Bò Kho (Vietnamese beef stew) gets an Instant Pot makeover

Flavors from all over Asia (ginger, lemongrass, five-spice powder, garam masala, fish sauce…) spice up this delicious, aromatic, meaty stew. The Instant Pot speeds it up. Recipe below.

OUR FAMILY LOVES THIS DISH. Hearty, complex, aromatic, it’s a popular favorite over here. Now that we are not eating all that much red meat, this has become even more of a special occasion meal. When one of our daughters found herself able to visit us over the holidays, this was the dish she requested. This time, we made it in the Instant Pot to see how it would work out.

The answer: pretty well! The rich, complex flavor was definitely there, and the cooking time was cut in half (once it came to pressure, it cooked for about 30 minutes instead of two hours, but there’s the coming to pressure and then depressurizing time to consider).

This time, we’re using using basically the same recipe as in our original posting back in, yes, 2010, with a few modest edits (we get more specific about the amount of shallots, increase the volume of carrots, and for the Instant Pot, are advising to use less liquid than for the stovetop).

If you haven’t made this before, take a careful look at the ingredients before you start to ensure you have everything. The list is long! But please don’t leave anything out. There is not much lemongrass in terms of volume, but omitting it definitely diminishes the flavor. Same for all the other bits and pieces—the five-spice powder, the garlic, the sugar, the fish sauce, the one bay leaf. Use ’em all. And though the ingredient list is long, the actual prepping and cooking are quite simple and straightforward.

One thing we worried about in making this was how to treat the carrots. In the original long-cooking stovetop version, you add in the carrots for the last half hour of cooking. Some Instant Pot versions of this dish say to depressurize the pot after half an hour, open it, add in the carrots, and repressurize to cook for a few more minutes (the timing of this varies from 4 to 8 minutes; that’s a big variation!). One version even says to add the carrots and finish the stew without repressurizing— just straight-ahead simmer it.

After a lot of pondering and reading and fretting and a long brainstorming session with Laurel’s boyfriend Raffy, we decided to put everything in the pot all at once and see what happened. The carrots, btw, came out just right, not too toothy and not too mushy. The beef was not quite as meltingly tender as with long stovetop cooking, but it was still tender, and so, so flavorful. In every other regard, this matches the long-cooking stovetop version. If you want to cook the stovetop version, you’ll find the recipe here.

Print Pin

Vietnamese Beef Stew (Bò Kho)

Flavors from all over Asia spice up this delicious, aromatic, meaty stew. The Instant Pot speeds it up.

Servings 4 with leftovers

Ingredients

• 1 stalk lemongrass, end trimmed off, dry outer leaves peeled away and the soft inner core minced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 teaspoons fennel seeds
• a 1-inch piece of ginger, peeled, crushed and finely minced
• 1/4 cup shallots, finely minced (one or two, depending on the size)
• 1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons garam masala
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne
• 1 teaspoon five-spice powder
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce (see Kitchen Notes)
• 1-1/2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 pounds chuck roast, trimmed of fat and cut into one-inch cubes
• cooking oil
• 2 medium onions, peeled and sliced thin
• 2 jalapeño peppers, topped, seeded and coarsely chopped
• 1-1/2 cups low-sodium beef stock (see Kitchen Notes)
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 whole star anise (see Kitchen Notes)
• 2 pounds carrots peeled, trimmed and cut on the diagonal
• a good baguette (see Kitchen Notes)

Instructions

• Place the lemongrass, garlic, fennel seed, ginger, shallot, ground pepper, garam masala, cayenne, five-spice powder, fish sauce and sugar in a big ceramic, glass or plastic bowl. Stir, then add in the chuck roast. Mix it all with your hands until every piece is coated. Cover and set aside for 30 minutes.
• After 30 minutes, heat 1 tablespoon cooking oil in a nonstick pan. Over medium heat, add the thin sliced onion and the diced jalapenos and sauté for about four minutes. Then move the onion and pepper mixture to the Instant Pot. (NOTE: Yes, the Instant Pot has a sauté feature, and sometimes we use it—but since you’re putting things into the sauté pan and then taking them out, using a separate pan just seemed easier.)
• Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan. Working in batches, brown the beef. We usually do this in three batches. Each piece should be nicely browned on all sides, not just the top and bottom; add more oil if needed. As the pieces brown, add them to the pot. Scrape all the little spice bits into the pot too. If any crust forms in the pan, deglaze it with a little stock or water and add that to the pot too.
• Then pour in the beef stock, water, tomato paste, carrots and 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. Stir it all together. Add the bay leaf and gently set the star anise on top.
• Seal up the pot and set it to 32 minutes.
• At the end of the cycle, when you depressurize and open the pot, the beef and the carrots should be tender and ready to serve.
• Serve with a nice crispy-crusted baguette and plenty of butter. We originally suggested having this with a crisp Muscadet or a cider. You may also like this with a beer—I currently am in love with Stillwater Extra Dry, a saison-style beer from Maryland, brewed with rice and evocative of sake. Or, don’t overthink it: we also love this simply with big glasses of iced water.
• Finally, as with any stew-like dish, this tastes even better the next day.

Kitchen Notes

Watch out for the sodium. When using beef stock, if you are not using your own homemade, be sure to use low or no sodium, and even then be cautious. Soy sauce and fish sauce are each sodium bombs in and of themselves.

Fish sauce. When choosing fish sauce, you will see there are many, many brands out there. As a rule of thumb, don’t buy a brand that comes in a plastic bottle. Buy the ones packaged in glass.

Star anise. Use whole star anise for this dish, not fragments. When you stir the pot, be gentle—you don’t want to break up the star anise. If you do, you’ll have to fish out all the little seeds and pieces before serving—those things, chewed on their own, are just too much.

A baguette? Not rice? This recipe draws its inspiration from when Vietnam was called French Indochina. That's also why it's eaten with a knife, fork and spoon, not chopsticks.

Liz's Crockery Corner. This handsome bowl made its first Blue Kitchen appearance back in August. Here's what we said then: This bowl is a bit of a puzzler. The mark turned up a number of pieces that looked similar, but not exactly it. It could be English, but was more likely made in Scotland. One thing the mark tells us for sure is that it was made in 1850.