Vegan Pho Recipe (Vietnamese Phở Chay)

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This vegan phở chay recipe is my answer to all those traditional pho cravings that hit when nearly every Vietnamese restaurant is still pouring beef broth (or sucky instant soup powder garbage) into the pot. It's deeply aromatic (yes, cinnamon stick, star anise, cloves are up in the place), rich, and heavenly comforting. This vegan pho broth gets mad flavor from root vegetables, ginger, and apple for subtle sweetness (don't give me that weird stare, Susan, trust me on this.)

A bowl of Vietnamese vegan pho with vegetables, fresh herbs, sliced jalapeño, and bean sprouts, with chopsticks resting on the bowl. Lime, sauces, and garnishes are nearby on a rustic wooden surface.

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If you are making homemade Vietnamese classics at home, this vegan version of Vietnamese pho is a must-make along with my vegan banh mi, Vietnamese spring rolls, and banh flan.

So yeah, the only turbulence you'll be experiencing is your pot overflowing when you make a 3x batch of this next time, because this easy vegan phở chay brings that rich flavor street food market experience straight to your home.

Jump to:

🥰 Why you'll adore this Vegan Pho recipe
🍜 Phở Chay Ingredients
🇻🇳 Vegan Vietnamese Noodle Soup Variations
📖 How to make vegan pho
💡Serving Ideas
👉Top tips
🤷‍♀️ Recipe FAQs
✌️You'll love these vegan Vietnamese recipes too:
Easy Vegan Pho Recipe

🥰 Why you'll adore this Vegan Pho recipe

✊ Vegan AF & GF: My vegan Vietnamese recipes are completely cholesterol free and cause no harm to lovable living beings. This is one of the gluten-free vegan recipes you can share with non-veg folks if you want to blow their dang minds.

⏱️ Weeknight-Friendly: You can pull this off in about an hour, and most of that time your broth's just vibing on the stove while you feel productive doing absolutely nothing.

🛒 Easy-Peasy Ingredients: No treasure hunt required, fam. Everything in this phở chay vegan recipe can be found in a regular grocery store or your local Asian market without selling a kidney on the World Wide Web.

✅ Tested and Approved Worldwide: Like I do with all of my vegan recipes, this one was first shared and improved upon with notes and feedback from a team of hundreds of recipe testers.

Plate of vegan Vietnamese spring rolls with greens and a small bowl of red dipping sauce. Text overlay reads, "Master the Art of Vegan Vietnamese Food.

🙌 Learn to make restaurant-quality Vietnamese food

This guide to my most popular vegan Vietnamese recipes is 100% FREE, & you'll love the actual heck out of it 🥰

🍜 Phở Chay Ingredients

A tray filled with labeled ingredients for Vegan Pho, including rice noodles, daikon, shiitake mushrooms, broccoli, bok choy, apple, tofu, spices, hoisin sauce, bean sprouts, jalapeño, carrots, cilantro, onion, ginger, sriracha & Thai basil.

The Spices

Cinnamon sticks, cloves, coriander seeds, white peppercorns, star anise, and fennel seeds bring the spice, aroma that's essential to legit pho. If all you've got are the ground versions, they will still work for sure, just toast them in the pan for a shorter time so that they don't burn on you.

Daikon radish

This big crunchy dude makes your broth all gentle and sweet-like without doing too much. If the store's out, swap it with a turnip or double up on carrots. And if you've got daikon scraps sittin' around after making this, you can make somen salad, radish kimchi, or the regular vegan kimchi with 'em.

Apple

Fuji or Gala apples are perfect, but pear is great in pho broth too if that's what's already part of the Carmen Miranda hat you wear at all times when cooking.

Dried rice vermicelli noodles

For this phở, go for the slightly thicker kind, not the whisper-thin ones you'd use in banh bao chay, but not like the mega wide ones (flat rice noodles) you would use to make delicious vegan drunken noodles with either. Follow the package instructions, because all brands and thickness require slightly different cooking/soaking times.

Hoisin sauce

Totally optional, but I love some hoisin on the table for folks who want pho with a hint of natural sweetness. The only thing better to do is to put kecap manis on the table for the same purpose.

Sriracha

Chili oil or chili garlic sauce will also work, but if you're asking for my opinion my homemade sriracha is the classic thing to serve with pho. Otherwise, if you want to just grab one from the store, Huy Fong, Fix, and Ninja Squirrel are the sriracha brands I recommend. Read the labels because a few sriracha brands actually contain fish.

*See the recipe card at the bottom of the page for exact quantities, nutritional info, and detailed cooking directions.

🇻🇳 Vegan Vietnamese Noodle Soup Variations

If you already love phở, you're gonna phở-reak out about a few of the hyper-yummy, but less famous Vietnamese noodle dishes I'm about to turn you onto.

Vegan Mi Quang

These turmeric noodles are less brothy than pho, but my vegan mi quang noodle recipe probably travels better if you are looking for a great meal-prep banger to bring to work with ya.

Bún Riêu Chay

My vegan bun riêu recipe is actually a veganized version of Vietnam's pretty famous crab noodle soup. Anthony Bourdain was quoted as saying "in the hierarchy of delicious, slurpy stuff in a bowl, bún riêu is at the very top." If you are a pho-addict, then take those as fighting words.

Bún Bò Huế

This is a famous central Vietnamese noodle soup that is normally served with beef bones and hyper-stank shrimp paste… but this vegan bún bò huế? Obviously, no beefy boys, or shrimpy guys are harmed up in the recipe, ya big weird goofus.

📖 How to make vegan pho

Alright noodle freaks, this is the fun part. Skip to the recipe card if you're hangry, or hang here while we turn a pile of plants into Vietnamese liquid gold. Don't pho things up!

