Tonkotsu Miso Ramen

ramen i've been wanting to make this forever and to be completely honest with you i've been holding off a little bit just because of how much time goes into making something like this i mean to give ramen that tender love and care that you need to give it in order to make it perfect i just haven't yet had the time for that but now is the time i know so many of you have asked for ramen for so so long so today we're making tonkatsu ramen tonkatsu ramen is a fan favorite and you may not recognize that word but trust me you know exactly what it is it's that ramen with that rich and fat pork broth those beautiful soft chewy fresh noodles and ooey gooey soft egg cooked to perfection beautiful juicy pork belly and whatever toppings you want now because this recipe is gonna take me quite some time i've already started a couple things but i started them yesterday i had a different haircut there was different weather outside but i had to get a couple of those steps done before to make sure this could come together today so for now let's pop back to yesterday when i hadn't shaved yet and when i had longer hair and we'll go to an asian market so we've just pulled up to this asian grocery store we are going to be grabbing some unique and awesome ingredients here because i need to really make sure that this broth delicious [Music] so the first things we're going to grab is a bunch of pork bones and chicken bones for that really flavorful stock [Music] this place literally they have everything in this market these black silky chickens there's so many cool things here then we're going to grab a couple of duck wings and chicken wings separately all the fish that they have in this place are alive and tanks they got some real plump melons in this place let me just tell you i'm not able to read some of this stuff so i'm having a little bit of trouble finding mirin but i know where the soy sauce is in an attempt to make this more flavorful broth i'm going to put some dried mushrooms in there as well and they have this massive selection i don't know what gorgeous memory means so i'm looking for enoki mushrooms which are these really nice thin ones that you might see in ramen sometimes so we got those i think we found them they have all the soy sauce in the world i could absolutely bathe in this stuff feels like negative eight million degrees in here i'm i'm frigid praise the mirror and gods we finally got it the beautiful the sweet nectar of the miren gods [Music] oh wait there's no space in there basically we couldn't get the pork belly at the last place but i got in front of the whole foods guy i'm standing there waiting he's like hey man this is weird but has anyone ever told you you look kind of like the guy that throws the knives on the internet i was like actually happens to be me well we got the pork belly so let's get home make some ramen let me just tell you and i mean this in the least perverted way possible there is nothing like a good japanese eggplant gotta find a place to put this for the drive so now that we've returned from the store i'm gonna start making that amazing ramen broth because to me that's the most important thing that we're working with here i'm actually doing this the day before but let's just get it going first into this large pot here i'm gonna go in with all my chicken wings that's gonna give us just some of the flavor here that we're looking for but i'm gonna get it from three different proteins next i'm gonna start taking these pork hawks that we got from the asian grocery store and dropping these right in with our chicken as you can see here there is some meat on the outside there we've got a nice big chunk of bone in there that's gonna give us tons and tons of flavor once i've tossed in all those pork bones make sure you don't put this thing in there i'm gonna go ahead and add my last bit of protein in there which are duck wings these again should give us some awesome unique flavor now i'm gonna cover all this up with some nice cold and crisp water then crank up the heat and bring this to a nice rolling boil which will get out a bunch of the nasty impurities once this has come to a rolling boil clear off some of the scum that begins to form on the top some people will tell you to rinse this all the way out but i like to keep all the flavor that's still in there from the bone so i don't like to rinse it out once you've cleared off the scum we're going to add in a nice big handful of white mushrooms a handful of those dried shiitake mushrooms that we got at the market which will hopefully give us that umami flavor then a few nice knobs of ginger one quartered onion a few cloves of garlic and last but not least a generous little handful of salt now is when we let this go overnight for 12 hours this is gonna do all the work for us while we go to sleep next we'll do our chashu pork belly that part of course is really important whenever you see ramen with a nice big hunk of pork in there that's what we're talking about right now now this part you don't have to do overnight but i'm gonna sous vide it to get it really soft and tender so i'm gonna