Instantly Level Up Your Ramen Skills in One Video

growing up ramen noodles meant this for me yeah and unfortunately I actually like them a lot which gives you a bit of a glimpse into what I was consuming as a child and I didn't actually have my first bowl of ramen noodles until I moved to New York around 2010 which is when ramen was being imported from Japan over to New York and you're really seeing a boom in ramen shops with places like Momofuku and a puto and I try to view these places and I still really didn't understand all the hype but then I found a local place by me in Brooklyn and I really had my moment of ramen reckoning and I do feel like everyone needs that one ramen shop experience to really wake them up to the potential of this dish and how good it actually is and when that happened to me it was really all I needed to stop going to ramen shops and just start trying to perfect this dish at home but what I'm gonna be doing today which I'm really excited about is giving you the foundation of ramen all five elements that you need that are mandatory to make an authentic tasty ramen at home and I'm gonna do it all in one video so buckle up because it is time to start your own ramen shop at home now you can make pretty good ramen at home by just throwing together a few ingredients maybe you fellow a recipe online it's gonna be alright but to make incredible ramen traditional japanese-style ramen you're gonna need to nail down the five essential elements of ramen noodles this was a day well spent in quarantine right here so you can see we've got our five elements and they're all essential to really get the authentic taste so to start off you need your base your bone broth of your stock you can make this vegetarian I've done a video on that in the past I'll link below then you've got the toppings and this is what I really love about ramen because it starts becoming an art form and you're plating this up and you've got all your different toppings and you've got all your colors the options are really endless when it comes to toppings then we have our aromatic oil so we're going to be infusing our oil with different aromatics perfume or ramen and there's a lot of different aroma profiles that you can take when it comes to your own personal ramen we're gonna cover one of my favorites today then we've got our today which is our seasoning for soup so our bone broth is gonna be pretty much plain so this is where all of the seasoning comes from and again I'm gonna be showing you one of my favorite our seasonings today and then last but not least of course you have your ramen noodles but ramen noodles are very specific is there an alkaline style noodle which gives them a unique flavor but also a really nice chewiness that is very specific to ramen so all five of these elements essential for really good good authentic tasty ramen and luckily we're gonna be covering every single element today in this video so let's get started all right let's talk bone broth the foundation of our ramen and really the foundation of all Asian noodle soups and without a good homemade bone broth made with love and care you're not making a good ramen it's just a fact I used to try to use things like this which I just found in the pantry to make soup and to be honest once you taste a really good homemade bone broth it's hard to even know what this stuff is it's like some meat juice and it's not gonna work for your soup this is not Pro home cooks this is amateur home cooks and we are upgrading right now so the basic idea of a broth or stock is really simple you're cooking down these animal parts to make a really flavorful liquid by extracting the flavor out of the bones the cartilage and the meat and of course you can get really complex with it there's different cuts you can use of course there's a range of animals for different flavors you can get and I have an entire video dedicated to broth and stock that I'll link below but today I'm just gonna be using things that I had in the freezer because I can't go to the butcher right now so I have some chicken carcass and then I have some pork hocks right here which have a good amount of meat but they also have a lot of bone in them as well so we have a blend of flavors here which I think will balance out really nicely but you can just use pork you can just use chicken your knees lamb you can use beef whatever you want and I would say the one thing I am missing right now is some type of pig Trotter or chicken feed something with a ton of collagen which will really help jellify your stock and give you a really nice mouthfeel and also it's just really good for you when you have that collagen in your soup but this is what I'm dealing with right now and I'm still gonna be able to extract so much flavor from these cuts right here but I do want to take these through one process before they go into the liquid so what I really like doing with my broth is taking the bones and roasting them first to just add a layer of flavor so what I'm gonna do is take out a sheet pan coat it with a little bit of oil throw in all of the meat and bones and then coat the top of that with oil as well and toss it in the oven all right so I have my oven set at 450 and I'll just throw those in there and roast them for about 45 minutes you're really just going by color and once they're looking really nice and brown then I'll pull over all right so it's been 40 minutes I