One of my husband and my food “addictions” is ramen. There is a local place we REALLY like to go to but it can get pricey going regularly. So I decided to do some investigating on how to make ramen from scratch.
The key to a good ramen is really the broth and noodles. In my searching I also found a nice recipe for chicken ramen that I want to give a try. The recipe uses a lot of different asian seasonings and sauces in the broth most of which are fairly easy to find in the store and many of which I keep on hand.
However, today I was really interested in making tonkotsu ramen. Making good pork and chicken ramen broth can be a challenge and time consuming. If you’re interested in the details you can check out this post. I decided this was too much effort so I bought tonkotsu ramen stock on Amazon and fresh ramen noodles from the local market.
Even with these ingredients I still had a bit of work ahead of me. I needed to braise pork belly for my ramen and also make seasoned eggs. Because I wasn’t making ramen for an army I modified the pork belly recipe so that it would work with two small pieces and could be done in an instant pot on slow cooker mode. This meant cutting the ingredients in half, searing the pork belly and slow cooking for 6 hours. Then I cooled it so it was solid so I could slice thinly with a VERY VERY sharp knife. I also had to dice a bunch of vegetables for the ramen. This included thinly sliced shiitake mushroom caps, bean sprouts, green top of bok choy and green onions.
Once all the ingredients were complete, I put the bits in a bowl. Seasoned egg cut in half, slices of pork belly, covered with cooked noodles. The last step is to pour the hot broth over top. The broth is meant to re-warm the egg and meat; and partially cook the veggies.
Overall, the recipe was a reasonable success. My spouse said he would prefer white mushrooms to shiitake. I want to try other veggies as well. It seems like the place we go uses the following in their different offerings:
- kikurage (dried wood ear which is re-hydrated and sliced)
- lime and cilantro
- roasted brussel sprouts
- baby bok choy
- spinach
- bamboo shoots
- garlic chips