sliced onion
- Mung bean sprouts
- Thai basil
- Lime wedges
- Cooked beef balls (thinly sliced eye round, optional)
Instructions
- Start by charring your ginger and onions. Use tongs to hold the ginger and onions over an open flame, or place directly on an electric burner. Turn until they’re lightly blackened and fragrant about 3 minutes. Rinse away the blackened skins and set aside.
- Place the bones and beef chuck in large stockpot and add water to cover. Bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes. Drain in a colander and rinse. This process will give you a much cleaner broth.
- Set aside your beef chuck in the refrigerator for use later. Transfer the bones to your Instant Pot, along with the charred/cleaned ginger and onions. Add the scallions, fish sauce, sugar, and salt.
- Now toast the spices (star anise, cloves, cinnamon stick, black cardamom, fennel seeds, and coriander seeds) in a dry pan over medium low heat for about 3 minutes, until fragrant. Use kitchen string to tie up the spices in a piece of cheesecloth, and add it to the pot. Cover everything with 3 ½ quarts of water.
- Seal the Instant Pot and place on the manual high pressure setting for 120 minutes. Allow the pressure to release naturally (15-30 minutes). Add the beef chuck and put back on the meat/stew setting for 30 minutes.
- Use the Quick Pressure Release, and when the Instant Pot is once again safe to open, skim the broth for excess fat and impurities. Adjust seasoning by adding more salt, sugar, and/or fish sauce to taste.
- To serve, boil the noodles according to package instructions. Add to a bowl. Place some slices/shreds of the beef chuck on the noodles. Cover with broth, and garnish with sliced onion, bean sprouts, and Thai basil, and be sure to squeeze some fresh lime juice over the top! You can also add some cooked beef balls or thinly sliced eye round if you like.
I am so excited to try this recipe. First time i had pho, in a tiny restaurant in Alabama run by a gentleman who immigrated from Viet Nam in late 70s. I was overwhelmed with the flavor of the broth, wich seemed to vary with every spoonful in depth and flavors. My 85 year old mom took mee there. I never knew until that day how adventurous she was.
An excellent home pho. I used a combination of stock bones and beef knuckle which came out great. They rendered a great deal of fat (I should’ve trimmed them beforehand, but I was enjoying a lazy Sunday), so I wound up skimming and then straining the broth. So, the lesson is to pay attention to your stock bones and trim if needed. :D
Thank you so much, Brian!
Do you strain the broth at any point or do you leave the bones and other stuff in after the broth is finished cooking? I’m interested in making this but I know we will have excess broth and I’m wondering the best way to store it.
You can strain it afterwards, transfer it to quart containers, and freeze it!
I’ve made this recipe multiple times and I can’t believe I made my own pho at home! It’s always a success.
Thank you so much, Casey! :)
I absolutely love Pho! It’s always been very comforting when I’ve been unwell, or overwrought. Being able to make it at home is something of a dream come true for me, and this recipe laid everything out in such a straightforward way I felt I could manage it. Although, as per usual, I needed to do the pounds to kilograms and quarts to cups conversions.
I used marrow bones to make the soup base, as those were the only kind available, which meant that when the broth was cooked we could also eat the delicious marrow, gelatin and so on – which was oh-so good.
I wasn’t able to add the actual meat to the pressure cooker, as mine is on the smaller side and the bones were quite large, but we were able to get some sliced rare beef, the sort used for hot-pot, to add instead when serving up.
The only thing I found was that the spice flavours didn’t end up being as strong as I would have liked, although the onion and ginger components worked well despite my only options for charring being to test the limits of our fire alarm with pan frying them to blackness. It’s usually a much more noticeable component in takeout Pho around my city, especially the cinnamon flavour. So next time I think I would use a mixture of fresh and grounds spices to make sure the flavours seriously pop.
I’m very keen to make this again, as I still have another lot of marrow bones – the original portion being one giant leg-bone that the butcher hacked up for me – and some frozen pieces of the spring onions. And as we get deeper into winter, I know I’m going to appreciate being able to whip out some portions of this delicious dish!
P.S As my brother is on the keto diet, he had his Pho with Konnyaku noodles and found that worked quite well. The flavours of the broth helped to disguise the somewhat funky flavour and smell of the Konnyaku noodles.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us, and glad you enjoyed the recipe!
Hi Family!
I just saw you on a episode of Family Dinner with Andrew Zimmern and wished I was at your table!! Being a transplant from Seattle to AZ, I REALLY miss all the Pho shops, so I can’t wait to try this recipe and use low-carb noodles instead of carb-loaded, delicious rice noodles.
Question: Instead of using all the different types of meats/bones, can I just use Ox Tails instead? They make the BEST, riches broth (too bad they’re very expensive too).
Thanks!
Hi there! So glad you caught the episode! Yes, you can absolutely use oxtails. Just make sure you have enough of them (equivalent weight would be 5 1/2 pounds, which might get pretty expensive, depending on how much oxtails cost in your area). They’ve gotten pretty expensive where we live!