Keto Beef Pho

Low Carb Beef Pho Recipe

For the best. authentic Vietnamese pho, you have to use beef bones along with other spices to make a fragrant, full flavor keto soup. The pressure cooker is the perfect way to extract flavor from the beef bones quickly. But don’t worry if you don’t own an Instant Pot, I give instructions for stove top and slow cooker pho in the recipe above.

The key to making restaurant worthy keto beef pho is to slowly cook the beef bone broth for hours. This will allow us to get the most flavorful broth when its steeps with cinnamon, cloves, anise, ginger and fish sauce.

Pho is made keto by the hearts of palm noodles that we add at the end. These noodles are very low in carbs and are gluten free as they are made from hearts of palm. Finish is flavorful soup with your favorite vegetables, thinly sliced and some shaved beef.

This keto beef pho recipe is also a keto dinner that you can make ahead. Simply make your beef broth ahead of time and have your vegetables prepped and ready to go for the night you want to have beef pho.

Pho Broth

To make a pho broth that is rich and complex in flavor, you have to use real bones. True Vietnamese pho broth is made from beef bones that are slowly simmered for hours in order to extract all the flavor and nutrients from the bones. You can use any kind of beef bones. From marrow, oxtails, knuckles. Any bone will work.

Besides the beef bones, pho broth also uses flavors from cinnamon, cloves, anise and ginger to give that complex flavor. In a pinch, if you don’t have whole cinnamon sticks, cloves or star of anise pods, you can always just use powdered. Even ginger powder can be replaced for the fresh ginger. I recommend adding a teaspoon of ginger powder in place of sliced ginger.

Fish sauce is a major component to authentic keto pho broth as well. Although stinky, fish sauce is from fermented fish and it adds that umami flavor.

Thinly Sliced Beef

It might seem strange that we are adding raw beef and uncooked vegetables to our pho broth, especially if you have never had pho before. However, the hot broth will cook our meat and vegetables as long as they are thinly sliced.

The best way to get very thin slices of strip steak is to freeze it for 35-35 minutes. This will harden it just enough so you can run a very sharp knife through it or slice it using a meat slicer. You can also request thinly sliced steak from your butcher.

Vegetables in Pho

To make keto pho, you can add your favorite low carb vegetables to your soup. I like to add a mixture of red bell pepper, onions, zucchini, mushrooms and broccoli. Just as long as you cut or slice them thinly with a mandoline.

Is Pho Keto?

Yes, pho is keto! The broth – which makes it pho – is definitely keto approved. Make sure you add low carb vegetables and stick to noodles that are keto friendly like the hearts of palm noodles I use in this recipe. Traditional pho soup used rice noodles. These noodles are too high in carbs.