I’ve recently been getting back into making ramen. It’s been a dish I’ve been on and off wifth for eight years. I go. through phases with it.
2018
I’ve not really invested time into dashi or char siu. Still it is tasty and a lovely meal.
2020
It was lockdown, shops were crazy and there was no pork loin.
2026
I’m now more familiar with the concept of a dashi. This one is made of kelp, a smashed garlic clove, some chicken wings, salt, msg and white miso paste. It was slowly brought to a boil at which point I removed the kelp. Then it was pressure cooked to force every ounce of taste out of the chicken wings. After an hour it was strained and move into a spare pan to keep warm where I added some high quality dried kombu (kelp). If I was brave enough I’d go down to the beach and collect my own kelp as there’s loads on the shore. Unsure about the quality and freshness though.
The char siu pork was started a few days before. That was a marinate of sesame oil, dark soy, light soy, white pepper, honey, msg1 and salt. It sat in the fridge for 24 hours, was frozen in the marinade for 24, then thawed and cooked in the oven with the marinade until the internal temp was 65º. I was constantly spooning the marinade over the meat when it cooked to build up a thick coating. Once it’s cooked the spare marinade is the best hoisin sauce. The honey makes it nice and thick and once you know this trick, you need never buy hoisin again. The char siu remains in the fridge until it’s time to cook at which point it goes onto my iron grill for markings.
The eggs are basic softboiled eggs. I’ve tried every trick in the book to get them to peel nicely but I’ve yet to find a repeatable strategy. It’s been two decades and I think I’m bound to have hard to peel eggs. Also, I’ve not yet developed a technique for getting the noodles to present nicely. so basically I hide them in the bottom.
And that’s eight years of Raman.
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fuiyoh ↩