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 don't think it's fair to say he has pushed food science forward.
He piggy-backed on the work of real food scientists and revealed things to the public that have been common in professional kitchens for decades, but then where he adds his own methods the evidence is often "trust me bro".
As someone who grew up in the household of two chefs one classically trained the other a development chef I see James Lopez as little more than a loud-mouthed amateur, have you tried his no-knead pizza dough, it's absolutely shocking, I think he later tried to distance himself from it claiming it came from another chef.
As someone who grew up around professional chefs you might not understand the true baseline level of cooking knowledge that many have going into adulthood; following a recipe is a challenge and they have no idea why they do any of the steps.
Kenji Lopez-Alt (weird that you intentionally chose to write his name in a way that he doesn’t) is by definition not an amateur (he worked professionally in kitchens), but more importantly, he is a really good communicator. His work is about explaining the why of cooking instead of the how to people who did not have the benefit of being raised by professional chefs. He may not have pushed food science forward, but he has pushed understanding of food science forward. His writing is for people that have no clue that adding pasta water to a sauce is a thing, let alone why. Of course professional chefs know to do this, and some of them even know why.
Has he had some dud recipes? Sure. That’s a good thing though, it means that he is willing to both try new things, as well as make mistakes.
He takes a scientific approach to cooking, and could accurately be described as coming up with techniques that are in the spirit of finding non-traditional ways of doing things.
He hacks food in other words.
Someone doing a technical write up about a new technique in their discipline is pretty hacker news to me.
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.
You didn't overstep, the preceding comment did. Anything that's interesting is on-topic here; even if the recipe isn't a "hack", if it's interesting it's a legit submission.
That’s such a nonsense rule that will eventually turn this site into cat and rage posting like the vast majority of social media. That’s no wonder the posts become more and more mediocre and inoffensive if the only validity metric is ‘what the majority decide is good enough’
I am interested in many things, most of them are not what I want to see on Hacker News.
Hey, I am the "offender". I upvoted your comment. I don't know the answer, HN is kind of the last bastion of sanity for me as a Usenet refugee and it's as close to that that I have found.
I would also be upset if the feed was 99% about LLMs. Not too far in the past it was crypto and before then it was blockchain and before that it was Big Data. Use the downvote button profusely, or perhaps dang and the gang can implement stricter rules/filtering.
I appreciate the post if counts for anything. Cooking hacks to save time or elevate a dish to the next level or even allow me to make something without the proper equipment are always good to add to the toolbox. The coffee I am drinking right now is an example of that.[0][1]
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.
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.
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.
The temperature at the base of the bowl is close to the temperature of the mass of liquid / solids inside and at the base of the bowl, sure.
I'm less certain the same transfer function always returns the gas pressure at the top of the sealed bowl "no matter what altitude you're at" considering that at the starting point, when first sealed, ambient room atmospheric pressure varies with altitude: for the same initial food mass to be cooked the standardised gas volume included will vary with altitude.
(Alternatively, no matter the altitude, there's always a constant volume to fill with atmospheric gas .. and the mass of that gas will vary with altitude)
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
That’s rather uncharitable. I shared something that I like because another submission made me think of it. Nobody was incentivized to read my post. If others found that useful, yes, I’ll bank the points. Use the downvote link, that’s what it’s for.
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?