did turn it down to 425 about 10 minutes and because it was a little too high now you don't need to be a genius you don't need to understand the my our reaction to to know that this is going to impart some serious flavor into our soup look at that color equals flavor and make sure you don't get rid of this fat that came off of all this meat because we are definitely going to use that so I've got this on high right now that's gonna come to a boil then I will reduce it down to a simmer and when it comes to ramen broth there's two main camps you can do a low and slow cook which I'm gonna do just a gentle simmer and you'll get a nice clear stock which I tend to like I like a clear stock if you want more of a tonkatsu feel a nice creamy broth by boiling this stock over time you're gonna start emulsifying the fats and it's gonna give you a nice creamy look a creamy texture which is nice but the boiling can be a bit intense especially if you're boiling something for eight hours and you do need to cook this no matter what you need to cook this for a while unless your pressure cooking which that works as well but I'm just gonna get this on a nice medium heat for pretty much all day at least a good eight hours the longer you can cook this thing the more flavor you will extract the more nutrients you'll be getting into your soup okay so we're up to temperature right here see how there's just a few gentle bubbles we're trying to maintain that over a long period of time once it starts boiling it's gonna start emulsifying the fats and then you won't have that nice clearness in your bra now another thing you can do to help really get that clearness of your broth is just skim off anything close to the top like there's bubbles or any type of scum that comes off the bones just every now and then skim it off and then we're just gonna pop the lid on and we're gonna let that go all day I started this thing in the morning which I would suggest you do you can let it go overnight if you're comfortable with letting us sit on the stove unwatched but I'll probably go eight hours and then you know we'll make ramen the next day's generally a two-day process or you can make the bone broth whenever you have time and you can freeze it which is great about this stuff I always have some frozen bone broth actually here's one that's a lamb stock that's a bone broth right there it says roasted chicken stock but it's a soup all right so my supply is low which is a good reason for making this right now so ramen noodles compared to other Japanese dishes is actually more of a new-age dish which I like because it gives you a little more flexibility where there's a lot of these other traditional dishes it's like you stick to the script and you do it to perfection which is great as well but ramen it's like you do whatever you want so when you go to a ramen shop you're gonna see so many different types of toppings so of course it's up to you which is why it's great to make it at home because you can just kind of use whatever you have in your fridge so for my ramen I'm trying to strike a balance I've got some fresh veggies right here some bok choy and some carrot I'm definitely gonna be making some half boiled egg that's something that I usually cannot resist because it just elevates your final dish so much and then I'm going to be making some Joshu which is actually one of the most popular toppings for ramen and it's a pork belly and we're gonna work on this first and the great part about this is I can actually Park cook this in the stock right now to get this pork belly nice and tender so traditionally which have sure you get a nice big chunk of pork belly and you roll it up into a circle and you get those nice circle pieces on top of your ramen not only do I not have twine here this is also a smaller piece of pork belly so all I'm gonna do is just drop it right in to and this is a great technique because all of the flavor loss from cooking in the liquid is going right back into our broth and we're gonna get it nice and tender so I'll probably keep that going for around two hours and then I'll remove it it's been about two and a half hours you see we're bubbling away with this pork belly coming out and I'll just let that sit in the fridge overnight and I'll show you what we're gonna do with that tomorrow one topping that is essential for me when I make ramen is the half boiled egg I pretty much put it on every single ramen that I make because one it's beautiful - it adds some nice protein to the top and it also adds a nice creaminess because when you cut into it the egg yolk emulsifies into the soup when you mix everything up and you can create an instant creamy texture to your ramen which I love and a lot of people are scared to make these things but there's an equation it is so simple once you get this down you'll make perfect half boiled eggs every single time all you have to do is bring a pot of water to the boil take your eggs and I always like adding one extra egg just in case one of them cracks or screws up in the process and then take some type of spoon ideally with holes in it and you're gonna take a few eggs at a time and just slowly dip them in and out of the water because you want to acclimate the eggs to the hot water or they could crack if you got cold egg going into hot water then once they're acclimated just let them sit on the bottom and set your timer for 6 minutes because a full