We love our Instant Pot. We love our friends Meghan and John who gave us our Instant Pot for our wedding. We love this chicken pho.
This chicken pho will make your whole house smell like a warm hug. This chicken pho will drive your cats nuts.
As far as authenticity goes, I think this tastes pretty spot-on, but I am not Vietnamese, and I have not ordered chicken pho in years (beef pho is our jam) so take this with a grain of salt. Or a dash of fish sauce.
Pressure Cooker Pho Ga
(Recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Serious Eats)
- 2 tbsp canola or vegetable oil
- 2 medium yellow onions, split in half
- 1 small hand of ginger, roughly sliced
- 1 small bunch cilantro
- 3 star anise pods
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 4 whole cloves
- 1 tsp fennel seeds
- 1 tsp coriander seeds
- 6 chicken drumsticks
- 1/4 cup fish sauce, plus more to taste
- 2 tbsp rock sugar, or granulated sugar
- 4 servings pho noodles
- 1 small onion, thinly sliced
- 2 cups bean sprouts
- 2 cups mixed herbs
- 2 limes, cut into wedges
- Heat oil in Instant Pot over high heat until smoking.
- Add halved onions and ginger, cut side down. Cook for 5 minutes without touching the onions or ginger, allowing them to char.
- Add cilantro, star anise, cinnamon stick, cloves, fennel, coriander, and chicken to the pot. Add 2 quarts of water, the fish sauce, and the sugar to the pot (don't worry about stirring any of this).
- Close the lid, set to seal, and cook on high pressure for 20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, boil your pho noodles until chewy (do not follow the instructions on the back of the packaging! I did this and mine were overcooked).
- When Instant Pot is finished cooking, quickly release pressure. Open the lid, transfer the chicken drumsticks to a plate, and carefully strain the broth through a fine mesh strainer. Discard any solids and skim any scum off the surface of the broth.
- Season broth to taste with more fish sauce and sugar (mine needed a few tablespoons more fish sauce and a sprinkle of sugar).
- Serve by placing prepared pho noodles, chicken drumstick, and onions in individual soup bowl. Pour hot broth over the noodles and top with bean sprouts, herbs, and lime.
I haven't blogged in ages, but here I am sitting in the house under quarantine (what a time to be alive, huh?), and all I want to do is bake and blog. Today I baked one of my old favorites--Joanne Chang's banana bread. Joanne Chang is something of a legend among Boston Asian-Americans. First, for daring to quit her Asian-parent-approved consulting career to open a bakery and second, for being really successful at it (her bakery now has 8 locations!). For me, there's a third reason, and it's this banana bread.
Andrew and I are really bad at eating bananas before they go rotten, so we make a lot of banana bread. This is by far the best recipe we've encountered. Instead of being a sticky and dense loaf, it's light, bouncy, and full of pure banana flavor. It's also fairly easy to make if you have a stand or hand mixer. Back when we first started living together, I had neither of those things and used to beat this by hand until I felt like my arm was ready to fall off. All in the name of banana bread.
Flour Bakery's Banana Bread
(Recipe from Joanne Chang's cookbook Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston's Flour Bakery + Cafe)
- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (230 grams) granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 2/3 cups (210 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 cup canola oil
- 3 1/2 very ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 1/2 cups or 340 grams)
- 2 tbsp sour cream
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F and set the rack in the center of the oven. Grease a 9x5" loaf pan.
- Using a stand mixer, beat together the sugar and eggs on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.
- While the sugar and eggs are beating, sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and kosher salt. Set aside.
- Switch stand mixer to low speed and slowly drizzle in the oil.
- Add the mashed bananas, vanilla, and sour cream to the mixer and mix on low speed until just combined.
- Using a spatula, gently fold in the dry ingredients until combined.
- Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake for 60 - 75 minutes until the loaf springs back when you press on it.
- Let cool in the pan for 30 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling.
