The home cooks turning phở into a weeknight staple

Traditional phở broth simmers for the better part of a day — beef bones, charred onion and ginger, a careful balance of spices, skimmed patiently for hours. It's a weekend project, not a weeknight one, which is exactly the problem a growing number of home cooks say they've solved with a pressure cooker and a shorter ingredient list.

"I make a version in ninety minutes that gets me eighty percent of the way there," said home cook and recipe blogger Emily Vu, whose weeknight phở method has been shared widely in online cooking groups. Her shortcut leans on a pressure cooker to extract gelatin and flavor from bones far faster than a stovetop simmer allows, along with a pre-toasted spice packet she batches on weekends specifically so weeknights require no prep beyond boiling water.

Other common substitutions showing up in home kitchens: store-bought bone broth as a flavor base instead of raw bones, pre-sliced beef from the grocery store instead of a whole cut, and a splash of fish sauce plus a spoonful of good beef bouillon to fake the depth that normally comes from hours of reduction.

Purists — and there are many, vocal ones — argue these shortcuts produce something that's phở-adjacent rather than phở itself. Vu doesn't disagree, exactly. "My grandmother's version and my Tuesday-night version aren't the same soup," she said. "But my kids ask for the Tuesday one by name, so it's doing its job."