Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga

seriouseats.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 102 posts

Re: Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga

#21

Post by bookofjoe »

fallinghawks wrote: post #17
stasomatic wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Instant (4 minutes in microwave) tonkotsu @$2.79 is surprisingly good:

https://www.doordash.com/products/nongshim-tonkotsu-premium-...

Re: Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga

#22

Post by MostlyStable »

pverheggen wrote: post #20

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.

[0] https://www.seriouseats.com/traditional-beef-pho-recipe

[1] https://www.seriouseats.com/quick-and-easy-1-hour-pho

Re: Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga

#23

Post by malnourish »

eutropia wrote: post #5
guessmyname wrote: post #3

I’m not entirely sure what makes this hacker news? It’s just a very long recipe for Phở ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pho ) Is the hack that it’s supposedly doable in under 30 minutes?

the person cooking it is Kenji Lopez-Alt, who is an MIT graduate turned professional chef, and his wife is the one who's colombian. He's got several excellent cookbooks (like the Food Lab and Wok) and is a regular contributor to serious eats and has youtube etc...

Ex-wife. I was not aware he went to MIT though (got a degree in architecture)

Re: Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga

#24

Post by stasomatic »

MostlyStable wrote: post #14

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…

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.

[0] https://petersfoodadventures.com/okroshka-kvass/

Re: Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga

#25

Post by stasomatic »

guessmyname wrote: post #3

I’m not entirely sure what makes this hacker news? It’s just a very long recipe for Phở ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pho ) Is the hack that it’s supposedly doable in under 30 minutes?

My Instant Pot has AI and when I turn it on I hear Kenji Lopez guiding me through the recipe steps.

Re: Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga

#26

Post by markerz »

fallinghawks wrote: post #17
stasomatic wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga

#30

Post by Cider9986 »

m4r71n wrote: post #27

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.

Post reply on HN