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  • I'm always trying to think about that one moment in time

  • where I had my favorite bowl ever,

  • and I'm trying to recreate what that flavor is.

  • My name is Richard Ho. This is my shop, Ho Foods.

  • Ho Foods is a tiny, 11-seat eatery in the East Village of New York,

  • and it's best known for having one star dish on its menu:

  • Taiwanese beef noodle soup.

  • The reason we picked beef noodle soup is because

  • as a kid, that was the one dish I would always ask my mom

  • to make for me.

  • Richard's beef noodle soup is an homage

  • to his Taiwanese-American upbringing in Los Angeles.

  • This herb-based soup, sometimes called Taiwan's national dish,

  • can have very complex flavor profiles

  • depending on how people choose to make it.

  • There is no one set recipe, and the process can take days.

  • Some shops in Taiwan are very medicinal.

  • There's tons of these different types of herbs.

  • Some people put lots of orange peel.

  • What I try to do is,

  • I'm always thinking back on a flavor profile that I had growing up,

  • when I had a bowl of beef noodle soup that I really liked.

  • Because Mom's beef noodle soup

  • wasn't exactly the same every time.

  • She would tweak it.

  • I'm always trying to think about that one moment in time

  • where I had my favorite bowl ever,

  • and I'm trying to recreate what that flavor is.

  • The beef noodle soup at Ho Foods takes two days to create.

  • It starts with the stock.

  • The beef stock is just

  • beef.

  • Beef bones, lots of knuckle bones, lots of cartilage,

  • beef neck, and tendons.

  • And there's some dried spices and herbs in there

  • just to kind of bring out that beefy flavor.

  • Then comes the braise.

  • So we start off with a little bit of beef tallow,

  • saute some aromatics in there, ginger, garlic, shallots, onions.

  • And then we build our base with rice wine,

  • different types of soy, and different types of bean paste.

  • We put our shanks in there.

  • With the shanks, what we found is that if you turn off the heat

  • and just let it sit there for a long time,

  • it kind of cools down and reabsorbs all that flavor.

  • We then blend those two things with

  • we save a little bit of soup from every day and

  • carry on over to the next.

  • And then when you combine them,

  • you get a nice, well-rounded, balanced bowl of soup.

  • We try to be very meticulous on our process.

  • We try to weigh things out,

  • measure salt content and sugar content.

  • At Ho Foods, customers can choose between two noodle options:

  • thin or wide.

  • The shop that was really close to our house

  • they had these kind of fat, wide noodles

  • and these really skinny noodles.

  • And my mom was like,

  • Oh, I like the skinny noodles because

  • it's more delicate and elegant.”

  • Like she is.

  • And your dad's like rough around the edges.

  • He's a hooligan,

  • so that's why he likes big chunky noodles.”

  • She always said that, so it just stuck in my head.

  • So that's why we have two different types of noodles.

  • I met so many Taiwanese people in New York City,

  • not just from where I'm from,

  • but from Maryland,

  • from Maine,

  • Georgia,

  • Arkansas.

  • And the funny thing was when they came over

  • they would eat beef noodle soup.

  • Everyone recognized the same flavor

  • as that flavor that they had from home.

  • And that's why I thought that this was a dish

  • that could translate to more than just my family and my friends,

  • but something that maybe everyone wanted to have.

  • Oh, hey!

  • If you liked that video,

  • make sure to subscribe to Goldthread for more.

  • Are we done?

  • Yo I got a date, man.

I'm always trying to think about that one moment in time

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