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

Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga(seriouseats.com)

30 points by stasomatic 4 hours ago | 23 comments

MostlyStable 39 minutes ago |

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

[0] https://www.seriouseats.com/pressure-cooker-fast-and-easy-ch...

stasomatic 9 minutes ago | |

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/

pverheggen 25 minutes ago |

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.

MostlyStable 16 minutes ago | |

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

guessmyname 1 hour ago |

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?

stasomatic 4 hours ago |

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.

fallinghawks 33 minutes ago | |

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.

bookofjoe 23 minutes ago | | |

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

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

MomsAVoxell 1 hour ago | |

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.

Hikikomori 56 minutes ago | |

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.

dcrazy 30 minutes ago | | |

Yes, tori paitan is one nice light alternative to the popular and heavy tonkotsu.