Shadowing Practice: The Best Vietnamese Pho Made At Home - Learn English Speaking with Video
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It's pronounced pho, not fo.
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If you're going to get the name wrong, you might as well get the recipe right.
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We're going to begin by making our broth, and the first step is to get a cast iron pan as hot as you can possibly get it.
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And while that heats up, I'll chop an onion in half, and then do the same with a piece of ginger.
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And once your pan is ripping hot, no oil needed, go in with your onions and ginger.
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The goal is to get these almost black.
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It's going to add sweetness and smokiness.
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And this step here is going to mimic the old school street stalls in Vietnam
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that would have used an open flame to make the pho.
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I know it seems a little bit weird to purposely burn something, but this is one of those steps in cooking where you just have to trust the process.
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They should have become pretty jet black that one's pretty good.
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That one's really good This piece right here is what we're going for once they're nice
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and charred go ahead
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and set this carefully off to the side I'll come back in now with a big giant pot
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because it's time to bring in the bones What we have here is beef knuckle
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and ox tail and these bones here are important for getting
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that nice beefy far broth for now I'm just gonna cover these all up with cold water.
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There's no measurement here Just go all the way until you reach the very top of the highest bone
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and then I'm gonna shift this carefully off to the side and bring this to a boil.
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While our bones simmer, we're going to toast our spices.
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First, we have this Vietnamese cinnamon.
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This is a beautiful cinnamon that you can see so clearly is the bark of a tree.
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Then a few cardamom pods, a sprinkle of fennel seeds, then some coriander.
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And finally, what is the most important spice for making pho, in my opinion, star anise.
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These for me are what give pho its pho flavor.
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It's a little bit of a sort of licorice -y, impossible -to -replace spice.
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We'll toast these spices now in a dry pan for about five minutes or until nice and fragrant
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I don't think I'll ever get over how cool it is to use real cinnamon like this.
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And not only does this look better, but the smell is just the strongest, warmest, most amazing cinnamon smell you could ever imagine.
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You'll know these spices are done once your whole kitchen starts to smell warm and sweet and toasty.
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It's a hard smell to describe, but it's definitely a beautiful one.
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I'll pour my toasted spices carefully off to the side so we can move back to our beef bones.
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It looks bad, which is good.
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What we're doing here is removing all the nastiness from these beef bones to get a nice, clean pho broth.
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Vietnamese chefs call this step here, making it clean.
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Now that it's come to a boil, I'll set a timer for 10 minutes and leave this uncovered, and then we'll come back.
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While we let those bones finish boiling, we're gonna make what's called a sachet with all our spices.
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It's an easy way to get all the flavor of these
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spices into our pho broth without having to dig them out later.
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All you do is carefully add them to the center of a few pieces of cheesecloth, Then grab the corners and fold it up to make a nice little pouch.
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And then, using a piece of butcher's twine, go ahead and tie it all up.
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And that's it.
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There's your sachet.
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Now that our bones have been boiling for 10 minutes, go ahead and carefully bring this whole thing over to the sink.
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I'm going to first dig out all the bones and set those off to the side.
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Then I'll give the bones a quick rinse in cold water, pour out all the nastiness and gunk from my pot, and then clean it off so we can use it again.
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Once we've got our clean pan again, we'll go back in with all our clean bones.
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And then just quickly, I'm going to chop up some daikon radish.
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Daikon is amazing.
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It actually sweetens and gives you an even cleaner pho broth.
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And I'm just going to chop this up into nice little sticks.
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And then in we go with our daikon, all of our charred aromatics, some green onions, our sachet, which has all those nice toasted spices, then some fish sauce, a bunch of cloves of garlic,
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optionally a little MSG, one or two small pieces of rock sugar just to sweeten things up a little bit.
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And last but not least, a sprinkle of salt.
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And then cover this all again with water.
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But this time we're going to keep the water, I promise.
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Now bring this a bit.
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You can add a lid on to help it come to a boil faster if needed.
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And once it does come to a boil, turn the heat down to a very gentle simmer and let it go for six hours, occasionally skimming off the foam on the top to keep the broth nice and clean.
