#but yeah half ginger miso broth half water 1/2 packet of bonito dashi stock tablespoon + miso

[spockoholic]

so, fun story, within DAYS of making this post i caught a nasty cough at work that i’m still trying to get rid of (💀 the start of the school year releases every illness imaginable upon the city, it’s a petri dish in there, not even considering covid) and i have been eating so much soup, frankly an obscene amount of soup, specifically miso soup so i thought i’d share tonight’s soup on the soup post: we got miso soup with oyster mushrooms tofu and wakame. very good, quick and easy, tasty tasty, good for me will cure me (maybe)

IT’S SEPTEMBER ITS TIME DONT TALK TO ME

rb with ur fav soup

[ladysmaragdina]

So remember how that ramen joint was opening up across the street from me today? Yeah, me neither.

In other news, HOLY SHIT GUYS, I FIXED MY RAMEN RECIPE. HOLY. SHIT. I’m gonna post it here so that a) I remember how I tweaked the base recipe next time and b) last time I posted about ramen I got about ten requests for this, so here you go.

This is a nice, straightforward, miso ramen. It’s not a super-creamy 18-hour+ tonkotsu ramen. I’m not that godly yet. (I’m also a white person who is not even trying to be authentic)

Okay.

BROTH

(Cook/prep time 7+ hours, can be made in advance)

Until I figure out how to get shit to render properly in a slow cooker, this is a day-long cooking endeavor.

The recipe I’m basing this off of calls for four pounds of pig neck bones, one whole quartered chicken carcass with the breasts removed, and one pig trotter. I don’t have a stockpot big enough to deal with that and am intimidated by pig trotters (and chicken necks, and chicken feet, and other things I probably SHOULD be using), so:

- A couple pounds of pork bones

- A couple pounds of chicken wings

- One onion, chopped

- About ten cloves of garlic

- About a two-inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped

- One or two carrots, peeled and chopped

- A handful of dried shiitake mushrooms

- One or two sticks of celery, chopped

- Instant dashi*

* Yes, I could make my own dashi with kombu and bonito flakes and such, but fuck that.

Toss your pork bones in a large pot, cover with cold water and bring to a boil. Hold it there, skimming scum off the top, for 20-30 minutes or until scum stops rising. Pork bones are weird; this keeps your stock from smelling funky. One time I didn’t blanch and it was Not Great.

While that’s going, chop your veggies and, optionally, brown your chicken wings.

When the bones are done blanching, dump the water, rinse the bones, rinse out the pot if you’re still using the same one. Toss everything except the celery and the dashi in a large stockpot. Cover with water by an inch or two (if you wanna replace some of the water with a can or two of chicken broth, go for it). Bring to a boil, reduce to the smallest of simmers, and cover. 

Let this go at a bare simmer for at least six hours. I let mine go for ten. You’re not leaving the house today. 

DON’T FUCKING STIR. 

When there’s an hour or two to go, add the celery (DON’T FUCKING STIR).

When it’s done, carefully strain, discard the solids, and add the dashi at a ratio of about 1/2 teaspoon/cup. I save this for last since a) dashi doesn’t like sustained high heat and b) I’m never sure how much liquid I’ll end up with. Incidentally, two cups of broth is about one (very generous!) individual serving, and I’ve got little tupperware containers that hold that much; I’ll dump a teaspoon of dashi into each one and ladle the broth over.

This stuff freezes real well. I usually get about 5-6 bowls of broth out of one batch.

Your broth is gonna taste kinda shitty. It has no salt! Read on.

TARE

(Cook/prep time 15ish minutes, can be made in advance)

Tare = flavoring. I’m still tweaking this part, but today is the first day I feel like I maybe got it right.

I should probably reduce this recipe by a third or so; it makes a FUCKTON of tare (but if you’ve got extra tare left over once your frozen broth runs out, you can half-ass the broth with canned chicken broth, dashi, and whatever aromatics you’ve got floating around. It won’t be as rich, but hey. No pork bones or gristly chicken bits = no collagen to render = no need for a 6-hour cooktime!).

- One cup white miso

- One cup red miso (yes, you want both types. BOTH types. I’ve done this with pre-blended red-and-white (awase) miso, but for some reason it’s not as great)

- At least two or three tbsps soy sauce

- One tbsp sesame oil

- One or two tbsps tahini (if you don’t have tahini - I opened mine today and found it was moldy - double or maybe triple the sesame oil)

- One or two tbsps rice wine vinegar

- At least six cloves of garlic, grated

- About a two-inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated

- Half an onion, grated

- Sichimi togarashi to taste (a teaspoon? half a teaspoon?)