let this go overnight as well this pork has been very bad so we have to tie it up first i'm gonna roll it all the way up just like this getting it as tight as i possibly can then i'm gonna come under it with some butcher's twine and then tying as snugly as possible i'm gonna give it a really good squeeze this way we can cut it into nice rings when we go to have our ramen we're gonna repeat this process across our entire pork belly for our sous vide the first thing we'll do is put this finely rolled up pork into a nice large bag to the bag we're going to add four cloves of garlic a few hunks of ginger three loosely chopped green onions one cup of soy sauce try to make it a nice high-end soy sauce one cup of mirin which is a really delicious sweet rice seasoning and it's a little bit similar to sake in flavor 1 3 cup of this extremely pungent fish sauce a nice little handful of white sugar about a half a cup or so and really anything else you want to be creative with then inside the bag we're gonna massage the heck out of our meat now we're gonna roll this up extremely tight and seal it and now with our water at 175 degrees fahrenheit i'm gonna slowly lower in that pork and cook this overnight for about 12 to 15 hours in the morning we should have the softest pork ever i'll see you in the morning okay it's the next morning i was tending to that ramen broth throughout the night i'm not sure if you can see it but it's in that silver pot back there i kept adding water throughout the night as it boiled off to allow the broth to get even more concentrated and my entire kitchen smells incredible not to mention that slow cooked pork that's all the way over there we had so many things going on in here that we blew the fuse three times last night but now we're ready to go about the rest of those steps so let's start with our soft boiled eggs now that our water's boiling we're ready to add those eggs but first we're gonna add about a tablespoon or two of vinegar which is actually gonna prevent running of the whites if any of these eggs crack at this point we're gonna quickly add our six eggs and then almost immediately we're gonna start our timer because the timing here is extremely important i'll drop in my six eggs burning my fingers in the process place on the lid and then i'm not sure if you can see the timing here but we're gonna do it for six minutes and nine seconds which i promise you it sounds silly but it's the perfect time for a soft boiled egg start once that time runs low we're gonna prepare to cold shock our eggs because given how precise these are we don't want them to overcook here i have a really cold ice bath and when the eggs are done i'll plunge them straight into the ice bath to halt their cooking we're timing them precisely for a reason here so once those are all in the ice bath mix them around a little bit to make sure they're evenly coated for our ramen egg marinade we'll combine three quarters cup of mirin one quarter cup soy sauce and one quarter cup dark soy sauce if you can't find dark soy sauce that's fine just add a little bit of brown sugar and try not to spill it all over your shoe now it's time to peel our eggs but i just wanted to show you guys first how perfect that yolk on the inside is i told you it's amazing now we're going to quickly peel these eggs trying not to ruin them in the process and i actually find that it helps to peel them right over and in that cold water now once you have those perfectly peeled eggs drop them right in that soy bath that's where that color and flavor will permeate right through the eggs once you've finished peeling all those eggs you're going to want to somehow weigh them down so they get even coloring throughout i'll cover these with plastic wrap and allow them to soak for several hours our eggs are all set next we're going to make our tare it's a really concentrated flavoring used in a lot of japanese soups as kind of a base and we're gonna add it to our broth to give it a little bit more flavor first we're gonna start with our dashi and there are five different types of dashi in japanese cuisine kombu katsu iriko shiitake and awase i apologize if i pronounce any of those incorrectly but awase is the one we're gonna be doing and that's a combination of several so to start we're gonna turn up the heat and add about three and a half to four cups of water now into that water we're gonna start with three sheets of kombu and really let this heat up to start getting some of the flavor out but we don't want to boil it we're actually looking to get around 170 degrees fahrenheit here basically dashi is this umami packed japanese soup stock it's used in so many different things and this is how we're going to build the foundation for our tare now that our kombu has had some time to soak and it's getting a little bit softened i can really take in all that flavor actually i want to get in a quick facial we're not filming right no okay oh my god now it's time to add a few more things what i have here is called nuboshi which are these dried baby sardines i've been soaking these sardines overnight so first i'll pour these into our