The madness of making your own ramen

If you are very nearly certifiably insane, you may very well attempt what we just did this past weekend.

We made our own Japanese ramen, with just about every component made from scratch. Oh and we made enough for a village of 18.

We dearly miss the Hakata-style tonkotsu ramen that we always ate while my hubby was living in Tokyo, and that inspired the idea of trying our hands at reproducing the bowl of noodles to comfort ourselves for the fact that we are not there right now.

How we ended up serving 18 bowls of ramen in one afternoon was the result of a rash decision in a moment of madness - it was all a blur after that.

Here’s a glimpse of the craziness that went on in our kitchen. I’m listing some links to recipes we referred to online instead of reproducing them here, and added some of our own notes based on our observations and testing. It actually isn’t too difficult but it is a lot of back-breaking hard work.

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TONKOTSU BROTH

The wonderful thing about ramen is the sheer variety of styles that it comes in, and with it, the creativity and room to make your own take of it. Ours was a tonkotsu broth, made from a mix of pig’s trotters and chicken carcass, and a load of other smoky aromatics.

This took the longest, and required the most attention. It’s simple in that it’s just like any other method for making broth, which is to extract flavours from bones and scraps by slowly cooking it over a long period of time. But it’s unlike any other method for making broth, in that the hours it takes to reach the end product is really long - it took 12 hours for our broth.

Our references: 1. Serious Eats (a primer on tonkotsu broth, the why’s and the how’s); 2. Serious Eats (recipe); 3. Mobius Bacon Food blog (on using pressure cooker vs traditional slow-cooking)

Notes:

It’s important that you char the aromatics (mix of leeks, scallions, onions, ginger and garlic). This will add a smoky flavour to the broth. Just drop them onto a hot pan until the surfaces are charred.

To achieve that creamy pale colour for the broth, it is important that you blanch the pig’s trotters and then clean out the bloody bits. We decided to just double-blanch it, no cleaning (since all bloody bits would be gone), and it worked. If you skip this step, your broth will be dark coloured.

Patience. You’ll need to keep the broth at a gentle rolling boil at all times, so you have to make sure it doesn’t overflow. But that also means you lose moisture very quickly so keep an eye on the pot and top up whenever the liquid runs low.

Why 12 hours? The first few hours you’ll get a clear broth, and it’ll taste pretty good too. As you progress, the broth will start to get more viscous. It’s not necessarily a lot thicker but the “mouth-feel” (口感) improves. That light creaminess that is a hallmark of the tonkotsu broth is a result of this prolonged boiling, which extracts the fats and emulsifies them with the broth. The pig’s trotters also releases a lot of gellatine, which contributes to that “mouth-feel”. We added chicken feet too for the same reason.

You don’t need to salt it much. You’ll need to make a tare (details next), which works like an intense salty soup base that is added to every bowl before topping with the broth. The saltiness will come from the tare.

TARE

Think of tare as the finishing broth. It’s a saturated version of a soup broth that will lend a salty edge and a sense of depth to the final broth. It is essentially a souped up version (hurhur pun intended) of a broth that is reduced to deliver an intense hit of saltiness and depth. There are varied recipes out there - some require roasting bones and deglazing with sake, some using rich flavours like sesame oil - but ours is just a simple intense dashi broth.

To cut down on time and cost, we used dashi powder instead of starting from konbu and bonito flakes. To the dashi powder and water, we added a load of salt. It will taste insanely salty, but just remember that it isn’t meant to be eaten as is - we use only about 2 tbsp per bowl, before topping it off with the tonkotsu broth.

To make it: Dissolve dashi powder in water as per packet instruction, and add salt. Reduce for about 30 minutes. We made close to a litre of this.

We did not want a tare that will overpower the rather delicate chicken and pork flavour of the broth, so the plain konbu dashi tare made the most sense. Also, because the crux of the ramen flavour still lies in the tonkotsu broth, so we figured this was the one step where we could afford a shortcut and used dashi powder. This is also because my Japanese friend once laughed and told me even Japanese people don’t usually make dashi from scratch. Okay then.

FRESH RAMEN NOODLES

This was the part that we were most unsure about because we read so many articles online about how difficult and unreliable this was. To our surprise, this turned out quite well the first time we tried it out.

You need just a few things to make this: bread flour, kansui (alkaline water), a pasta roller and heck lot of arm strength. It’s a lot of work, but there were three of us doing this so it was fun.

