Interesting to see this posted, as it's quite an old recipe (the oldest capture I could find on the Wayback Machine was from 2015 although I'm pretty confident it's older than that; as an aside, can I say how annoying it is when websites only have an "updated on" or "edited on" date and not a date for when it was originally written?). It's also one of my favorites of Kenji's though and a regular in our home.
I think that Kenji's series of pressure cooker recipes are probably my favorites of everything he did when he was doing The Food Lab section. Almost every recipe is fantastic and they are mostly pretty easy. If I had to pick my single favorite, it would probably be the pressure cooker chicken enchilads [0], although that one is on the higher end of the effort spectrum
The article about ramen made me salivate, so I thought, hey, I know ramen is gonna put me in a comma, let me MacGyver pho - because the closest place to me that serves pho is named "Sushi Thai", so you know... :)
In this Florida weather, "Okroshka soup" [0] is more appropriate (Eastern European summer soup), but it's too much to chop and I already had nice bones for a pho.
I had my doubts about my pressure cooker when I received it, as I recalled the monstrosity my mother used when I was a kid. But that thing gets used several times a week now.
Combined with a recipe from Kenji, I'm going to have to try it. I have yet to make anything from Serious Eats, and particularly Kenji's recipes, that I didn't enjoy making and eating.
One thing that's worth noting. I don't know about this one but a number of those old SE pressure cooker recipes don't translate to Instant Pots. I'm thinking of Gritzer's french onion soup in particular. For those who have an instant pot as their pressure cooker, check the reviews of the recipes.
Plug-in pressure cookers like Instant Pots don't run at the same pressure/temperature as stovetop models. Electric models apparently run at ~12psi on high pressure mode, while stovetop models can run at 15psi. This means the timing is substantially different between the two.
Electric models can run unattended, so the slightly longer cook time isn't a deal-breaker. I'm a huge fan of Serious Eat's Colombian stew, which I can throw in the pot then go to the gym or out for errands and come home to a hot meal.
https://www.seriouseats.com/colombian-chicken-stew-with-pota...
The "updated/edited on" date is so that it'll say "2026", and search engine and searchers think "oh a freshly written article".. although that hardly matters for recipes.
If you want less labor-intensive enchiladas, try stacking El Paso style instead of rolling. They have to be eaten on the spot rather than stored casserole-style, but I much prefer this style.
Kenji’s stuff definitely goes back further. There was an article about Greek pizza that mentioned a place I loved in Newport, RI and I swear it was originally from 2002.
In a similar vein, Chris Young has a fantastic video on making world class chicken stock in 60 minutes using a pressure cooker: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3k20zFlbFfE.
I'm not convinced by his 350° searing temperature for steaks and his idea about searing from frozen doesn't turn out well because there's no time for the salt to penetrate.
His video showing that you can speed up a reverse sear starting at a higher temperature was really helpful though.
Haven't tried his pressure cooker video because I don't have one. I will get one eventually but probably not a multi cooker. I have heard great things about them.
You can’t actually do it in 60 minutes. It takes longer to reach pressure and then release pressure even with his tricks. At least with an instapot.
But I do generally follow this method. I put the chicken meat in a soup sock though, so I can pull it out and add it to a soup or whatever instead of throwing it away. It will be kind of dry chicken though.
Yeah, I do the same. Soup sock in a vacuum cooker. It's the chinese way to make soup. The chicken does turn out dry. Perhaps it's worth taking the chicken mear out (leaving the bones) after an hour and adding it back after the soup is done.
Just learned about Kenji by finding his "The Best Chili Ever" recipe [0] through Reddit and immediately his another recipe appears on HN. Baader-Meinhof strikes again.
Kenji worship can be a little weird, but assuming because of his heritage means he can't cook Pho is ridiculous. His contributions to Serious Eats and America's Test Kitchen have immensely pushed food science forward.
He takes a scientific approach to cooking, and could accurately be described as coming up with techniques that are in the spirit of finding non-traditional ways of doing things.
He hacks food in other words.
Someone doing a technical write up about a new technique in their discipline is pretty hacker news to me.
