How to make ramen. Homemade Japanese soup

How to make homemade Japanese ramen . Ramen, a  Japanese soup recipe that today has crossed the borders of its country of origin and has spread around the world like wildfire.

The ramen that Japanese soup is actually of Chinese origin and that bases its success on its umami flavor.

Today we are going to make ramen, but not with those prepared envelopes that we can find in any Asian products store, today we are going to make homemade ramen with all the calm in the world.

This dish is based on an intense meat-based broth to which a series of ingredients are added- bacon, pork loin, eggs, nori seaweed, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, Chinese chives … there are many toppings that are you can add to this broth.

In order not to get too involved and show that we can make a ramen that is more than decent at home, the only accompaniments to the broth that we are going to add are those that we can get very easily, eggs, pork loin, ramen noodles and chives.

Simply with these and a category broth, we will have a ramen to lick your fingers.

Of course the secret to success is, in large part, in the broth . To achieve an intense base with a umami flavor the best possible, we can achieve it if we use the necessary ingredients. On the one hand, meat, the usual thing is to use pork bones or even chicken bones.

On this occasion I have used calf knee bone that brings great flavor to the broths. By preparing these liquids with a base of kombu seaweed, shitake and tuna, we get a luxurious ramen broth.

Although the process is not complicated, it is true that it takes time. Luckily nowadays we can help ourselves with the new technologies and cook the ramen broth in an express pot instead of spending 5 or 6 hours attending to the casserole.

With this process we achieve an intensity of flavors and aromas that will make our ramen a luxury item. The other option is to prepare an express ramen with the help of some quality broth … although the end result will not be the same.

It is clear that there will always be more to go in this matter of preparing a tasty and authentic ramen, but I assure you that the result of this recipe is on par with the best you have ever tried.

Preparation of the broth for the ramen. Soup base

1. In a saucepan we put 2 liters of water and, when its temperature reaches 65ºC, add the kombu algae. Hold for 30 minutes.
2. After this time, we remove half of the water, straining it and reserving it. We put the saucepan back on the fire, this time with only 1 liter of water, and raise the temperature to 85ºC.
3. Add the dry tuna powder or the dried tuna flakes, let stand for 5 minutes at 85ºC and remove the casserole from the heat. We reserve this katsuobushi broth.
4. With the rest of the seaweed water we have reserved, we put it back in a new saucepan on the fire. We bring the broth to 40ºC, add the clean shitake mushrooms and keep at 40ºC for 30 minutes. After this time, remove the saucepan from the heat.
5. In an express pot we add the mushroom broth, the shitake mushrooms themselves, the seaweed broth and previously drained dry tuna (we discard the kombu seaweed), the knee bones, the exploded chicken, the carrots, the Chinese chive or the chive, peppercorns, coriander, salt, soy sauce, Thai fish sauce, mirin and sake.
6. We will add the chicken with all its skin since it will give a lot of flavor to the broth. Once cooked we can defat it without problems, so we will not worry a priori about the fat that the chicken may have.
7. We close the express pot and put it on the fire. We cook the broth of our ramen for about 2 hours.
8. After this time, let it cool down and store the broth in the fridge. Preferably from one day to the next, so that the fat rises to the surface, solidifies and we can easily remove it the next morning.

Preparation of the ramen. Final presentation

1. Once we have the defatted and clean broth we reheat it since the ramen has to be served very hot.
2. While we heat the broth we prepare the ramen ingredients. On the one hand we cook the eggs for no more than 5 or 6 minutes. They must remain with the yolk without completely curdling.
3. Once the 6 minutes have passed, we cool them in cold water to cut the cooking. Peel them and dip them in soy sauce while preparing the rest of the ingredients on the plate.
4. Cut the Chinese spring onion into slices and reserve.
5. We cook the Chinese noodles following the manufacturer’s instructions and reserve. We fry the pork tenderloin lightly without spending too much.
6. We assemble the plate, serve the very hot ramen broth in the bowls that we have chosen.
7. We add in each bowl the rest of the ingredients. The egg cut in two, one of the pork loin fillets, a part of the ramen noodles and sprinkle with chives.
8. We serve the ramen very hot ready to enjoy it.

Be sure to enjoy all the soup recipes  that we have on the blog. You can see all the photos of the step by step recipe of homemade Japanese ramen .