[ALG918]

okay all you fellow low carbers!!!! PHO sounds good, i have been craving "soup" for a while and my coworkers always go and get it. If i simply have the broth, and fresh meat (cooks in the broth), bean sprouts and other veggies, would I be okay?

I have the "Why we get fat" by gary taubs and he states that you should have 2 cups of broth a day.

any opinions?

[TiffNeedsChange]

I think you would be fine. I always order my PHO without noodles and with extra tendons. Pho is so delicious!!

[seagirl]

I love pho! I'd ask for fewer noodles or none at all. But since I have it so rarely, I'd probably eat the noodles even though I do low carb.

[kaplods]

I love Pho. I also low-carb, but I use a low-carb exchange plan which allows me two servings (160 calories) of starch per day. So I'll often spend my starch exchanges on the Pho.

Or sometimes I'll order twice the beansprouts and none of the noodles - or half noodles. And I agree that extra tendon is always a good choice. And the gelatin/collagen is a protein that is difficult/slow to digest so it's one of those foods that may (may being the operative word) take more calories to digest than foods that digest more easily.


I make lower-carb asian soups a lot. Right now I have a tom yum style hot and sour soup in the fridge that I made with turkey, tom yum seasoning mix, and a broccoli-like green (I don't know the name, but it has little yellow flowers, and thin steps with lots of leaves - looks like a cross between mustard greens and broccoli).

I used the greens in place of noodles. Very yummy.

[MarjorieMargarine]

I don't know much about it because I've never looked at a recipe for it, but to me Pho usually tastes fairly sweet. Is there sugar or some sort of sweetener in the broth? Is the meat marinated in something sweet? Am I just crazy? I'd check that out before I ate it...

[ALG918]

i know the raw meat is just meat that cooks in the broth, i have had two tastes of the broth and i never thought it tasted sweet but i will ask

[stunzorz]

I have never had sweet Pho. May have just been the preparation at that particular place. It's beef broth, with assorted vegetables and different meat pieces. Fish sauce, soy sauce, siracha, I'm not sure of the carbs count but those things are also in it.

[ALG918]

yeah where my coworks go if you order to pick up then everyone comes on the side

[MarjorieMargarine]

Weird. I've ONLY had sweet Pho and I've had it at several different restaurants. I just looked it up on Wikipedia and it says that it's a regional variant- especially from Southern Vietnam- they make it with "yellow rock sugar." Maybe my city's Vietnamese restauraunteurs are all southerners.
It IS delicious, if you've never tried it, but honestly I'm kinda jealous that ya'll have some without sugar!

[ALG918]

Yeah mine wasnt sweet, tasted like beef brother, i had eye round and pork meatballs (called and there is not bread in it), no noddles and i had two jalopenoes in it for about 15 mins. i couldnt finish the broth!

[kaplods]

Originally Posted by MarjorieMargarine

Weird. I've ONLY had sweet Pho and I've had it at several different restaurants. I just looked it up on Wikipedia and it says that it's a regional variant- especially from Southern Vietnam- they make it with "yellow rock sugar." Maybe my city's Vietnamese restauraunteurs are all southerners.
It IS delicious, if you've never tried it, but honestly I'm kinda jealous that ya'll have some without sugar!

You may be able to ask for it without sugar or sweetener, because in our area the "best" restaurants serve the Pho with a condiment cart and customers customize the soup to their own preference. Sugar and other sweet condiments do come on the cart, but it's an optional ingredient customers can choose or omit.

This is apparently very common, but other restaurants allow fewer condiments or no condiments and season the broth to their preference. Even those who do the pre-seasoning, often don't add the sugar until after adding the broth - so you may be able to ask for them to omit the sugar for you.

If you can find a restaurant that does have the condiment cart, you'll be amazed at what can be used to adjust the flavor (and calorie count) of the soup.

In our favorite restaurant they would bring out a dish of bean sprouts, basil, mint, cilantro, white or red onion, cilantro, lime, and sometimes lemon. Then the condiment cart would have beef paste, a rice wine vinegar or two, sweet thick soy (thick and sweet like soy-sauce flavored molasses), white sugar, sometimes brown sugar or a tamarind paste, Golden Mountain seasoning sauce (a lightly seasoned diluted soy like a thin teriyaki sauce), mushroom soy sauce, Kikomman soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, peanut butter - sometimes chunky AND smooth, a couple different fish sauces, Sriracha chili sauce, chili-garlic paste, fermented bean paste, fried crispy onion or garlic (sort of like a slightly more browned Durkee onion) and several others (there were some I never tried and didn 't recognized).

We became very good friends with the Hmong owner and her family. She, her husband and their children all seasoned their Pho differently (the kids preferred it sweeter - one liked it sweet and spicy, the other liked it sweet and sour).

If you can find a restaurant that has a loaded condiment cart, Pho is incredibly fun as an interactive dining experience. Though it can take some practice to customize the soup exactly as you want it (I'd use Splenda instead of sugar, because I liked the sweet-spicy broth best, but didn't want the calories and carbs of the sugar).

I usually would eat some of the soup without condiments or with minimal condiments, and then would add different seasonings half-way through the meal, so it was like getting two different bowls of soup for the price of one.

(But as hubby says, I am a condiment freak).

[kaplods]

Another thing to consider is that it takes very little sweetener to make a meat-broth taste sweet unless the broth is excessively salty and/or spicy.

A broth that isn't super salty or super spicy (or both) will taste too sweet to most people if much more that a tsp of sugar is used (personally, I learned the hard way that a tsp of sugar or half a packet of Splenda was WAY too sweet for me unless the broth was too spicy or too salty). That's only about 15 calories and 4g of sugar for a medium-sized bowl of Pho.