OP here. Apologies if I overstepped, but it is kind of about hacking the prep. I was simply piggybacking on another thread about ramen, I wasn’t thinking of the hacking angle at that moment.
You didn't overstep, the preceding comment did. Anything that's interesting is on-topic here; even if the recipe isn't a "hack", if it's interesting it's a legit submission.
That’s such a nonsense rule that will eventually turn this site into cat and rage posting like the vast majority of social media. That’s no wonder the posts become more and more mediocre and inoffensive if the only validity metric is ‘what the majority decide is good enough’
I am interested in many things, most of them are not what I want to see on Hacker News.
I appreciate the post if counts for anything. Cooking hacks to save time or elevate a dish to the next level or even allow me to make something without the proper equipment are always good to add to the toolbox. The coffee I am drinking right now is an example of that.[0][1]
I popped in here just to say I would fight anyone who asked why Kenji would be on HackerNews and yet I was too late.
Also, authenticity about recipes is the “but does it scale” of app discussions. It’s ok to just let people enjoy stuff. Not everything is a purity test.
The statement that electric pressure cookers measure pressure absolutely (i.e. not relative to local pressure) was news to me, and definitely a good hack to know if you're living at altitude.
Electric cookers don't "measure" pressure. They are thermostatically controlled via a sensor touching the bottom of the bowl and, because they are sealed, that temperature directly translates to the same pressure no matter what altitude you're at.
The temperature at the base of the bowl is close to the temperature of the mass of liquid / solids inside and at the base of the bowl, sure.
I'm less certain the same transfer function always returns the gas pressure at the top of the sealed bowl "no matter what altitude you're at" considering that at the starting point, when first sealed, ambient room atmospheric pressure varies with altitude: for the same initial food mass to be cooked the standardised gas volume included will vary with altitude.
(Alternatively, no matter the altitude, there's always a constant volume to fill with atmospheric gas .. and the mass of that gas will vary with altitude)
Kenji Lopez Alt is a well known chef who writes a lot about the science behind making food (which might contribute to it being HN-worthy). Though I understand where you're coming from, his ethnicity (Caucasian and Japanese; the Lopez comes from his wife) is irrelevant in the light of the fact that he is a professional chef.
Pho bo (beef pho) typically takes at least 8 hours and is better simmered overnight, so cutting it down to 30 minutes and still having a good result is very useful.
Check out Kenji’s book, The Food Lab. (Also the name of his blog before it merged with Serious Eats.) You’ll get a sense of what makes him popular among nerds who like to cook.
He used to own a restaurant in downtown San Mateo called Wursthall. It has since closed. He lives up in Seattle now but I am not aware of him being involved in any new restaurants.
Seems like you didn't read the article very well. Kenji is a well known chef that does a lot of testing of methods so many recipes come with a story but you can also just scroll to the bottom
There was a recent submission on HN about ramen. While I love ramen/udon/soba, I prefer pho. Perhaps I find pho more "crispy", I like the sprouts/lime/mint/jalapeno. Ramen puts me to sleep. Ramen definitely has more pedigree, this isn't about what's better.
They are both some of my favorite foods. I've made pho probably 4 times at this point. It takes 8 to 10 hours but is totally worth it.
Something I started doing was occasionally taking the rare thin meat out for use with the sriracha and sweet sauce. I never added then to the soup because I found it corrupts it.
There's also Northern Vietnamese Pho which I haven't tried but I'd like to. It's supposed to be less sweet and less spiced. In the US it seems southern sweet style is the norm.
Northern Pho is in almost all ways inferior to Southern Pho. Even Northerners tend to prefer the Southern style. Something important to understand is that the Northern style is essentially the starvation version of the Southern style. The south is the main agricultural region of the country, so they had ready access to ingredients, like meat, that were difficult to come by in the North. The styles reflect this reality.
Thank you. If you have a Trader Joe’s near you (it’s a chain in the states for anyone wondering), they have a pretty good chilly paste named “Bomba Hot Pepper”. It has a punch, but it’s not EMP level, not too sweet, not too acidy. Half a teaspoon does it for me.
