All tagged Recipe

Instant Pot Pho

Flavors: brothy, pho-y

So a LONG time ago I wrote a recipe for crock pot pho. Super good, super easy. The recipe was poorly written, which may have been a little frustrating for readers. Also- it took a LONG time to make. Like 8 hours. Forever.

Anywho- today, I have a recipe for Instant Pot pho ga / chicken pho. WAY Faster. 1.5 hrs and you have a BOMB pho ga. If you don’t know what an Instant Pot is- HELLO - where have you been the past 5 Black Fridays.

Healthy Thai Iced Tea & Best Teas to Use

I love love loved Thai tea. Every time I had a long night of studying to do in college, I would grab a friend to split a pad Thai & some Thai tea. Those were the days. But after college, I started becoming wary about hidden chemicals in my food- excess sodium in my pho, etc. I started wondering what made Thai tea have this fluorescent orange color. Spoiler alert: at a lot of restaurants, it's food coloring (yay). Also, secret ingredient #2 is sugar. A lot of sugar.

Healthy DIY Poke Bowl

One day, I realized I was addicted to poke. I would get it at least once a week. After a visit to Ijji sushi, I started questioning the quality of the fish at poke places. Thinking about it made me feel slightly icky. Paired with the intense bloating from the high sodium poke sauces, I decided to make my own poke bowl at home.

The ingredient list looks intimidating, but I promise it's not hard to make. You can add & leave out ingredients as you please.

DUTCH OVEN: Beef Udon Soup

Flavors: Umami, sesame, miso

Can we agree that homemade broth is better? But it takes SO MUCH TIME. I want to the effort of boxed broth with the taste of homemade broth. Is that possible? Kind of- sort of. By using a Dutch Oven, you can spruce up a “meh” broth pretty quickly. The Dutch Oven locks in moisture during cooking and can maintain high heat at lower temperatures.

This is no 8 hr broth, but it’s still bomb & takes 1/8 of the time.

Gluten-Free Kimchi Miso Noodle Soup

I've stopped going to my favorite Japanese Hot Pot place in San Francisco (Shabu House) because I discovered they use MSG in their broth. And I found out in the most distressing way.

Me: This hot pot is especially salty today. Do you think they use MSG?
Friend: No- of course not- I wouldn't come here if they used MSG.
Me: Excuse me (to waitress)- is there MSG in this?
Waitress: (nods fervently)

Healthy[er] Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken

I try to shy away from fried foods because once I start, I can't stop. Recently, when getting bubble tea, I decided to get some popcorn chicken. Big mistake. Over the next week, this chicken began invading my thoughts. How can I make it less unhealthy? Is it possible to bake the chicken and imitate the crispiness of deep fried chicken? So after trial and error, here's my recipe for Taiwanese popcorn chicken that tastes just as good as the real thing, but without all that oil!