broth or our tare i should say followed by about a cup of bonito flakes which if you've never heard of them are from a fish as well as a little handful of our dried shiitake mushrooms now i'll be totally honest i'm not sure if one i'm doing right now is permissible under japanese ramen laws but the way i see it i'm packing in tons of umami flavor here and making for an even more flavorful broth i'm also using ingredients that would be used in a traditional dashi regardless once this has had some good time to soak i'll turn off the heat and set it aside allowing it to soak a little bit longer once that incredible dashi is done and i can't even begin to describe the flavors coming out of this thing we'll strain it into a nice large bowl the broth that's here smells incredible and it already feels like this itself would be a delicious treat to slowly sip but now keeping about two cups of our dashi we'll create our tare by adding one cup of soy sauce one cup of mirin one half cup of sake two tablespoons vinegar six cloves of garlic which i'll press through my garlic press to let them spread and get out more and more flavor and by the way if you like using garlic by hate getting it on your fingers i would highly recommend a garlic press about a two inch piece of cut up ginger and then about two tablespoons of black peppercorns now we're gonna let our tade sit just like the eggs to kind of soak in all these flavors and we'll strain it at the last minute now for our ramen i don't know what i just did with my hands i don't know why i did that we're gonna start by adding six grams of baking soda to 160 grams of water then we're gonna whisk this up and let it go you see ramen noodles are very interesting the first thing i'll say is please do not use dry instant ramen noodles this is an absolute no-go don't worry i'm still gonna eat that ramen noodles are very different in that they need to be alkalinated that's basically just a fancy way of saying that we put baking soda in the dough but another trick is to boil regular spaghetti with eight cups of water and a couple tablespoons of baking soda in it that can also get you those nice chewy noodles that we look for in ramen once all that baking soda is mixed in we'll add a nice little sprinkle of salt and mix that in as well until dissolved then we'll set our water aside and now in a large mixing bowl we're gonna add about 400 grams of bread flour and four grams of vital wheat gluten the vital wheat gluten you may have to order online if you want to make these homemade but again you can take the easy route and boil spaghetti in that baking soda water now we'll whisk this up until it's well combined making sure that that wheat gluten is evenly distributed and now we'll add this bowl to our mixer with the paddle attachment and churning slowly i'll add in about half of my water to let this get evenly distributed it should start to get nice and crumbly and once those crumbles start to get more even you can prepare to put that second batch of water in now we'll add in that second amount of water letting this evenly soak into our dough it should start to come together more at this point and if you do need to add a little bit of extra water to let that dough come fully together do it once this is clumpy and well combined we'll turn off our mixer and let it rest cover with plastic wrap for 30 minutes once that dough has had some time to rest separate it out into two separate balls and press them together what's nice about this dough is that you don't have to knead it after we've rolled it out a little bit with our rolling pin you gotta love a good handy rolling pin we'll begin to roll out our noodles again this is gonna be extremely dry but just be confident with it and let the mixer do all the work after rolling it through take a little bit of bread flour and sprinkle that across your ramen dough then roll it again we just want to get it nice and smooth to the point that we can make some gorgeous noodles again this dough is really hard to work with because it's a little bit dry and it's also very glutinous so to be honest if there's any step that i'd skip in making homemade ramen and you're a little bit nervous about it i'd probably skip this part once you've rolled this out nearly all the way we're ready to cut it into that spaghetti shape switch on that spaghetti head and then you're ready to roll give yourselves a huge pat on the back right now because what you're looking at right here are your gorgeous homemade ramen noodles i have to say i've never done this before but these look absolutely fantastic in fact i could almost use them as a nice scarf just toss them over myself and walk around like this in public i think people would like me this way now once you've cut your ramen into nice portions spin that ramen into nice little nests and hit it with a nice spray of bread flour just so nothing sticks now our ramen is ready to be cooked right here is our 24 hour ramen broth you can see that it's been going for so long that we have that darker more robust color all that pork chicken and duck are more tender than anything you've ever seen