🇻🇳 How to Make Bun Bo Hue

Craving Bun Bo Hue? On FoodNeverComes the food never actually comes — so here's how to make real Bun Bo Hue at home, in about 1 hr 30 min, with stuff you probably already have.

🛒 Ingredients

Tap ingredients to tick them off as you shop or cook ✔️

• 1 pork hock or 500g pork bones
• 300g beef shank
• 2 stalks lemongrass, bruised
• 1 tbsp shrimp paste (mam ruoc) stirred into ½ cup hot water
• Chilli oil: 2 tbsp oil, 1 tbsp chilli flakes, 1 tbsp minced lemongrass, 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp fish sauce + 1 tsp sugar
• 400g thick round rice noodles
• To serve: shredded cabbage or banana blossom, bean sprouts, lime, sliced onion, coriander

👩‍🍳 Method

1. Parboil the bones and hock for 10 min, discard that water and rinse everything. Same rule as pho — deal with the grey scum now or drink cloudy soup later.
2. Simmer the bones, shank and bruised lemongrass in 2.5L water for about 1 hr 15 min, skimming as you go. Pull the shank once tender and slice it thin.
3. Let the shrimp paste settle in the hot water, then pour only the clear liquid into the broth and leave the grit behind. This funk is what makes it bun bo hue instead of just spicy pho — do not skip it, but do not tip the sediment in either.
4. Fry the chilli oil ingredients gently for 2 min until the oil runs deep red and smells of lemongrass rather than burnt garlic.
5. Stir most of the chilli oil into the broth, season with the fish sauce and sugar, and taste for the balance you want: spicy, deeply savoury, faintly sweet behind it.
6. Cook the thick noodles until just tender. They are rounder and chewier than pho noodles and need a couple of minutes longer than you would expect.
7. Bowl up noodles, sliced shank and hock meat, ladle the boiling broth over, and spoon the reserved chilli oil on top. The cabbage and herbs go on at the table.