I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that although I have owned an Instant Pot for two years now, I still haven’t used it to make one of my all-time favorite dishes in the world, pho — not the chicken kind, not the beef kind — neither kind. I’m not sure why I’ve procrastinated on this. Part of it was because I still cannot find a a reasonably priced source for beef and oxtail bones for beef pho. The second part is that I tend to always want to try new things, and because I’ve already made chicken pho (pho ga) the traditional way so many times, I deprioritized it.

I finally made pho ga today in the Instant Pot, making some changes on the spices to the Serious Eats’ version that takes 20 minutes at high pressure in the Instant Pot. It was incredibly easy, very little work, and was so, so satisfying. Noodle soup is one of those ultimate comfort foods for me since I grew up eating with it, but for Chris, he prefers noodles separate to soup. He loves noodles. He loves soup. He doesn’t necessarily love them together most of the time. But when he had a bowl of this, he admitted that this turned out very good.

All I need to make this are chicken drumsticks, which I can buy organic and reasonably priced at Trader Joe’s. And now that the quarantine restrictions are loosening in New York City, I can more comfortably go to Trader Joe’s without waiting in a long, slow line to get in. This is win-win!