A four-panel image shows making Vegan Pho broth: toasting spices in a pot, adding chopped vegetables and apple, simmering with broth and more vegetables, then straining the cooked mixture with a mesh sieve.

Step One

Spice Spice, Baby:

Place the cinnamon stick, coriander seeds, white peppercorns, star anise, cloves, and fennel seeds in a dutch oven or stock pot. Toast over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes, shaking occasionally until fragrant.

Step Two

Char You Ready to Rumble:

Add the daikon radish, onion, garlic, carrot, shiitake mushrooms, ginger, and apple to the pot. Dry sauté the vegetables and warm spices for a few minutes. A small amount of char on the veggies creates a slightly smokey complexity in the broth.

Step Three

Stocky Horror Picture Show:

Add the water and bring the pot to a boil over high heat, then lower to medium and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes.

Step Four

Broth IRA:

Strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve into a clean pot, pressing the solids gently to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard the solids, keep the broth warm over low heat, and season with sugar and salt to taste.

A collage of four images shows steps of making Vegan Pho: boiling noodles, cooking carrot slices in broth, adding broccoli and tofu, and ladling fragrant broth over noodles and vegetables in a bowl.

Step Five

Send Noods:

While the broth simmers, bring a separate pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add the rice vermicelli, stirring to keep them from sticking. Remove from the heat and let sit until tender, then drain, rinse with cold water, and set aside.

Step Six

Carrot of Habeas Corpus

Bring the seasoned broth and sliced carrots to a gentle boil over medium-high heat. Cook for about 7 to 8 minutes until the carrots begin to soften.

Step Seven

Broc The Casbah

Add the broccoli florets and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes until tender but still bright. Add the bok choy and fried tofu, then remove from the heat.

Step Eight

E.T. Pho Home:

Divide the noodles among serving bowls and ladle the hot broth and vegetables as pho toppings over them.

A bowl of vegan pho topped with fresh herbs, sliced jalapeños, carrot, and cilantro sits next to sauces, bean sprouts, and another bowl of soup, all arranged on a rustic light surface.

Step Nine

Home a Phởne 2 - Lost in New York:

Add bean sprouts, jalapeño slices, Thai basil, and cilantro leaves as pho toppings. Serve with hoisin sauce and sriracha for individual seasoning.

💡Serving Ideas

Roll up some banh trang cuon with herbs and tofu beside that bowl of pho, then toss in a plate of garlicky rau muống to get extra dark leafy greens in your diet. I always told my kids that greens are the real "meat" of a vegan diet, and I think there is some truth to that.

And if one noodle recipe isn't enough, mi xao xi dau's chewy noodles come through with that soy-rich depth that just vibes with a full Vietnamese dinner spread.

Then cool off with chè ba màu or kem chuoi because you deserve a sweet ending after this spicy lil rollercoaster of a meal. If all that still didn't satisfy you, just book a trip to Vietnam already, dammit.

A table of Vietnamese dishes featuring vermicelli noodles with lemongrass tofu and vegetables, spring rolls, vegan pho soup with herbs, Vietnamese sticky rice, fresh lime, dipping sauces, and garnishes on a gray surface. — **An absurdly lovely full table of Southeast Asian vegan glory:** Serve your pho with Vietnamese sticky rice, lemongrass tofu, Filipino achara, and Thai spring rolls.

👉Top tips

Don't be shy to toast the aromatics: Just slightly burn the onion, ginger and other veggies before you add the water. That little scorch brings out the smoky magic that plain boiling could never touch.
Season at the finish line: Always taste-test before serving. Those noodles and veggies love stealing salt and flavor. Adjust the salt then and there for that perfect balance.
Noodle timing is everything: Cook those noodles last and serve them immediately. Rice noodles get soggier by the minute as they hang out in liquid. Every brand and thickness has its own weird timeline, so follow the package instructions like a responsible adult.

🤷‍♀️ Recipe FAQs

What does phở chay mean?

"Chay" basically means vegetarian or vegan in Vietnamese, so authentic pho chay is the no chicken stock, no fish sauce version of the iconic noodle soup that still hits every flavor note.

What makes an authentic tasting vegan phở broth? 

It's all about that deep, layered flavor. Toast your spices, char up your veggies, and let everything simmer until it tastes like comfort and chaos had a baby.

Can I use any type of rice noodle for phở chay?

Medium-thick rice vermicelli gives you the best chew, but thinner rice sticks totally work. Some folks even make good vegan pho with spaghetti style wheat based noodes, but as far as I am concerned, -f&@k outta here with that.

What's the difference between northern and southern phở chay?

Northern phở keeps it subtle and savory, while southern phở (which is more prevalent in US Vietnamese restaurants) goes sweeter and loads up on herbs and bean sprouts. Both are fire, it just depends on your taste.

How should I store and reheat phở chay?

🌡️ Refrigeration:
Let the broth cool completely before you stash it. Pop it into an airtight container and keep it in the fridge for up to 4 days. Store only the broth, tofu, and maybe the carrots. The noodles? Make those fresh every time, because they will suck after being stored.

❄️ Freezing & Thawing:
Freeze just the broth (and tofu or carrots if you want) in portions with a little space at the top for expansion. The herbs and bean sprouts don't belong in the freezer, hun. They'll come back lookin' like expired store-bought frozen veggies. Let your broth thaw in the fridge overnight before reheating.

🔥 Stovetop Reheating:
Pour the chilled or thawed broth into a pot and warm it over medium heat. Add a splash of water if it's thicker than normal. Once it's plenty hot, ladle the broth over freshly cooked noodles and your crisp toppings like the kitchen god you are.

🥰 Why you'll adore this Vegan Pho recipe

🙌 Learn to make restaurant-quality Vietnamese food