boiled egg is 12 minutes and once that's done you're gonna take the eggs out and dip them into ice water and the same thing in and out so they acclimate to the cold water now and you need that ice water bath because you want to stop the cooking process right at that 6 minute mark now make sure those cool for at least 5 minutes and then you can just start cracking the shell just gently on the table and then you just peel the egg off just making sure to get under that one film layer of the egg then as long as your eggs are fresh the shell should just slip off and you have perfect half boiled eggs so the next element of the ramen is the aromatic oil which is probably the sneakiest element I would say the most missed element especially when you're making it at home but it's so important and it's a technique that's used a lot in Chinese cooking and you see it in Japanese cooking when it comes to ramen basically what you're doing is taking an oil or a fat and you're fusing different aromatics because oil is a great carrier of aroma so when we drizzle a little bit of this oil on top of the soup it's not so much of a flavor like a blast to your tastebuds it's more of a perfume and essence that you're gonna be adding and the best part about it is you can customize your oil with any type of aromatics that you want so the aromatics that I'm choosing for this oil today are some ginger root right here which I'm just gonna peel and then chop up really fine I've got some scallion which you know I love one of my favorite Japanese ingredients I'll chop that up really fine as well and then right here I have some chilies from burlap and barrel this is koban arrow chili and this will add a nice spicy kick the only spicy kick to our ramen which I are really like so once your ingredients are chopped up I'm gonna take this oil that came off the bones which is super flavorful but I am gonna balance it out with a little bit of neutral oil this is a grapeseed oil it's just nice to balance out the fat with the oil so you get a nicer mouthfeel because just fat can be a bit intense and all I'm gonna do is heat this up for a few minutes and once you throw in a scallion and it starts to sizzle then you can take it off the stove and then just pour it over your ingredients to let them infuse you can see that oil going to work you don't need a super high heat but that will just wake up all of those aromas now making ramen tomorrow night so at least I have a day of this infusion but this stuff just let it go the flavor is just gonna keep intensifying after like two weeks that's that's the sweet spot or something like this so what is today sauce well it's the way we're gonna season our ramen so rather than just sprinkling salt into your soup we're gonna build a liquid seasoning with a lot more flavor than just salt now there's a million ways to make today sauce and there's different types of today sauces you can use miso you can use salt base soy base I'm gonna do a combination between a salt and a soy base that I really like that adds a ton of umami flavor to our soup and remember it's really important to get this today seasoning really flavorful because it's gonna be adding most of our seasoning to our just plain old soup base so to start my today sauce I actually soaked some kombu and some shiitake mushrooms yesterday and I let those sit overnight in some water to really start releasing those flavors and once those have been soaked overnight I took them out I poured them into a pot I added about 2 cups of soy sauce and half a cup of mirin and brought that up to a boil and once it's up to a boil the kombu has pretty much done its job so I started to fish out the kombu pieces and then I just boiled that for another 5 minutes to really bring all of those flavors together and I just skimmed off any of the foam that was building on the top and then you can strain off your toddy sauce and that's good in your fridge for at least a week that is a beautiful flavor enhancer let's give this seasoning a little taste to make sure it's gonna season correctly that is incredible that's so good not only is it salty and funky from the soy sauce but the kombu in there and the shiitake gives it so much um mommy but this right here this is gonna guarantee that our soup tastes incredible 8:00 p.m. I think I started this thing at 9:00 a.m. around then so we're close to 12 hours on this guy take a peek so just skim the surface one last time just to get any of that cut off and what I can do is you can see everything just falling apart right off the bone pop that in here and we can strain out now this stuff you can use but really this meat will have barely any flavor because all of the flavor has now been transferred in here over that long talk it's still really good texture you can throw it on a sourdough pancake there's a lot of stuff you can do this so I like keeping this stuff rather than just throwing it out now that might have taken all day but in my mind it's well worth it because look at this we've got golden beautiful chicken and pork stock and this is a bunch of servings right here because one of these that's ramen for at least two people maybe three you could water this down since it's pretty concentrated so this is not just ramen for one night this is an open canvas of delicious soups to come over the next few weeks and of course you can freeze these no problem alright so let's talk assembly let's talk