Veggie Pho The Lazy Way – Pho Chay

The weather is a bit of a bad whiplash 😳 Monday we had -32 c, Tuesday was 0!!!! And today is snowing like crazy and it’s -26 c, not good for the head 😨

So to warm the chill day, what did I prepare? Noodle soup 🍜🍜🍜🍜

My husband and I really like Vietnamese pho that we always planned to go to Vietnamese for an authentic bowl of pho, but knowing we don’t understand Vietnamese at all and we wouldn’t know what to order that fits our diet, that plan is always postponed.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend @choogirl said Vietnam has a lot of vegan dishes, but our reason for wanting to go to Vietnam was pho, and the pho we knew was always with meat, so no pho, no Vietnam, until I checked there is actually pho chay, Vietnamese vegetarian pho.

I do know vegans make vegans pho, but never crossed my mind that authentic Vietnamese vegetarian pho exists. I guess we can really go to Vietnam afteral 😁

The sky seem agreeing as a couple of days ago, we went to a barbershop for the boys and next to it was the Filipino store. I went to check around and spotted spice cube for pho chay!!!! Never seen it before, so 💃💃💃💃

Grabbed a couple of the cubes and flat pho noodle, went to another grocery store to grab enoki mushrooms and basil, and voila.

We will be having pho all day long today 😂 Crazy weather, calming soup 👍👍👍👍 Perfect.

So yeah, this is a lazy pho, using the spice cubes 😂

Ingredients

• 1 bag pho noodle (please, flat rice stick, not vermicelli)
• 1 box of pho chay (4 cubes inside)
• 250 g green beans
• 1 bag enoki mushrooms, trim the roots
• 6 baby carrots
• 1 box medium firm tofu, cubed
• 1 can sliced mushrooms
• enough water (I guess broth would be better, but for the life of pho, I didn’t think of that 😂) – enough for 4 bowls of pho

Additional

• fresh basil leaves
• sriracha
• hoisin sauce
• lime/lemon juice

As this is basically just boiling everything, I didn’t take step-by-step pictures ✌️

How To

• prepare noodle separately by dropping noodle into boiling water, and boil for 7-8 mins, drain, set aside
• drop in other ingredients in a pot of water, being to boil, cook until veggies soften
• pour soup into noodle and serve

Easy peasy, tons of MSG 😂😂😂😂

Yeah I do have to note that obviously. Pho is packed with MSG and the pho chay cube is no different. It does taste like real pho broth tho. Well good enough when you are lazy to concoct your own spices. That’s the good score, I guess.