Project scratch ramen: spicy miso

[Fredward]

Hey everyone. I was hoping to share my ramen journey with everyone here in a “build thread” of sorts. Lol Don’t know what else to call it, the only forums I ever used to be apart of were automotive. I’m not very new to cooking but I always have found it difficult to find new things to cook, even though I’ve only cooked a dozen or two of recipes probably. Or at least it seems like. No matter how inventive I feel like being it seems to always end up just being a protein and a few sides.

So, now that I have a new found hobby of sharpening and J knives I am using my desire to use them as a motivator to push my boundaries and try new things.

Sticking to the japanese theme I decided that first conquest would be ramen. Real ramen. All by hand. The Tare, the broth, the aroma oil, the chachu pork, and even the noodles.

Step 1: collect ingredients. Still not done if you can believe it. Couldn’t find the noodle makins at the places I went to. Gotta go somewhere more uppity.

[Fredward]

Step 2: Tare - the base of the soup

[ronnie_suburban]

Very cool. Looking forward to following your project. Was just telling a friend earlier today that ramen is one of the few things I've wanted to cook that I never have. Where are you located? Seems like you have easy access to everything you need and more, which will be really helpful.

[Fredward]

Thanks. It should be fun. I travel all over the country but right now and for quite a while I’ll be in San Diego. You should be able to find these ingredients anywhere though if you look for an Asian market. If not you can order most of it online

[Fredward]

Step 3: aroma oil

Ingredients:
1 cup fat of choice (I typically use pork lard or chicken fat, though vegetable oil also works here)
8 cloves garlic
1 2-inch piece of ginger, sliced into ¼ inch coins
½ a small onion
3 tbsp ground togarashi
8 chinese chilis, whole
2 tsp szechuan peppercorns

Steps:
In a small saucepan, add the fat, garlic, ginger, and onion.
Turn on the burner and heat over medium to medium low heat, stirring occasionally, until the ingredients take on a light golden hue, and smell fragrant, around 15 minutes.
Add in your togarashi, chinese chilis, and szechuan peppercorns.
Remove the saucepan from the heat, and let the ingredients steep in this oil for 30 minutes.
Strain and transfer to a container. If not using immediately, store in the fridge.

[Fredward]

It won’t let me edit my previous posts on this thread for some reason. I wanted to add the recipe for the tare and each step as I go.

****I also wanted to add that this recipe is not my own. It is all from the ramen lord reddit board****



Tare:
This stuff keeps months in the fridge. It’s better made a day or two in advance, so just let it hang out after you make it. It gets better over time.

Below are the components.

Ingredients:

1 red bell pepper, deseeded
2 habanero chillies, deseeded
¼ a large onion, pureed in a food processor
2 cloves of garlic, grated/minced
One 2 inch piece of ginger, grated/minced
560 g miso of various types (I like to blend white, red, and maybe a mugi or chunkier variant, though all white will work here)
10 g mirin
30 g soy sauce
5 g sesame oil
14 g tahini
8 g Tobanjan
60 g Gochujang
1/2 tsp smoked paprika (or more to taste)
1 tbsp togarashi (this is for flavor, we’re also adding spice to the bottom of the bowl)
Steps:

Blend the red bell pepper and deseeded habaneros in a food processor until fully pureed and liquidy.
Add this liquidy paste to a small saucepan or skillet, and cook over medium heat, until the majority of the water has evaporated and beginning to caramelize, around 10-15 minutes.
Add the contents from step 2 to a bowl. Combine with the remaining ingredients. Whisk fully to incorporate. Reserve indefinitely in fridge.

[Fredward]

Step 4: Bone broth
I’m not sure if I did this one right, I think my bones might not have been of enough quality, as in the right bones. He specifically says chicken backs here but al I could get was “chicken bones” form the Asian market. And it ended up being a lot of small bones and even meat and skin. It doesn’t have very much flavor at all, theres no seasoning in it since the tare does most the seasoning for the bowl, but it just kinda tastes like water. I’ve never made bone broth before. Does anyone know if this is normal? I was expecting more like chicken broth, with a lot of flavor.

Ingredients:

4 lbs chicken backs, (you can sub in pork neck bones if you like the flavor, but I keep it all chicken)
1 onion, split in half and skin removed
1 head of garlic, cut in half to expose cloves
That’s. It. I do mine in a pressure cooker too, which is ultra fast, just as flavorful, and provides good enough clarity that it’s worth the time savings. But steps for both are included.