before the bones have been fully cleaned of all their meat and what we have right here is a complex fatty umami packed broth perfect for running we're gonna strain off all this broth to make it nice and smooth as we don't want any of these solids in the final product i like to use a really fine strainer here just to make sure that we're getting every last solid out and now what you see here is our broth concentrated delicious and ready to go next we have our chashu which is our japanese pork belly that we need to cut let's hear that again folks there's going to be juice everywhere here i know that this is going to be messy you know what time it is it's time to get our hands dirty now i'm going to very gently come in and try to lift out this pork belly without it breaking on me you can see that it's just falling right apart here oh my god that's good that is so good i'm gonna start by adding some of that excess liquid into our pot here because we can use some of that in our ramen broth too as this has more pork flavor than anything we could possibly imagine now i'll roll this onto our counter what you're looking at here is pork belly that's cooked the entire night the whole thing is so jiggly this right here is fall apart pork belly just look at this piece of fat here that can crumble right across my gloves and the meat pulls right out of the sides even our cloves of garlic here fall right apart in your hands this pork is something out of my dreams it is dripping juice and it is so incredibly hot you can see where each of the pieces of butcher's twine are still on here but i just can't help it i have to spank it lastly though i do want you to look at the meat on the sides there you can see that all that pork is almost shredded like this soft perfectly tender pulled pork to everybody watching right now if you're not drooling right now i'm sorry i don't know how i can ever please you i don't know if you'll be able to watch my videos anymore cause this is just about the best i think i can do pork belly it's been a pleasure getting to know you these last 24 hours but now it's time to cut in oh pork belly i didn't need to do that i am sorry now for our ramen we want these beautiful rings cut out of this pork belly so let's get a couple of nice slices just right through here you know it's funny it's almost so soft and tender that i can't really get any slices but given how tender this is this is the best we're gonna do here and that looks just like what you'd see in a ramen bowl so that's good enough for me once i've pulled off the pork belly's thong i can get a few more good slices in but again inside i'm laughing because it's almost too tender to do what we're looking to do with it once you've gotten a couple nice slices that can go in your ramen bowls we're all set to prepare the rest of the ingredients and make this ramen while we have you here i want to give you one last sense of how delicate this is watch how easily my knife goes through this not just kidding we don't need a knife look at that pulled pork now to finish off our tare which is of course a very important part of this we're first going to strain out all those little things that we added in there for that extra flavor then we'll add a little bit of that pork liquid just to give a little bit of extra pork flavor in there and last but not least what i have here is shiro miso which i'm actually going to open up and add a few tablespoons of directly to my tare in addition to that miso flavor of course that's actually going to give us that nice cloudiness that we look for in a really good miso broth so once i whisk this up our tade is all set we can set this aside now what i have here are enoki mushrooms and these are quick and easy just a nice topping to put on our ramen i'll very simply chop off the base which has those dirty areas on it and then just steam these beauties off for a few minutes and they're ready to go now it's time to finally open up those soft boiled eggs and i know you've probably been waiting for this moment first let's cross our fingers that we got that color from those eggs sure enough we did just to show you a little spot on the top of the egg that was not submerged should give you that contrast to show you how amazingly well this got colored with our soy now for one of the most exciting things we're going to cut through that egg very clean and keeping all that yolk inside as you can see the outsides of the egg have clearly gotten some of that soy and boy oh boy aren't those yolks incredible just look at how soft and amazing it is when cutting these open use a really sharp knife to get that nice clean cut now we've reached the final shot where we assemble i know this is the moment you've all been waiting for so let's get started to start after mixing it around a little bit i'll place in a nice spoonful or two of my tare again that's gonna give that beautiful umami broth base here then comes my actual broth the whole top layer is fat that beautiful pork fat that we're looking for in our broth and with this i'll take several large scoops right into my big bowl this right here is what we all came for