Instant Pot Pork Lo Mein

When you make pork lo mein in the Instant Pot, you get a homemade dish that tastes like it came from a restaurant. Plus, it takes only about 30 minutes to cook so you can enjoy something hot and delicious pretty quickly without much mess and fuss.

Instant Pot Pork Lo Mein

When my daughters were little, lo mein was one of the tried-and-true dishes we could order at the local Chinese restaurant. Because they grew up eating spaghetti at Sunday dinner, it was an easy dish to introduce them to. Sure, the sauce was different from an Italian marinara sauce. But the fun experience of eating the noodles was just the same.

Now I love making lo mein at home in the Instant Pot. We save money by not getting food as takeout, and we don’t have to wait for our order to be ready. Plus, I can add whatever vegetables I have on hand or in the refrigerator — including bok choy that I grew from kitchen scraps.

Ingredients

• 8 ounces spaghetti
• 1 pound center pork
• 2 cups water
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 pound baby Bok choy
• 2 small carrots
• 1 yellow onion
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 3 tablespoons dark soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons light soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon Mirin
• Vegetable oil
• Salt, optional
• Pepper, optional
• Sesame seeds, optional

Instructions

Slice the onions, Bok choy, carrots and red bell pepper. Mince your garlic. Set aside.

Cut the pork into small cubes. Add half of the dark soy sauce and sesame oil to a bowl and mix until well combined. Add the pork to marinate.

Turn on the sauté setting on high on the Instant Pot. Add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil until it is hot like in a pan. Add the pork to the pot and let it sauté until it is golden brown on the outside. Remove the meat from the Instant Pot and set aside.

Add the minced garlic to the Instant Pot, still on the Sauté setting, and let it get golden-brown. This goes quickly — about 30 seconds.

Add the two cups of water to the Instant Pot and deglaze the bottom by scraping it clean with a spatula or wood spoon.

Break the spaghetti in half and put them down in a crisscross pattern. This will help prevent sticking to each other. Do not stir the noodles after you’ve created the pattern. Gently push the spaghetti down with the wooden spoon, so it is under the liquid.

Close the Instant Pot with the lid, seal the valve and pressure cook on high for four minutes. Set a timer.

Once the four minutes have passed, immediately release the natural pressure release valve and let it rest for an additional four minutes.

When the pressure is fully relieved, you’ll be able to open the top so do so. Stir the noodles, then add the remaining dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, hoisin sauce and mirin to the noodles and stir until combined.

Turn the sauté setting on high. You’ll be keeping the top off the Instant Pot now. Add the salt, pepper, Bok choy, red bell pepper, onions, carrots and pork to the pot, stirring often for five to eight minutes. The longer the vegetables saute, the crispier they will be.

Serve and garnish with sesame seeds.

Notes

The recipe calls for both dark and light soy sauce. If you have only one kind, you can substitute it for the other. It might affect the taste and aesthetics slightly but nothing to ruin the dish.

You can add other vegetables to your lo mein if you’d like. Some of the ones I like that you might find in traditional Chinese dishes include water chestnuts and baby corn. Also, if you can’t find bok choy at the supermarket, you can substitute cabbage since bok choy is a cabbage variety.

This recipe is for pork lo mein. You can substitute other proteins as you see fit, including chicken, beef or tofu.

I know that breaking spaghetti breaks all of the Italian cooking rules, and I’m sorry to my mother in law in heaven for suggesting this. But making these noodles in the Instant Pot means I don’t have a pot of boiling water to submerge them in. So you have to do what you have to do to make this dish this way.