Spicy Beef and Noodles

Pho, a traditional Vietnamese soup, is a one-dish meal that combines a spicy, cinnamon-flavored beef broth with noodles and a variety of condiments. The broth can take hours to prepare and many of the traditional ingredients require some serious legwork to find. We wanted to simplify the dish as much as possible and find ingredients at the local supermarket that would suffice. Here’s what we discovered:

Test Kitchen Discoveries

• Sear the beef, and then make the broth for the soup in the same pan. Any residual browning left in the pan from the meat will flavor the broth. Use prepared chicken broth, not beef broth, which can taste thin and tinny.
• Toast the cinnamon sticks and cloves to intensify their flavor.
• Use instant ramen noodles; just discard the seasoning packets.
• Stir the spinach in with the noodles once they are almost done. The spinach will cook in seconds.