The five elements of Vietnamese cuisine used in every dish – pho and otherwise – are spicy, sour, bitter, salty, and sweet. These five fundamental taste senses correspond to five organs – gall bladder, small intestine, large intestine, stomach, and urinary bladder. When making pho, analyzing these five tastes, you’ll notice your pho will never be too spicy or too sour, too bitter or too salty, or too sweet. Any time one element is added into creating a dish like pho, a complimentary element needs to be brought in to balance it out.
Keeping in mind the rule of 5s, there are also 5 types of nutrients common to Vietnamese dishes which are powder, water or liquid, mineral elements, protein, and fat. A traditional Vietnamese cook also typically will try to employ 5 colors – white, green, yellow, red, and black. As it pertains to presentation, there’s also attention paid to appealing to the five senses. For example, many Vietnamese dishes have a specific arrangement to attract the eyes, utilize crisp ingredients to appeal to sound, spices which can be easily detected on the tongue, aromatic ingredients to stimulate the nose, and some meals which can be perceived for texture in touching. Evidently, this is all a lot to figure into creating authentic Vietnamese cuisine. North American cuisine has nothing that comes close to this rule of 5s!
So taking all this knowledge, building pho is both a very creative and rewarding experience as well as a difficult, frustrating one. Even when putting together vegan or vegetarian options, changes like this can throw pho all out of wack. This requirement for balance is also a reason why many Vietnamese families have pho and non-pho recipes passed down from generation to generation. A great exercise for newbies can be to come up with their own balanced five-element pho or non-pho recipes.
For those who haven’t been, Toronto Pho has authentically prepared Vietnamese dishes achieving perfect balance within the five elements. Choose from marinated fish, stew beef with rice noodles, vegetable rice noodle soup, chicken noodle in soup, the house special beef noodle soup, stir fried rice noodle, and more. Also, you’ll find on our menus some of the best pho in Toronto. Featuring some of the tastiest broths, for pho-lovers, we’re sure to impress. Drop in anytime!