we worked so incredibly hard in this gorgeous broth so it's amazing to finally be able to put it into the bowl one more scoop and we should be complete now you might be wondering where are the actual ramen noodles those should be placed into this hot broth immediately when they finish so into this pot i will pour a bunch of boiling water unsalted and once it's boiling over very high heat i'll toss in our rum i'll stir this around just to make sure none of it sticks and then for just a minute and 30 seconds or so we'll let this cook admire how amazing my homemade noodles are and after one or two shakes put it directly into my ramen broth this already looks incredible and now we're ready for that final plating so in go our enoki mushrooms evenly spaced out for a beautiful little look on the side then we'll go right in the middle with those gorgeous eggs then we have our beautiful pork which will rest right on the side of our ramen then a nice generous handful of green onions and last but not least some nori that i've actually gotten straight from japan and that right there is one of the most gorgeous ramen bowls i've ever seen now before we eat this i want to paint the pork in a little bit more fat and then just give it a little torch for some color and flavor now our ramen is ready to eat now before i eat i do want to say that this is one of the most beautiful bowls of ramen i've ever seen and yes i feel like i'm saying that often with things we make but think about how much time and effort goes into all these things i'm always going to tell you the truth too about how things taste look i've tried a lot of things out there so i love food but i'm rarely truly impressed by food that much anymore and i'm not saying that in a picky or greedy way i've just been so lucky to try so many things and food has been my whole life so it's just rare that i come across things that truly blow my mind but i'll eat anything bring me the popeyes for lunch i'm the happiest person ever and bring me to a really nice restaurant and i'll enjoy that too but i will say that i'm really excited for this ramen i think the first thing i want to do since we put so much time and effort into it is try that broth so let's dive in i'm going to take a nice little spoonful out mix it around a little bit to fill it up and then take a slurp this is really special and i completely mean that i've been to japan once and i've tried a lot of ramen there i've tried ramen all over the place i am absolutely not kidding and you can try it yourself if you don't believe me following all these steps but this is definitely one of the best ramen broths i've ever had it's fatty which is exactly what you want it's super super flavorful with so much umami in there and so much depth to the flavor it's also just a little bit thicker in your mouth you have that cloudy miso in there i mean it's just one of those broths that you don't need the rest of the rum it's something so incredibly magnificent just by itself now next i actually want to just try one of these eggs quickly no i don't like eggs normally and i still don't love these just by not liking eggs that much but i love that that soy has permeated the edges just a little bit and gives it kind of a unique flavor and texture it's really really tasty but next we have to try those homemade ramen noodles because we really did put a lot of work into these so let's see if we nailed that consistency i mean i'm not really surprised here but they're delicious similar to the way fresh pasta is a little bit more delicate and just fresher than boxed dry pasta this has those same qualities which i love just one more little bite here of that fall apart pork we are absolutely not messing around with this ramen and i'll say this without a question without even having to stop and think we've brought in parmesan wheels on this channel we've had tons and tons and tons of fresh fish live stuff all the time that comes right in the kitchen and then moments later we eat it ridiculous burgers made from wagyu from japan but suddenly all of that doesn't matter so much this is the best thing we've made yet on youtube and i mean that 150 this is insane now this bull is probably a little bit bigger than my head so it's going to take me some time to eat this thing but let me quickly say this please don't forget to drop a like in the video definitely subscribe and if you already are hit that notifications button it's just sitting right there waiting for you and you don't want to miss anything like this and also we're almost at 2 million subscribers which is absolutely insane so you could be the 2 million and that'd be pretty special but really i hope you enjoyed the video i am telling you right now this ramen was absolutely insane so definitely definitely give this a shot if you're even thinking about it and i'll see you next time

Channel: Nick DiGiovanni

Views: 3,745,527

Rating: 4.9173613 out of 5

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Id: hA4yfpXeq8k

Length: 21min 10sec (1270 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021

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