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Since I knew we had to wait six hours for our broth, I figured, why not have some fun cutting our beef and bring in a whole meat slicer?
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What we have here are two different cuts of top round.
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I did get slightly higher quality beef than you might normally see in pho, just because I know it'll look better for you to see on camera, but this is very much a traditional cut of beef that you would use for pho.
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The goal here with this meat slicer is to get nice thin slices
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that are going to cook really quickly when we add in our broth, because remember, with pho, we'll end up pouring the hot broth over the beef to cook it just before we eat it.
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So get them nice and thin.
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to do this with a meat slicer.
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You can buy your meat pre -sliced, which is probably the easiest and best way to do it, or you can even try using a knife at home if you really want to do this yourself.
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But I just love that the meat slicer gives you these really beautiful curls of beef.
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This meat here is thin enough now that it should cook right away
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when we pour that hot pho broth over the top of it.
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Let's fast forward a little bit.
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It's been about three hours now with our pho broth here.
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Even though we had a lid on here, quite a bit of that liquid is gone.
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The smell is much richer and more concentrated.
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And it's very important now that we add in more water until all the bones are covered, because that's where we're pulling a lot of that flavor.
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For now, we'll just cover this again and let it cook for about three more hours.
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Fast forward three more hours and it's time to strain our broth.
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into a strainer over a bowl just to catch all those extra juices.
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And when you do eventually find some of that oxtail, you'll want to put that into a separate bowl
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because we're going to eat that in just a little bit with the soup.
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It should be difficult to transfer some of this over.
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It's going to be fall apart tender if you did this right.
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Once we've gotten out all the bigger chunks and made sure we get all that oxtail, go ahead and lift this up.
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You can take this and get rid of it.
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You're not going to use any of this anymore.
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And now using whatever method you want, carefully strain out that broth.
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I probably could have ladled it over if I wanted to, but I was just - Oh, that's a good lady.
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Very important, taste that broth.
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This is your final step to season it up before you're gonna eat it.
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So after all that cooking, your broth should taste clean, maybe lightly beefy with a little bit of sweetness and warm spice in the background.
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I'm overall happy with the sweetness in mind, but I'm gonna add just a touch more of that rock sugar here.
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I'm grading it on a microplane just to get a little bit because I don't need much, as well as just one more pinch of salt.
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And that should do it.
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To finish this off, I'll add on a lid and place this in the fridge overnight, which will give all that fat time to rise to the top, While our oxtail is still nice and hot,
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I just want to show you how incredibly easy it is to take it off the bone.
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I also think it's good to do now anyways, because you're going to have to take it off the bone regardless.
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But just look at how easily all that meat flakes apart after you cook it for that long.
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It should literally just melt off the bone between your fingers.
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And if you really like oxtail, you could always add more at the start of the recipe, because it'll only make your broth more flavorful and give you more oxtail meat.
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With this, I'm just going to cover it and place that in the fridge as well.
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Hello!
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I hope you guys all slept well.
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It's the next day.
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jellowy and gelatinous, which is great.
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And what's even better than that is
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that we can literally take this whole piece of fat off the top like a lid.
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We're going to keep all the broth though.
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This we don't need.
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You can get rid of this.
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When it turns into jello like this, it means you got all the collagen out of the bones.
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More importantly, it means you'll have a really good pho broth.
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To prep this for our pho, we'll go ahead and heat it back up.
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And you'll notice that all that jelly is going to melt down really fast again into a liquid.
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And while that heats up, we can go ahead and cook our noodles.
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These are rice noodles.
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They cook a bit different than a traditional
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all you do is add a bit of warm water over them and then let these soak for about 20 minutes.
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After 20 minutes, they'll have soaked up lots of that water and should look like this.
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Not fully cooked yet, but part of the way there.
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To finish off our noodles, toss them into some boiling water and we'll cook them for just a few minutes until tender.
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You do not want to overcook your rice noodles.
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When I went to a shop in Vietnam and had authentic traditional pho, they were cooking these very, very quickly.
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Just like any kind of pasta or noodle, they become much too soft.