Our references: 1. No Recipes Blog (for the noodles recipe); 2. Harold McGee’s NYT article on using alkali in cooking

Notes:

Kansui (alkaline water) is essential for this recipe. The alkaline component is what gives the noodles a yellowish tinge and a springy bite. We found kansui in a bakery supply shop here, but we’ve read that in a pinch, you can substitute it with baked baking soda (see 2nd link attached above). Kansui is the same thing that’s used to make the local yellow mee noodles that we’re familiar with.

The dough is very tough. After mixing the bread flour with the kansui and warm water, the resulting texture is gravel-like. There’s no other way to form it into a dough except to use your hands and mash them together into a ball. You don’t knead this the way you would with pasta - it’s more of pinching and making it stick together. Don’t be tempted to add more water or you’ll end up with limp noodles. If the gravelly bits aren’t sticking together much, introduce more water by wetting your hands and kneading the dough, rather than adding water directly - a neat trick that my sister the dough master advised.

Pasta roller is essential. There’s only so much your hands can do - the dough will really come together after you’ve passed it several times through the largest setting on the pasta roller. We passed it up till setting 4 (out of 6), and then passed the noodle sheet through the spaghetti-shaped cutter.

We wanted a thinner noodles so that it is closer to the Hakata-style ones we tried, but we didn’t have the skills to hand-cut the noodles that finely. We tried to cheat by making a thinner noodle sheet and then rolling it through the same cutter - looks the business, but when cooked it totally lost the bounciness and bite. So we stuck with the slightly thicker cut as it was perfect. It wasn’t fully yellow because the kansui required was quite small an amount; this also meant that it did not have that strong alkaline taste that some people dislike in noodles.

Storage - we made the noodles half a day ahead, bunched them into individual portions, froze the balls of noodles (on a tray) then stored them all in a ziplock bag in the freezer. To cook, we removed the noodles from the freezer, dropped into a boiling pot of water and cooked for 1 minute 10 seconds.

CHASHU

No ramen is complete without melt-in-your-mouth slices of chashu. I really hate it when ramen places get the chashu wrong - some serve tasteless bland chashu, yet others are too thin, or there’s not enough fats so it’s dry and stringy.

To ensure a thorough cook that retains juiciness and flavour, we cooked the chashu sous vide. Sous vide offered us a clean, efficient and highly precise way of cooking the pork belly rolls, especially when we are dealing with 18 portions. It also frees up the stove-top space, as well as our effort tending to the stove.

Our references: 1. Serious Eats recipe (stove-top slow-cook method); 2. Video on how to tie the pork roll using kitchen twine

Notes:

We adapted our recipe based on the Serious Eats one above. After tying the pork belly into rolls, we packed them separately into one bag each, together with the marinade liquid and aromatics. We sealed the bag using our chamber vac, and then cooked it sous vide at 63.5 degrees Celcius for 30 hours. It should go for 36 but we ran out of time. Bad planning on our part!

If you’re doing this sous-vide, you’ll need to seal the bag well since it’s a long cook. If you are just using a food saver, double seal it. If using plain ziplock, think about double-bagging but my policy is to not go this route for long cooks. With a chamber vac, it’s pretty safe to say it won’t leak mid-cook. Just remember to check the water level after half a day or so to ensure the pork belly is still submerged.

We also set aside a few hours for the pork belly rolls to chill in the fridge after cooking. It’s easier to cut chilled meat than hot ones. Make sure you rapidly cool the pork belly after removing it from the water bath rather than letting it slowly come to room temperature.

For serving, we seared the pork belly slices individually on a very hot pan. The marinade and juice that’s been absorbed into the pork, and the fats, will help to give it a nice char - we didn’t even add oil or sauce to the pan.

AJITSUKE TAMAGO (soft-boiled eggs)

Boy am I mad about this one. This was supposed to be the easiest but for some reason we ran into some problems. I mean, after the crazy broth, tying pork belly into rolls etc, how hard can it be to make eggs, right? Also, I make all kinds of eggs regularly, mastering every technique from creamy scrambled to fluffy omelette to oozy poached eggs, so this really drove me up the wall.

Anyway the consistency of the whites and yolks that we got were just nice - the yolks were still soft, golden and slightly runny. The problem we had was with the shells clinging to the eggs, so the end result was the eggs looked pockmarked. But we sliced the eggs when serving it, so nobody is focusing on the ugliness anyway. :)

Our references: Serious Eats recipe (yeah, this site is amazing)

Notes:

My main gripe is with using the term “barest of simmer”. It is vague. The barest of simmer on a different stove, and even different sized ring of fire on the hob, can mean very different temperatures. To me, “barest of simmer” means 75C-80C, similar to poaching eggs on the stovetop. But turns out, yeah, that’s way too low to cook the eggs in 6 minutes. It also made it impossible to peel the eggs as you’re bound to break the egg. It would work better if you turn the heat up slightly so that it’s still a boil but a softer boil (not the vigorous spitting boil). After several attempts to tweak it, we just did it sous vide at 90C for 6.5 minutes. (Also because the sous vide circulator was already at 90C as I was making some awesome butter carrots for another meal)

Remember to use room temperature eggs, and not straight out from the fridge. This is important! Apparently it also helps if the eggs aren’t super duper fresh or the egg will cling a lot to the shells. Buy the eggs a few days in advance.