I do have some Asian markets near me within reasonable driving distance, but I can’t try all the sauces and the ones I have tried leaned toward the sweeter side, and that’s not for me. This Bomba hits me where it matters.
The ubiquitous Southern-style pho in America is due to historical reasons, when Southern Vietnamese diaspora fled Saigon en masse in the aftermath of the fall of Saigon.
Particularly tonkotsu, which basically has fat emulsified into it. My understanding is that ramen was originally a workman's meal -- inexpensive and calorie rich food for laborers.
I had a Japanese teacher a few years ago who explained that Japan's ramen is the US's "burger and fries". It's calorie-rich processed food that's available everywhere. They are prepared in advance, served very quickly (usually within a few minutes), and people finish their meals within 15 minutes. It's far closer to "fast food" than most Westerners realize. The average ramen outside Japan is far more elevated than within Japan.
The average ramen, yes, but in the same way that many people in the US obsess about the perfect burger, there is a serious ramen scene in Japan with obsessive ramen devotees and chefs pushing the envelope.
As a lover of both pho and ramen I feel I can compel with you on the crispy factor - like pho is more for a jungle - and also on the food coma factor of ramen - a meal for the monsoons, perhaps - but nevertheless need to point out to you that there are also crispy ramens, with sprouts/lime/mint/japaleno, too.
In fact there is no ‘one ramen’, it has to be said; there are regional variants where the “scrap food” of the area is used as the decoration to the base, where a noodle and boiled-meat leftover soups/stock are combined …
I have very sleepy pho’s in my neighborhood, also .. just sayin’. Both are great, you’re right, they are a wonderful branch of food.
Best pho I had was in Tokyo, thinly sliced raw wagyu melted into the soup. Though theres as many ramen styles as there are cities in Japan, some style would likely suit you.
Pressure cookers get up to pressure by heating water until the steam pressure is whatever pressure they are trying to reach -- which means their temperature will necessarily be above the boiling point of water.
Low-temperature high-pressure cooking seems hard to achieve. You'd need a pump or something similar to pressurize with.
I’ve recently discovered Galbitang and despite being far less popular, I much prefer it over pho. We make it in a pressure cooker as well and love how easy it is!
We've been making pho ga from this recipe for years. It's been on weekly rotation in the fall and winter because it is so ridiculously good. Pair it with bone broth made in your instant pot for best results.
Normally we start making bone broth around 9am, it finishes by about 5pm, and then dinner is ready by 7pm.
Pressure cookers do reduce the cook time of some dishes dramatically, but the flavors don't meld as much compared with slow cooking. If you do a 30-minute recipe like this, it's probably worth letting the soup sit another 20-30 minutes in warming mode before serving.
One of the reasons why I loved The Food Lab was that very often Kenji would write several versions of a recipe at different effort levels, along with detailed reasonings about why and how he shortened a step and what one was giving up by doing so. While he didn't do that for the Pho Ga recipe, he did do that for his Beef Pho recipe, with a full blown 6 hour "traditional" version [0] and a faster (although still not as fast as the pressure cooker pho ga one) 1 hour version of the recipe [1]. My guess is that the write ups of the 3 recipes together probably give one enough information to dial in relatively precisely how much effort you want to give and which steps one can skip or reduce.
Oh man the the amount of fish sauce he wants you put in this will ruin it. Add a teaspoon or a tablespoon or something, but not 1/4 cup. The first time I made it I nearly threw it out.
It's a tablespoon per serving which isn't that crazy at all. Also Vietnamese fish stock is milder than Thai fish sauce if that's what you're thinking of.
Go through the SE comments on this recipe. The amount of fish sauce makes the broth smell like asshole. I recall several Vietnamese scratching their heads over it. I love fish sauce, but Kenji went nose blind to it or something.
I think that Kenji's series of pressure cooker recipes are probably my favorites of everything he did when he was doing The Food Lab section. Almost every recipe is fantastic and they are mostly pretty easy. If I had to pick my single favorite, it would probably be the pressure cooker chicken enchilads [0], although that one is on the higher end of the effort spectrum
[0] https://www.seriouseats.com/pressure-cooker-fast-and-easy-ch...
reply