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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
[0] https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-chili-recipe
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...
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/
Checking the source of the recipe page, there's a schema.org object in there that says
So I'd believe it's from 2015Always wanted to try pressure cooker recipes, they look so good, but haven't been able to justify the purchase yet
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.
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.
Thanks, SEO.
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.
Salt won't penetrate much in even an hour unless it's very thin, overnight dry brining is better though.
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.
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!
Love that this popped up on HN. Been making this recipe regularly for going on 14 (?) years now.
same here, one of my family's favorites
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.
Do you mean after the meat sat a bit in the broth? I’m no stranger to tartar or raw meats, just not clear.
Yeah. Cook it to how you like it and then dip in Sriracha and or the sweet one. But you could also do it with the braised meat or anything as well
I love the meat straight from the broth so I mostly do that but the sauces are a traditional option it seems.
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.
https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/italian-bomba-h...
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.
Instant (4 minutes in microwave) tonkotsu @$2.79 is surprisingly good:
https://www.doordash.com/products/nongshim-tonkotsu-premium-...
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.
Yes, tori paitan is one nice light alternative to the popular and heavy tonkotsu.
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...
Still, doesn't really make sense to be here. Content not author is what matters usually.
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.
Ex-wife. I was not aware he went to MIT though (got a degree in architecture)
Ex-wife I believe?
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.
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.
In addition to what others have said, the OP posted their rationale in a comment along with the post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49135427
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.
I know I read HN for the world news and recipes...
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.
My Instant Pot has AI and when I turn it on I hear Kenji Lopez guiding me through the recipe steps.
Farming for points.
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
Kenji and Alton Browns first video together is a must watch, Alton was extremely insecure.
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
I assumed it would use chicken broth. Obviously not a chef, but I am going to give it a go.