Japanese · Soup
Weeknight Shoyu Ramen
- Intermediate
- 45 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, richness that coats and comforts, lifted green at the very end.
Ingredients
- 1.2L good chicken stock + 10cm kombu
- Tare per bowl: 1.5 tbsp soy, 1 tsp mirin, ½ tsp sesame oil
- Fresh ramen noodles
- Soft egg (6.5 min), scallion, nori
- Chashu or shredded rotisserie chicken
The skills inside
Ramen brothThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil
The words inside
Stocks: Blanc, Brun, Broth & DemiKombu
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · egg · soy · sesame · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Steep kombu in stock 20 min at a bare simmer; season lightly. 20 min
- Mix tare in each bowl: the bowl seasons the soup, not the pot.
- Cook noodles separately; never in the broth.
- Assemble: tare, broth, noodles, toppings. Serve screaming hot.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes
- The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
- It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
- The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
- Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
- The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.
Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Junmai or Ginjo sake
- Also Right
- Dry Riesling or Grüner Veltliner
- From the Taps
- Japanese rice lager
- Zero-Proof
- Cold green tea (sencha)
Umami bridges best with umami: sake’s amino depth shakes hands with dashi and soy where tannic wine would argue.
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