Steps:

Rinse the chicken backs (or other bones) with water. Usually these backs are kinda bloody and I find rinsing them helps with stock clarity and flavor.
Add the bones to a pot, cover with water by at least an inch.
Bring to a boil over high heat, and skim the scum that rises to the top. We’re looking for colored scum specifically, you may notice that there’s some white froth towards the end of this process. If you stop boiling the broth and this froth subsides, don’t worry about skimming it; it’s just protein and fat being suspended together due to the rolling boil, and wont have an impact on your broth color or flavor.
When the colored scum stops rising, reduce the heat to low, maintaining sub-simmer (around 190F). Cook the broth at this temp for 5-6 hours (or if using a pressure cooker, hold for 45 min at high pressure)
Add in your onion and garlic. Cook for one additional hour below simmer (if using a pressure cooker, run under cold water to quickly depressurize, open the pot, and then add the onion/garlic, cooking uncovered for one hour).
Strain the soup, reserve as needed.


And some knife porn just to add to the post lol

[Fredward]

Step 5: chashu pork
ChashuYou can sous vide, braise it, whatever. It’s pork belly, it’s super forgiving. Below is the sous vide method, but I also braise the belly quite often.

Ingredients:
Pork belly
½ cup mirin
½ cup soy sauce
1 cup water
1 tbsp brown sugar
¼ cup sake

Steps:
Preheat the waterbath to 174F.
Sear the pork belly on all sides in a pan until golden brown, then place in vacuum bag.
Deglaze the pan with the remaining ingredients, then reserve this liquid and allow to cool.
When liquid has cooled, add it to the bag with the pork.
Cook the pork belly sous vide for at least 7 hours, but up to 12. You do NOT have to vacuum seal this, just use the water displacement method to remove excess air, and clamp the edge of the bag to the pot or vessel you’re sous-viding in.
Remove from the bath, and shock in ice water to chill quickly. Reserve in the fridge until needed.

[Fredward]

Step 5: Noodles
Skip this step because you don’t have the time lol. I used store bought noodles this time. Oh well

Step 6: Eggs
Soft boil eggs for 7 min, that’s pretty much it. Actually again your supposed to marinate the eggs in a solution for 24 hrs but I didn’t know that and was trying to eat the ramen tonight cause I work the next 3 days and some of my ingredients wouldn’t be fresh anymore so I just used plain soft boiled eggs and it was great. I can post the recipes for the noodles and eggs if anyone wants

Step 7: assembly
Making sure everything is ready, the mis en place (fancy French voice). And put some boiling water in your serving bowls to warm them. Toss your noodles into your water. When they’re almost done, dump the water, add a ice cream soup sized portion of the tare, too with a tbs or so of the aroma oil, add 12oz or so of bone broth (that should be boiling or nearly boiling), whisk together in this case being miso style since the tare is a paste (shyou and Shio style ramen the tare are liquid), noodles should be done, move fast here, drain the noodles as fast as you can and add them to your soup then add all your topping and then your done!

Step 8: enjoy!

[Bob Z]

Thank you for sharing your project! All I can say is wow! Amazing amount of work for some noodles. Gives me more respect for when I go out and get these. Keep up the good work.

[Fredward]

Thank you for sharing your project! All I can say is wow! Amazing amount of work for some noodles. Gives me more respect for when I go out and get these. Keep up the good work.

Thanks! Lol yeah I spent about 80 bucks And took like 4 or 5 days. lol. But I gotta few tools, which were about $20 of that. And I had enough prepped components to make about 10 bowls. Just need more noodles and pork belly. I could shorten that timeline a lot now though. But that is what is so great about ramen, it’s just a humble noodle soup but if you give each component and ingredient the attention it deserves it becomes an artisanal craft. And sooo much room for creativity. Now I just gotta get around to making my own noodles

[d_rap]

Thank you for breaking this down with pics and steps; this is really very cool and impressive.

And yeah it looks like a lot of work but we all know what happens if you thoughtfully and carefully put the time in with ingredients. This kind of thing is inspiring.

[ronnie_suburban]

Thanks again, for taking the time to lay this out. It looks awesome! I was getting tired just thinking about how much work you were doing, so I was actually relieved to see that you used store-bought noodles!

[Jeff B]

So much time and detail doing this, thanks so much for sharing all this!

[MisoSatisfried]

I've been wanting to attempt ramen for years, you may have finally pushed me over the edge! Great work man. What did you think of the final product? Will you be repeating it?

[Fredward]

I've been wanting to attempt ramen for years, you may have finally pushed me over the edge! Great work man. What did you think of the final product? Will you be repeating it?

Final product was great. The noodles weren’t great lol. But I did buy them at the dollar store . I was getting those cheap plastic soup containers. But yeah I have enough tare and broth for like 8 more bowels. So I’m for sure going to be doing more. And I wabt to try a shoyu ramen too sometime.

[KetchupKing]

I recently posted in "what you cooking" thread, because I didnt know that thread was going on like that. I cook a lot for work.. and then at home on days off.. yes im psycho . Being in japanese cuisine and familiar with so much you posted, I feel these threads could use more or that influence. I have some crazy fermentation shio(salt) bases that would be awesome for your project. Ramen is deffinitely something that I am down to re-do on here. Liked to see someone elses spin on it.