Shoyu ramen

Ingredients

• Chicken carcasses1.5 kg
• Pork belly500 g
• Kombu10 g
• Dried shiitake20 g
• Soy sauce200 ml
• Mirin60 ml
• Sake60 ml
• Ginger30 g
• Garlic4 clove
• Ramen noodles500 g
• Eggs4
• Spring onion4
• Sesame oil2 tbsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Cover the carcasses with cold water, boil for ten minutes and pour it away. Rinse the bones and the pot: the clarity of the broth depends on it.

   15 min

2. 2

   Cover again with fresh water, add the ginger and garlic and simmer for three hours. Put the kombu in twenty minutes before the end and lift it out before it boils — boiled kombu turns bitter.

   180 min

3. 3

   For the tare, reduce the soy, mirin, sake and shiitake to a third. What is left is a thick dark liquid — two spoons per bowl.

   20 min

4. 4

   Boil the eggs for six and a half minutes, cool them in iced water, peel and steep them in the leftover tare for two hours.

   130 min

5. 5

   Boil the noodles separately, strictly to the time on the packet, drain and put them straight into bowls with the tare in the bottom.

   5 min

6. 6

   Pour the hot broth over, stir once so the tare disperses, and lay on the pork, the egg and the spring onion. Finish with the sesame oil.

About the dish

Ramen is not a soup boiled as one thing. It is a construction of three: a neutral broth, a concentrated tare in the bottom of the bowl, and an aromatic oil on top. Separating them keeps the flavour under control — saltiness is adjusted with the tare, not the broth.

The tare is the most underrated part. It is soy sauce reduced with mirin, sake and mushrooms; about two spoons go into a bowl, and it decides what the ramen tastes like.

The noodles are boiled in their own pot and always at the last moment. Their starch clouds the broth, and they keep softening in hot liquid by the second.

Worth knowing

• — Broth and tare are made ahead and keep: the broth three days in the fridge, the tare a month. On the day only the noodles are left to cook.
• — The ratio runs about 300 ml of broth to 30 ml of tare per bowl. Start under and adjust.
• — The noodles must not wait. Under a minute from pot to table, or they go soft.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

780 kcal

Protein

44 g

Fat

30 g

Carbs

82 g

More from Japan

• Miso soup — A soup of dashi and miso that takes ten minutes. Miso must never boil: boiling takes out both the aroma and the point of it.
• Katsudon — A breaded pork cutlet finished in sweet-salt broth with egg and slid onto rice.
• Gyudon — Thinly sliced beef simmered with onion in dashi, soy and mirin, over rice.