about bringing this ramen shop experience together at your house and it's all about organization it's all about timing so I like having two pots going one pot over here is going to be my bra I'm just gonna pour that in and heat that up to you know a nice simmer so that is just the pure bone broth right there now over here I've got a pot of water boiling which is very important because I'm gonna be blanching some fresh ingredients so I peeled some carrots and cut those up into pieces and I also just pluck some bok choy right off the stem so I'll be blanching those ingredients in here but I can also throw the noodles in here so it's really just two pots of liquid for success right now so I'm first gonna just take my carrots and just blanch those right in there for about I would say two minutes you're just cooking them enough so they're nice and tender and you really retain and that flavor because there's so much flavor going into a ramen there's no need to roast these or saute these I actually really like having some fresh ingredients to balance everything out the carrots have been going for about two minutes what I'm gonna do now is throw in this bok choy and just blanch that and that only needs about one to two minutes so everything will be cooked to get got my cashew sliced up but let's take a quick field trip out to the grill first mmm big shout out to Napoleon grills for this thing right here this is a beast and this is an infrared burner right here I'm gonna throw these Joshu right on there because they're very bland right now they've got no texture but they are tender so I'm just gonna give them a nice sear real quick all right perfect field trip back inside all right take a look at this we have done it we are organized let me show you what it takes to really run your own ramen shop at home everything is in front of us everything is organized ready to go because ramen comes together quickly so we have our broth over here eaten up we've got our water for our noodles we have our chashu that is seared up and garnished scallions we have some toppings right here some carrots and some bok choy we've got our aromatic oil and then lastly you can't forget the noodles so like I said before ramen noodles are very specific they're alkaline style noodles they're super chewy and you can get them dried in a packet these are fresh which is gonna be of course the best this comes from Sun noodle company which supplies all of the ramen shops in New York they actually sell them in grocery stores now but just do your best at obtaining some good around the noodles see what you have locally around you and the supermarket's may be a specialty Japanese store or maybe you even make them at home there's plenty of tutorials online for that but you do not want to cook these long ramen the experience is the chewiness and they also cook in the hot broth as they sit in there so if they're fresh they only need a minute to two minutes obviously if they're from the package just follow the package instructions I'm just gonna take these right into here and as long as you're serving everything at the same time you'll be totally sample noodle nice so traditionally the today sauce goes into each bowl as a seasoning and the bottom of the bowl but that's a lot of work and I know that I'm gonna season these all equally so I'm just gonna pour this right into the soup and just make sure that felt the base soup is seasoned correctly and then we're good to go we can skip that step Oh perfect meaty mushroom me with the aromatic oil all these toppings we're on to something here so noodles are cooked everything is prepped I've got these beautiful ramen bowls right here I have four of them I'm cooking for four people tonight I'm gonna show you a demo on how I play one and then I'm gonna open up shop all right start off with a few ladles of that beautiful amber broth right there three ladles is perfect go in with a nice load of noodles I'll hit it with the chashu right there you carrots over here some bok choy in that corner and this is where things really pop off we're gonna take that egg you'll say perfect every time every time place that right on the side that's gonna add a really nice pop of color get a quick scoop of that oil and just drizzle that ginger scallion chili oil you see how it just drops up that's gonna perfume last but not least now that is a sexy-looking of soup right there super well-balanced and color and flavor and it's a complete dish it's all you really need for a dinner which is what I love about Rob now remember this is your art form right here plate it however you want get funky with the ingredients and the flavors that's why people love ramen because there's so many unique Styles out there so make it your own have fun with it and believe me making all the buzz elements it's well worth it when you taste this ball of noodle soup

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 506,459

Rating: 4.9331436 out of 5

Keywords: ramen noodles, how to make ramen, ramen shop, perfect ramen at home, how to make tare, how to make bone broth, how to make aromatic oil, aromatic oil, ginger oil, scallion oil, perfect ramen, 5 elements ramen, chashu, cashu recipe, ramen recipe, authentic ramen, half boiled egg, ramen toppings, pro home cooks, ramen for beginners, next level ramen, new

Id: Zg-89wuPfVc

Length: 22min 36sec (1356 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020