Vietnamese Noodle Soups

Although living in a very westernised country & suburb, I had a pretty authentic Vietnamese upbringing, especially when it comes to food.

I would salivate over the fact the my friends would have the likes of spaghetti & roasts for dinner. Whereas I on the other hand lived on rice & noodle soup dishes. Something I had always taken for granted up until I moved out of home (and when the likes of masterchef making cultural dishes more popular).

As a kid (and even now), at the beginning of each weekend mum would drive all the way to Inala (best place to get the most freshest & cheapest meats & asian groceries in Brisbane) to buy up in prep for cooking her noodle soups. She'd do a big pot up of broth and we'd have that particular noodle soup for breaky, lunch & dinner (literally) for the rest of the weekend.

I was never really one to watch mum cook, so when I moved out I didn't have the viet cooking repertoire that everyone thought I did. Its only been going back home to eat, that I craved the noodle soups. Learning to make the broths nice, clear & flavoursome is an art and it took a lot of practice to get it to the point I'm happy to say it taste exactly like mums.

So here are a list of noodle soups that I have managed to master:

These are my mums recipes and there was a lot of trial and error to get the right quantities as she never used 'tablespoon/teaspoon/cups'. Noodles Soups can be a bit time consuming as it takes at least 2 hrs to simmer. But the longer you leave it, the more concentrated and flavorsome the broth gets. The noodle soup would always taste better the next day.

I suggest not substituting any ingredients as it will not taste the same. I moved to the Sunny Coast where there is only a handful of asian grocers with minimal stock, so its been hard to get my hands on some of these but I was able to find via online stores if you cant get your hands on them. But check out my list of common asian items to see what you need to look for.


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