Why homemade Ramen is the perfect make ahead weeknight meal.

a traditional bowl of ramen consists of five bespoke components which are the noodles the soup the tare the aromatic oil and the toppings and the best part about this is all of these can and really should be prepared ahead of time as most of them can be stored either indefinitely or for quite a long time in the fridge or freezer this means that with a little bit of prep amazing and delicious bowls of ramen become accessible on a busy weeknight at a moment's notice today i'll cover each component as i make them for a healthiest bowl of chicken shoyu ramen and it's amazing how complex and delicious this stuff is also all the information that i learned from making this video is from the book of ramen by the ramen lord on reddit or mike satin over and i highly recommend giving it a read it's a free book for everyone and you'll instantly start making better ramen but with all that being said let's break it down y'all to start let's talk noodles so ramen is not ramen without the noodles and to be ramen noodles they must have two things one wheat in the form of flour and two kansui or alkaline salts which provide the noodles with the signature structure as well as aid in color and taste now there are recipes in mike's book to make your own you could also buy fresh noodles or just use instant noodles like i am and today i'll actually be using the high protein healthier instant noodles from today's sponsor white ramen so let me thank them now white ramen is a high protein healthier instant ramen and specifically the instant ramen meal packets can have 26 to 31 grams of protein compared to just 9 grams like many store-bought brands today i'll be using the naked nudes for my bowl of ramen and one plain brick has 23 grams of protein helping me stay fuller for longer the noodles are made with wheat quinoa corn fiber and kansui to create a nutritionally complete noodle and all the broths are actually made with real ingredients whether it's real pork or chicken or even real white miso imported from japan straight up these guys have a cool vision and run a great company based in the u.s and the ramen is honestly priced in order to supply each employee with a living wage so if you all want to support them and my channel or just get a healthier version of ramen noodles which i'm all about head to the link in my description and use the code ethan to get 10 off plus an exclusive bundle including free chopsticks a free ramen spoon and some stickers these noodles are great to use as a starting point to get a little bit healthier bowl and then you can doctor them up with the tare the aromatic oil and toppings like we'll get into right now so once you have your noodle selected we have the soup or broth you may call it and these are usually meat based soup made from beef pork or chicken bones where the goal is to transform collagen into gelatin which increases the viscosity of the liquid for better mouthfeel the two base soups are chin ten which are clear soups and pie 10 which are cloudy soups which is due to emulsifying the fat in the stock such as with a blender for my soup i made a supremely simple chicken ginger stock which is a clear soup so to start get out a whole chicken and break it down for this i'm after three components the bones which will be used for the stock the chicken skin which will be rendered down and used for our garlic sealant chicken oil and finally the meat which will be used for a roasted and rolled chicken dye with everything broken down and separated let's start with the bones for making our soup so i used the thigh bones the backbone and also just threw in the wings as there as well and you're going to want to set your preferred stockpot over a scale toss in all the bones and note that weight down in my case this was 900 grams now to that i'm gonna add two times that amount in water so 1.8 kilograms and this ratio will give us a well gelatinized stock though you could use even less water if you wanted a very chickeny version once the water is added set the pot onto boil and during which some scum will rise to the top and i tend to remove some of this but it doesn't really make a massive difference either way then instead of bathing this thing on the burner for several hours just toss it in a preheated 190 degree fahrenheit oven for five hours and during which the collagen will break down and some of that fat will release after five hours pull the pot out and just take a look at this beauty then for the last hour i tossed in a large piece of ginger and just let that cook for another hour to release those flavors and we really don't want to add the aromatics like ginger garlic or onions at the start as they will actually lose too much flavor and you won't notice them after the final hour with the ginger strain the soup out into a large bowl and you might need a helping hand here now instead of attempting to strain the fat off the top while it's warm i just set this in the fridge and pull it out the next morning making it much easier finally i like to strain the stock one more time and put it into these mason jars which hold around 350 milliliters or grams which is the perfect size for heating up one bowl of ramen and these will store in the fridge for about a week or six months in the freezer now this soup may look and smell like it's full of flavor when you actually heat it up but if we toss the noodles with it you'll be so disappointed because it has no tare let me explain in the book of ramen mike notes that tarai is the secret sauce of ramen and it's even more important than the soup how can that be you ask well it's quite simple adding atari to the soup does three things one it adds salt two it adds flavor and three it adds umami that chicken and ginger broth we just made has no salt in it by adding some tare to the bottom of the ramen bowl and then mixing it with the broth takes it from this is kind of boring to really something special in general there are three categories of tares being shoyu shio and miso which use different forms of salt as the base now there is a lot more info on this you can read in mike's book if you would like but today i decided to make a super basic shoyutare by adding 300 grams of soy sauce to a deli container along with 10 grams of kombu or dried seaweed for a mommy and 40 grams of mirin for sweetness then set that in the fridge to let cold steep for 6 hours or up to 2 days which will help extract the umami flavor or glutamic acid from the kombu then when ready pour the mixture into a pot and heat it until it reaches roughly 160 degrees fahrenheit and hold it there for 10 minutes after 10 minutes remove the kombu and then add 10 grams of katsuobushi or dashi fish flakes and hold it roughly 180 degrees fahrenheit for 10 minutes we don't want this thing boiling finally strain off this liquid and push down on those dashi fish flakes to extract all the flavor that we can and you can keep this in your fridge