My family’s preferred hot dog sauce recipe is this one. It’s from West Virginia, originally. While you can alter it to your preference, we prefer it with a bite. We drizzle this hot dog sauce on top of our hot dogs before adding some chopped onions for flavor. This recipe yields a sizable quantity, so you can freeze part of it for later use.
| Prep Time: | 20 mins |
| Cook Time: | 5 hrs 15 mins |
| Total Time: | 5 hrs 35 mins |
| Servings: | 8 |
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 2 thick slices beef shank
- 2 pounds beef oxtail, cut into pieces
- 1 (6-inch) piece fresh ginger, sliced
- 6 whole star anise
- 1 teaspoon fennel seed
- 1 teaspoon whole coriander seeds
- 2 whole cloves
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1 cardamom pod
- 3 quarts water
- 1 onion, halved
- 6 cloves garlic
- 2 tablespoons white sugar
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 tablespoons fish sauce
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 (16 ounce) package fresh rice noodles
- 1 cup fresh bean sprouts, or to taste
- 1 fresh jalapeño pepper, sliced into rings, or to taste
Instructions
- Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Cook beef shank, oxtail pieces, and ginger in hot oil, turning occasionally, until browned, 3 to 5 minutes per side. Add star anise, fennel seed, coriander seed, cloves, cinnamon stick, and cardamom pod to the pot and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
- Stir water, onion, garlic, white sugar, and bay leaf into beef mixture; bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer until broth is flavorful and meat is falling off bone, 5 to 6 hours. Remove meat and reserve. Strain broth into a pot; discard strained spices and vegetables.
- Chop beef shank meat and add to broth in pot; stir in fish sauce and soy sauce. Bring broth to a simmer and reduce heat to low to keep warm.
- Place rice noodles in a large bowl and cover with hot water. Set aside until noodles are softened, about 5 minutes. Drain and rinse in cold water.
- Place a handful of bean sprouts in the bottom of a large soup bowl. Top with a large handful of prepared rice noodles and drop a few jalapeño slices over noodles. Ladle beef broth into bowl to cover noodles.
- The nutrition data for this recipe includes the full amount of the broth ingredients. The actual amount of the broth consumed will vary.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 390 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 34 g |
| Cholesterol | 89 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 30 g |
| Saturated Fat | 5 g |
| Sodium | 528 mg |
| Sugars | 4 g |
| Fat | 15 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
This was delicious.
Awesome!!!!! Better than a restaurant!!! Will make as written again…
wonderful soup!
Our family loves pho. I’ve always been too intimidated to make it as I know it takes hours to cook, includes spices I know nothing about and just didn’t think I could pull it off. Then here comes Chef John, again with the win! I did use ox tail but only one pound. Next time I will be sure to trim as much fat as possible from the beef shanks. I started it in the morning before work on the stove, then transferred it to crock pot and cooked it on high for 10 hours. I strained it through a cheese cloth and added the final ingredients. Other than using the crockpot and adding salt, I followed the recipe to a tee. That is why Chef John is my go to! I really never have to tweak his recipes & I always learn great tips from his videos. It was amazing & my entire family loved it! Living in Houston, with a very large Vietnamese community, we are lucky to get amazing pho here but it gets pricey for our entire family. It’s good to know I can whoop this up for 1/3 of the cost. Thanks Chef John!
Turned out amazing. I added the ox tail for flavor. I will make it again.
Delicious, thanks!
have been making this for years. Like the spices very good recipe
Really enjoyed this recipe and expect it will become a favorite meal for years to come.
Very non-traditional way of making Pho (which by the way is pronounced “Fa”). Browning of the meat is not done, spices are supposed to be toasted as well as the onion. Bay is not generally used. Though it was creative, it should have simply been called beef soup. As the chef stated, more beef generally is better and the longer the cooking time, the better. I made this recipe and and found it somewhat bland and the flavor itself did not reflect that traditional Pho flavor.
I def had to add more salt and I braised the meat prior to putting it all in the crock pot in high for about 5 hrs.
I took a lot of liberties with this recipe but absolutely love this spice combination! This my favorite recipe for making soup base. I used 2 qts beef broth + 1qt vegetable broth as I didn’t have ingredients on hand to start from scratch. I sautéed the onion in a bit of oil and broth then added the spices until fragrant. I put the onion and spices in the crockpot then added the remaining broth. I put it on high for an hour then turned it on low overnight. In the morning I added the liquid seasonings and sugar and since we had a snow day, returned the crockpot to high for an hour then back on low for the rest of the day. My add-ins were rice noodles, jalapeños, bean sprouts & cilantro. (Alas, I forgot the basil – but it was totally yum anyway)
I added additional fish sauce & soy sauce, along with a little beef broth. It was excellent. Tasted like what we had in a Pho restaurant.
I cook the broth for ten hours and it was unbelievably good
This is a great recipe.
This is actually a pretty elaborate process to make this delectable broth, well worth the trouble to find the actual whole seed/pod spices and beef cuts because they are what makes this unique flavor. Definitely needs more salt, like another reviewer i seriously up the fish and soy sauces. My daughter is a pretty picky eater but this is one recipe she says You can make this Again! And i have, and we always have seconds! (and leftovers fortunately for all the work…)
I added about 5 more table spoons of fish sauce and another couple of soy sauce then it was perfect. I also throw in beef tendon.
Pretty darn good ! I didn’t have any of the seed spices so I used ground spices instead. I grated two inches of ginger into the broth and added grated carrot to the bowl before serving.
I made the broth yesterday as written and am having this for dinner tonight. As is it’s pretty good but it’s lacking a major ingredient… SALT! It’s just a spiced up water otherwise. I added some beef bouillon and some salt. With that addition it’s an inexpensive way to enjoy pho anytime. With just a little planning that is.