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Ramen_Broth.md

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title Ramen Broth
source https://japan.recipetineats.com/home-made-ramen-soup-recipe/
img media/ramen_broth.jpg
tags ramen, noodles, egg, chicken, pork, onion, ginger, garlic, bonito flakes, soy sauce
category basic preparations

My version of Ramen Broth is made from a combination of pork bones, chicken carcasses and bonito flakes. It takes a few hours to make but it is not very difficult. It can also be made in the slow cooker or pressure cooker.

Shōyu ramen using Home-made Ramen Broth with toppings, yakibuta, ramen egg, shraga negi, and a piece of nori sheet.

This Home-made Ramen Broth Recipe is one of the most popular recipes on my blog. So, I decided to republish it with a video showing how to make a broth on the stove top.

I thought of publishing a tonkotsu (pork bones) ramen but making a tonkotsu ramen broth is an extremely time-consuming process, requiring the broth to be simmered for a minimum of 6-8 hours, preferably 14+ hours. So to start with, I am posting a ramen broth that takes much less time to cook but still has a bit of tonkotsu flavour. It’s a kind of hybrid tonkotsu soup.

Ingredients

Shōyu Ramen Broth

  • 2tbsp konbu soy sauce
  • 1½tsp mirin
  • salt
  • 300-400ml Ramen Broth in this recipe, boiling hot

Shōyu Ramen Noodles and Toppings

  • 80-100g fresh thin egg noodles
  • 2-3 slices Yakibuta (Braised Pork)
  • 1 Ramen Egg (Ajitsuke Tamago), halved
  • 2tbsp shiraga negi finely julienned green onion, curled in iced water
  • 1 10cm2 yakinori (roasted seaweed sheet)

Preparation

Ramen Broth

  1. Bring 4L/8.5pt of water in a pot to a boil. Add chicken and pork bones and boil for 10 minutes. A lot of scum will surface.
  2. Drain and wash the bones under running cold water one by one, removing coagulated blood, guts along the spine of the chicken and other brown dirty bits.
  3. Add the cleaned bones and the rest of the Ramen Broth ingredients, excluding bonito flakes, to a large pot with 4L/8.5pt water, and bring it to a boil.
  4. When scum surfaces, occasionally scoop it off gently using a ladle (note 5). Do not mix the broth with the ladle when removing the scum as it will cause the broth to become cloudy.
  5. After removing the scum 4-5 times, turn down the heat to simmer gently.
  6. While simmering, remove scum a few more times in the beginning if required.
  7. Simmer for 2 hours with a lid on but allowing for slight ventilation. Then add a bag of bonito flakes. Simmer for a couple of minutes.
  8. Turn the heat off. Put the broth through a sieve and collect only the liquid.
  9. Makes about 1.6L / 3.4pt of soup (note 6).

Making Shōyu Ramen

  1. Put konbu soy sauce and mirin in a serving bowl.
  2. Boil water in a saucepan, and cook noodles and drain very well.
  3. Add Ramen Broth to the bowl and mix. Taste test the soup and adjust with salt.
  4. Add the noodles. Place sliced Yakibuta, Ramen Eggs, and shraga negi on top and slide a yaki nori on the side of the bowl. Serve immediately.

Notes

Keys to A Good Ramen Broth

If you let the bones and the other ingredients simmer for a long time, you will be able to make a soup stock. But it’s not going to be a good and tasty broth because coagulated blood on the bones and other unwanted substances gets mixed into the broth, making it extremely cloudy and degrading the flavour.

The following are the 4 key points to remember when making a good ramen soup stock:

  • Blanch the bones and clean them first before cooking the bones for a long time
  • Remove the scum as much as possible while cooking
  • Simmer gently
  • Do not mix the bones vigorously while simmering.

You can also make a ramen broth using a slow cooker or a pressure cooker, although the clarity of the broth is not quite the same – the slow cooker method produces clearer broth while the broth made in pressure cooker is a bit cloudy.

Notes

  1. My soup bones were back bones chopped into small pieces. If you have pork leg bones, that’s fine too. Ask the butcher to chop them in half.
  2. Spice bags are usually made with muslin. If you have a piece of muslin, you can wrap bonito flakes in the muslin and tie the edges to make a bag just like bouquet garnis.
  3. How to make konbu soy sauce (4 servings): a. Cut 10cm x 5cm/ 4” x 2” konbu into about a dozen small pieces. b. Add the konbu pieces and 120ml/4.1oz soy sauce in a jar. c. Leave it in the fridge overnight up to 1 week.

If you don't have konbu, just use the same amount of soy sauce.

You can use konbu soy sauce in place of pouring soy sauce to the dishes, e.g. Chilled Tofu, Spinach Ohitashi Salad, Japanese Okura with Bonito Flakes.

Time to cook noodles varies depending on the type of noodles. You may also change the duration if you prefer the noodles to be firmer or softer. Follow the instructions on the pack as a guideline.

Instead of a ladle, you can use a flat sieve with fine mesh like this.

Depending on the diameter of the pot and the temperature of the cooktop, the amount of the broth you get varies.

If the water evaporates too fast, add boiling water to increase the quantity. If too much soup stock is remaining, cook further to reduce the quantity.

The topping of shōyu ramen is based on my recipe, Easy Japanese Rame Noodles. You can of course change the toppings to your favourites.