pretty much indefinitely i like to transfer it to a squirt bottle for easy use and this stuff is salty smoky from the fish flakes and umami from the kombu let's talk aromatic oil as we have learned before like in my sandwich video fat carries flavor and also enhances the mouth feel creating that glossy feel on the tongue and teeth and it's really no different with ramen the aromatic oil is there to transport flavors from the fat itself and whatever flavorings were added to it for my ramen i made a basic garlic scallion chicken oil and with those saved chicken skins from the breast and chicken carcass all you have to do is throw them in a cold pan with a little bit of water and set the heat to medium low and slowly let that fat render until the skins are crisp this will probably take at least 30 to 45 minutes and you just want to let it go low and slow until the skins are golden brown we don't want any burning which will give the oil and off taste and these chef presses are really nice for increasing contact on the pan once golden brown and really crisp you're going to remove the chicken skin from the bowl now chicken smallz is great as is but even better is infusing it with the flavor of garlic and scallion so set the pan to medium-low and slice off the bottom of a bunch of scallions along with tossing in two lightly smashed cloves of garlic let everything toast together while stirring until it's fragrant probably around 10 minutes or so once those are done cooking you can remove them from the oil and save them for a fried rice or something and then strain that oil into a bowl and this should last about a week or two in the fridge if it's strained really well or you could store this into the freezer for up to six months and just a little drizzle of this stuff takes ramen over the top but lastly let's talk toppings toppings as you may expect can vary wildly pork shashu and soft boiled eggs are probably the most popular ones you see along with green onions and seaweed and today i'm keeping it fairly simple i took two chicken thighs salted the interior and exterior before letting it rest in the fridge for overnight or at least one hour to firm up in dry brine then i took it out the next morning and rolled each thigh up before securing them with butcher's twine i then just put those on a wire rack over a baking sheet and gently toasted them at 275 degrees fahrenheit until they reach about 165 or 170 degrees internal then instead of slicing these right away wrap them up in plastic wrap and just pop it in the fridge so it's a bit easier to slice later on and these things may look a little weird but it's actually quite good we can also make soft boiled eggs ahead of time too by first setting a pot of water onto boil and then carefully sliding in the four eggs set a timer for six and a half minutes and then just remove them and add them to a bowl of ice water and let cool for 15 minutes before removing the shells and storing them until you're ready if one does break just take it as a snack opportunity now with all that we have our completed make ahead components and it definitely seems like a lot of work but like 95 of this is just inactive time so i would highly recommend doing this on an off day like a sunday while you're lounging around the house anyway or even make some of the components like a week or two in advance you can really make all these at your leisure but now that everything is prepped this is where the magic happens all it takes is really just the time to cook some noodles and this is how i do it to start place your ramen bowl in the oven on the lowest setting and set it to preheat and take it out after it's done preheating meanwhile also set a pot of water on to boil the noodles and additionally just prep the toppings in my case this was slicing up the chicken thigh and the scallions along with cutting the egg in half after that microwave the chicken ginger soup in the mason jar until it reaches around 175 degrees fahrenheit it's for about 2.5 minutes back to the water the noodles go into the boiling water just giving them a stir and cooking to the recommendation on the package you definitely want to avoid overcooking these while the noodles cook set the ramen bowl over a scale and add 30 grams of the shoyutare 10 grams of the chicken garlic oil and 325 grams of the hot chicken ginger soup now the noodles should be done so just strain them and add them directly to the bowl of soup and you definitely don't want to let these sit or they can become sticky some people also do a fancy noodle fold still kind of learning on that one and finally add those toppings come in with the rolled chicken thigh slice at six o'clock the scallions right in the center the jammy egg at 10 o'clock and some pickled onions at 2 o'clock for a little acidity to help cut through the richness of the soup and now we have a beautiful bowl of ramen let's taste test all right everybody let's do that quick taste test i've been dying to get these working [Music] easily one of the best bowls of ramen that i've ever made i love the broth it's nice and chickeny but then it's flavored you know by that tare sauce that we added to the bottom remember the broth didn't actually have any salt in it so that tare gives us the saltiness it gives us umami from the kombu and the smokiness from those fish flakes then you pair that with some nice chewy noodles we got a little bit of the healthier ones from white ramen thank you again and then whatever toppings that you want to add you know the soft boiled eggs is a classic a little bit of meat maybe some scallions are also very traditional and then using that aromatic oil as a way to kind of increase the the mouth feel a little bit of glossiness in there which is definitely a key component but hopefully you guys have enjoyed the video and now kind of understand how rama works i think the cool thing about this is you know you could apply this whether you're making instant ramen maybe you take their broth packet or whatever but then maybe you doctored up with a little bit of aromatic oil or some you know some different toppings that you can try out so hopefully you guys have enjoyed the recipe for this specific version will be up on my website if you guys want to check it out and again if you want to learn more about it definitely check out the book of rahm and i highly recommend i'll leave a link in the description of that that's gonna wrap it up for me in this one y'all i'll catch you in the next one peace [Music]

Channel: Ethan Chlebowski

Views: 831,951

Keywords: Ethan Chlebowski, shoyu ramen, shoyu tare, ramen, homemade ramen, homemade ramen broth, ramen noodles, ramen recipe, how to make ramen, aroma oil for roaen, chicken broth for ramen, chicken soup for ramen, ramen lord, the book of ramen, ramen lord shoyu tare, weeknight ramen, ramen toppings, miso ramen, shio ramen, ramen soup

Id: YPgehlk3JkQ

Length: 12min 52sec (772 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 23 2021