My coworker and I were talking today, and we wondered how many Calories there are in pho. Yeah, I know. That’s like asking ‘How big is a book?’ When I have pho it’s almost always pho dac biet: soup, noodles, bean sprouts, basil, onion, cilantro, jalapeños, raw beef, well-done beef, tendon, trips and beef balls. Serving size: Enormous. It’s got to be 40 ounces.
She thinks it’s about 600 - 700 Calories. I think the stock must have a lot of fat in it to make it so tasty. Only a couple of ounces of cow parts in it, but I’m guessing the whole thing would be 2,000 or 3,000 C.
I’ve wondered this same thing myself. You’re way off on the 2-3000. As you noted, there’s not a lot of (weight) meat in there. Bean sprouts, green onions, and rice noodles can’t account for much. As you note, it’s all about the broth. My guess is that the tastiness is primarily from an insane amount of sodium, not fat.
The only thing even like a cite I could provide is that I recently lost about 70 lbs over the last year or so. I did it by counting calories and tracking calories in vs. calories burned. I eat a large Pho twice per week and I was considering it to be about 800 calories (Pho Ga for me). The fact that my “diet” worked, means that I can’t have been off by more about 1.5X in terms of calories otherwise it would have screwed my calculation.
This recipe for beef pho has 367 calories per 619 g serving. Considering the size that you claim that your serving is and the extra meat, I’d probably double it and agree with Jayrot that it is around 800 calories more or less…
I’ve never had pho (no kosher Vietnamese restaurants yet), but the beef stock itself shouldn’t be fatty, and if it were, you’d see the greasy layer floating on top. A good, rich stock can be almost fat-free if it’s well skimmed - the rich taste comes from collagen in the bones cooking off, not from fat.
That’s pretty amazing, that something so tasty is relatively low in Calories.
Aha. You’re right. I’ve made enough things with ham hocks or drippings that I should have thought of this.
We walked by the pho house today and I thought of getting some. Only it would have to sit on my desk for a couple of hours, a 20-minute bus ride, and a two hour drive before I could enjoy it.
Maybe, ask them to give you the raw vegetables, or fresher bits of the pho on the side in a to go box. Nuke the beef and noodle soup and addd the fresh ingredients at the last minute.
I’ve got a can of pho stock right here. Its got 70 calories in 28 oz. Then you can any amount of calories you like on top of it. I suspect most pho stock is a lot richer and has plenty of fat from the bone marrow.
It’s 9 am here, and I have a job interview in an hour, and all I can think about is a great big bowl of pho’, complete with sriracha sauce, hoisin, and all the accoutrements.
Yeah, that’s how they do it here too. You get one bag with noodles, onion and raw beef and one with shoots, leaves and chillis. You nuke the container of stock and pour it over the former, then garnish with the latter.
And yes, it’s the marrow that gives the stock that fabulous mouth-feel.
I may have overestimated the size of the container. Probably 32 ounces and not 40. I don’t pour the stock over the veg. Instead I tear them up and put them in the soup. I think next time I get it I’ll forego the tripe. I like menudo, but pho tripe is crunchy.
Coworker did some searching, Jayrot’s estimate is pretty close as there were several claims of 700 C. devilsknew’s link is for a 16 oz. serving, which puts it right there in the ballpark.
MikeG, where do I get good pho on the north side, please? And what do I need to know to order it without sounding like a stupid white girl? I’ve never tried it, but from the descriptions in this thread, I must remedy that!
619g of water is exactly 619 mL, which is near close to 21 fluid ounces (20.93088), if we’re going by volume. Of course, that’s pure water. More dense things, like broth and meat, will make it less volume, and less dense things, like veggies, will give it greater volume.
Don’t call it ‘foe’. (It kind of sounds like ‘fuh’.) Menus in every Vietnamese place I’ve been to have different sections for pho dishes, rice dishes, noodle dishes, house specialties, etc. So just look under the pho section and order by number.
And in my experience, it’s never the same. Take-away pho is never even a quarter as good as the stuff you get in the restaurant. Even from the same restaurant. We have the best pho in the universe at one particular place in Sydney, and eating their stuff at home is very ordinary. I don’t think it travels well.
I just bought it out of curiosity. I’m quite confident it’s not very good, but I think it might be tolerable with some rice vermicelli and some thinly sliced rare ribeye for a late night snack. I still want to try to make it from scratch, but it’s really a hassle and the oxtails and bone marrow bones are surprisingly expensive. I’ve actually tried to make a low rent version out of beef stock and all the proper spices but it came out pretty mediocre. I doubt the canned stuff would be any worse.
Alas, our huge 1980’s era Vietnamese population picked up and left for Fresno and Minnesota a long time ago. Anyhow, I think they were mostly Hmong, who I think have different culinary traditions. We still have 3 Vietnamese restaurants in town, but a big bowl of pho is twice what it would cost in Portland or Little Saigon in Orange County.
Like I said, we don’t have a huge number of Vietnamese here in town. My favorite pho joint in town had a latina waitress.
Me: "Well I’ll have some ‘fuh’ ".
Stupid waitress: “Tofu?”.
Me: “No, Fuoh”.
SW: “Tofu?”.
Me: “No, Foe!”.
SW: “Tofu?”.
Me: “Dammit how about a number 21.”.
Jeez, how can a friggin’ waitress in a Vietnamese restaurant not know what “pho” is? These days, I just act like a clueless American and just say “foe”. That waitress is the only one I’ve ever encountered who didn’t know what I was talking about.
Good question. I’ve been eschewing carbs and losing weight for the last ten months, and my beloved pho was about the first thing crossed off my list. I used to eat it about twice a week. Of course, I usually added a glass of freshly-squeezed, sugary-as-hell limeade to it, so that was quite a calorie-laden lunch.
Don’t forget San Jose, where we have an enormous Vietnamese population. Our Little Saigon area is the bomb - we have more pho, bun and banh mi joints than you can count. Pho’s pretty cheap here. I estimate about $5 to $8 will get you as big a bowl of pho as you could eat. I love living in an ethnically diverse area!
On the other hand, it does contain a week’s worth of sodium (or at least I’ve always assumed so).
My guess is that the bulk of the calories in phở, at least the way it’s served here, come from the noodles. Most restaurants here tend to put a lot of them, too; I usually can’t even come close to finishing an entire bowl.
If there’s a more perfect comfort food on a cold, rainy day, I haven’t found it.