There are other marinade recipes out there, so don’t be surprised if you see that the marination hours vary. We like this recipe very much - it’s subtle, very balanced, and not overly salty. We left the eggs in it for 12 hours in the fridge and the flavour was perfect. But please do not over-marinate the eggs - once the liquid gets to the yolk, it’ll be ruined.

Condiments

The final bowl of ramen really comes together with the addition of the condiments. This is where you leave it to your guests to customise, though there is always a recommended serving of course!

Our condiment station included the following:

Garlic chips

Ground white sesame seeds

Finely chopped spring onions

Nori sheets

Black fungus (also known as wood-ear shrooms)

Takana-zuke (pickled mustard greens)

Yuzu salt

Takana-zuke (高菜漬) is a type of pickled condiment (tsukemono) that I first discovered while visiting Japan. It’s made from mustard greens, a bit like our chinese version of muichoy (梅菜), but crunchier.

I knew I had to make this to complete this round of madness, but as it turns out, there are no recipes available online. I managed to find a packet of takana leaves at the Japanese grocers, but the entire thing had not a single word of English, so again, no clue how I’m supposed to prepare it.

I decided to just wing it. The takana was already pre-pickled, so I just needed to cook it. Here’s my recipe, to fill the void on the Internet:

Wash the takana leaves under cold running water, and rinse several times until the water is almost clear. Squeeze it dry, and then slice thinly. The packet I bought contained exactly 1 takana plant (with about 4 big leaves and several smaller ones). In a hot pan, roast a small amount of white sesame seeds. In a separate pan, heat up some canola oil until it is really hot. Sprinkle some chilli pepper flakes into the pan, then add the sliced takana leaves and stir fry until the mixture is almost dry. Add about 2 tbsp Japanese soy sauce, and a dash of mirin and sake each. Mix well, taste it and adjust by adding more soy if necessary. When u are almost done, add the roasted sesame seeds and mix well. Remove from the pan, and let it cool before keeping it in the fridge. I like to eat it cold. This can be added to the noodles, or eaten on the side. It’s also perfect with rice.

I kinda overdid it with the soy sauce so the result was too salty! X_X So go slow, and adjust as you go. Serving it chilled also helps to dull the salty edge.

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It was quite impossible to serve all 18 people at the same time so we had our guests take turns to eat, kinda like at a regular ramen joint I guess! Throw in a ticket vending machine and a line of plastic chairs at our door for people to sit and wait, and it just might pass as a bona fide ramen joint!

For each bowl, we first ladle about 2 tbsp of the tare, followed by the tonkotsu broth. The noodles we cooked 2 portions at a time, for just a bit over a minute. This is then topped off with 2 slices of charred chashu and 1 ajitsuke tamago, and it’s off to the table for our guests to top off with their condiment of choice. The thing with ramen though is that it needs to be eaten quick because the longer the noodles sit in the broth, the more it’s going to cook so the trick is to slurp it down quick before the noodles lose their springiness.

Yes, the entire process is long and it requires a lot of work. The amount of research we had to do was crazy so I hope this post helps to pull the important stuff together in one coherent spot. If you are up for it, give it a try. Just remember to plan ahead, organise your space, get one or two partners in crime, and invite a bus load of people over to eat. It will be worth it.

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Stock-list: Cold Storage at Compasspoint, Sengkang: pig’s trotters, pork belly, chicken carcass, chicken feet, scallions, ginger, leeks, eggs, bread flour. The butcher is awesome. They helped us chop whole pig’s trotters into smaller even-sized chunks. Go early in the day, especially if you are buying large amounts of meat. Meidi-ya at Liang Court: takana-zuke (available in the refrigerated pickles section, behind the miso section), dashi powder, Japanese cooking basics like soy sauce, mirin, sake. Phoon Huat (Hougang branch): kansui (alkali water).

If you have questions about any of the processes or ingredients, ask away! Will try my best to help out. For the maestros, tips and trade secrets are welcome too!

All photos by either me or my hubby, who was the mastermind behind this. If you like food photos, follow him @auyongtc and me @tsewei on Instagram.