I've been working hard perfecting the techniques and recipe for Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup, or Pho, just for you. It's taken years of kitchen experiments, eating out and scouring for good recipes.

Luke Nguyen shares his favorite Vietnamese recipes, including rice paper rolls, corn pudding, slow-braised chicken and more.

My first bowl was in Paris 30 years ago. It brought instant devotion. Hot steaming broth with wafts of ginger, anise and clove, slick rice noodles, slices of rare beef, and flanking the bowl was a plate of what is called "table salad" (sa lach dia in Vietnamese), a heaping platter of additions, like fresh herbs, bean sprouts, greens, lime and chiles-this is the essence of North Vietnam's Pho (pronounced "fuh") soup.

Making your own fabulous bowl of Vietnamese pho soup at home is not hard, all you need is a straightforward recipe, a few secrets and a nice big stockpot. You've had Pho before, right? If not, it's a wonderfully delicate Vietnamese noodle soup, made from beef bones, ginger, onions and lots of aromatic spices.

One of the items on my cooking bucket list for years has been to learn how to make pho soup. A big bowl of comforting, warm, aromatic, fresh, piled-high-with-garnishes, awkward-to-pronounce-but-awesome-to-taste Vietnamese pho. Pho is one of my most comforting of comfort foods. I love it on snowy winter days and in the blazing heat of summer.