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Once they pass the taste test, go ahead and toss them off to the side in a colander
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the sink and give them a nice rinse in cold water to rinse off the starch and so they don't stick together.
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With our noodles done, we'll move on to make a quick sauce, possibly the easiest sauce you'll ever make.
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All we need is a bit of hoisin, sriracha, and the juice of a whole lime.
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Like I said, easiest sauce you'll ever make.
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Just whisk it all up until it's consistent, give it a quick taste, and set this off to the side as well.
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For plating, I'll start by adding a bunch of my rice noodles into a bowl.
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And once you're happy with how they've been arranged, go ahead and add in your oxtail, that delicious fall apart tender meat that we'd spent so long making with our broth, as well as your raw beef.
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Use whatever kind you want for this.
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And next, some ice cold bean sprouts.
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Putting them in ice water like that makes them nice and crispy.
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Then some Thai basil, a few mint leaves, some Vietnamese coriander.
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It's an amazing herb, but if you don't have this, go ahead and use a few sliced green onions, then one lime wedge.
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And now to finish, we'll pour that hot boiling broth all over our pho.
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I love watching how the meat cooks right as you pour that broth over it.
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Quick squeeze of lime.
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It's like hot pot.
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Watch how quickly I can cook the beef in this broth.
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I like to eat the beef in the sauce.
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And I've got to try the noodles and broth together.
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Mmm.
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Burned my mouth.
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I don't even care.
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That is how you make pho.
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Just kidding.
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Pho.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
This video, which focuses on making authentic Vietnamese pho at home, presents a rich context for English learners to practice speaking. The speaker guides viewers through the entire cooking process, providing an opportunity to engage with everyday vocabulary related to cooking, ingredients, and culinary techniques. By shadowing the speaker, learners can improve their pronunciation and fluency while narrating a step-by-step process, which is a valuable skill for IELTS speaking practice.
The engaging nature of food preparation offers learners the chance to practice conversational English, making it easier to remember phrases and vocabulary. Moreover, discussing dishes like pho encourages cultural exchange and can spark interesting dialogues about food traditions. Utilizing a shadowing app or site to practice alongside this video can deepen understanding and retention of language structures in a practical context.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Throughout the video transcript, several expressive grammatical structures are used effectively:
- Imperative verbs: Commands such as "go ahead" and "bring this to a boil" are vital for giving instructions, which learners will encounter in everyday speaking scenarios.
- Descriptive language: Phrases like "nice and charred" and "almost black" illustrate how to use adjectives effectively for vivid descriptions. This not only enriches vocabulary but also helps in IELTS speaking where descriptive language is key.
- Present continuous tense: The use of "we're going to toast our spices" shows how this tense conveys ongoing actions. This is essential for learners to practice in their speech for fluency.
- Conditionals: The phrase "if you're going to get the name wrong, you might as well get the recipe right" demonstrates a common conditional structure. Learning to use conditionals can enhance learners' conversational skills, allowing them to express hypothetical situations during discussions.
Common Pronunciation Traps
There are several pronunciation challenges highlighted in the video that English learners should pay attention to:
- "Pho": The correct pronunciation of this Vietnamese dish is crucial. It is pronounced "fuh," but many learners may instinctively say "foe." Practicing this can enhance clarity when speaking about Vietnamese cuisine.
- "Daikon": The term for this type of radish might be tricky due to its unique syllable rhythm. Learners should practice saying "dai-kawn" to sound more fluent.
- Ingredient names: The diverse spice names like "star anise" and "Vietnamese cinnamon" can be difficult for learners. Emphasizing these words through shadowing techniques will assist in mastering their articulation.
Practicing with videos like this one can greatly improve English speaking abilities, especially when using shadowing methods. Engaging with the content in a focused manner will not only prepare learners for conversational contexts but also enhance their cultural understanding of global cuisines.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | bad, which is · sachet, which has · sliced, which is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | It's been · we've gotten · they've been arranged |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are covered · they've been arranged |
| Superlatives the -est / the most … — the top or bottom of a group | the highest · the most important · the strongest |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.