- Salt and/or - gasp! - MSG to taste

Mix it all up into a paste. Taste it. Is it salty as absolute fuck? If not, add more soy/salt. Then a little more to be sure.

This also freezes real well.

FAT

(Cook/prep time 30ish minutes + however long it took you to accumulate the bacon grease, can be made in advance)

This is TOTALLY OPTIONAL, but! It’ll give you that nice shimmery aroma-trapping film of fat on the top of the bowl.

- Grease from maybe one package of bacon (if you’re not straining and saving the grease from whenever you cook bacon, SHAME. You can also just buy lard - but. BACON.)

- The other half of your onion, chopped

- Some more ginger, peeled and chopped

- Maybe a dozen cloves of garlic

Cook the onions, garlic and ginger in the fat until golden - maybe half an hour? Strain, discard solids. Now you’ve got garlic-ginger-onion infused bacon fat. Congratulations.

This keeps in the fridge real well.

TOPPING: CHILI-GARLIC STUFF

(Cook/prep time 15ish minutes, can be made in advance)

This isn’t a recipe so much as “shit I threw together at the last minute because I realized that miso ramen goes well with spicy things.” Take some minced garlic, vegetable or sesame oil, a lot of sichimi togarashi, and whatever else (sesame seeds? Sugar?). Saute until the garlic is blackish and sticky. If you’re feeling less lazy than I was, puree. Toss that shit on as a topping because, since you made it, it’s fancier than sriracha. Yaaaaay.

TOPPING: MARINATED EGG

(Cook/prep time 6-8 hours, CANNOT be made in advance)

Soft-boil an egg! Bring a pot of water to a boil, dump in an egg that’s still cold from the fridge, and boil for six minutes; your margin of error here is maybe thirty seconds each way. Shock in icewater. Peel, carefully. Marinate in a 3/2/1 ratio of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sake (you can skip the sake, or add other things like ginger or extra sugar, or whatever), folding a paper towel over the top to soak up the liquid and ensure the top off the egg soaks too.

Marinate for six or perhaps eight hours, definitely no more than ten. Too short in the marinade, and you won’t pick up much  flavor (you’ll still have a nice soft-boiled egg, though). Too long, and your egg will start getting weird and rubbery.

NOODLES

Noodles

(does... does Amazon seriously have these listed for $25 a pack? They’re like $3 at my local Asian market. Good lord.)

Seriously, if you’ve read this far... don’t use instant noodles. Fresh noodles are amazing. I buy Sun Ramen’s frozen miso ramen kits and toss out the flavoring packet. (Lowball the cooking time. The miso noodles say to cook for 2:15; I give them maaaaaaybe two minutes)

All this shit (minus the egg) fucking freezes, and fresh noodles are no exception. Give them a day to thaw in the fridge before using.

ASSEMBLY

The fucking GREAT thing about ramen is that ALL THIS SHIT FUCKING FREEZES and you can just heat it up later. So:

- Thaw/heat up your broth, heat up your water for the noodles.

- While that’s going, dump about a tablespoon of your infused fat and an ice-cream-scoop of tare into your bowl (honestly, I add tare to the point of saturation). Prep any toppings you want - take the egg out of the marinade, chop green onions, whatever. Set the table. Pour your drink. Do all that shit now.

- When your water and broth are both boiling, dump the noodles in the water and start a timer for them. While that’s going, dump your broth into your bowl and wisk until the fat melts and the tare is incorporated (don’t forget to give the noodles a stir or two during this so they don’t clump). 

- Drain the noodles, briefly shock under cold water, and dump in your bowl. Quickly. Fresh ramen noodles are WEIRD. If you don’t shock them, they’ll keep cooking and go mushy; if you don’t get them from boiling water to bowl in less than ten seconds, they clump like fuck. (I have never tried to time the noodles for multiple servings of ramen for multiple people. I am vaguely terrified to)

- Toppings

- IT IS FOOD

And there you go!

...You’ll notice I’m missing a recipe for everyone’s favorite topping: chashu pork. Honestly, I live alone, this is SO MUCH FOOD that chashu pork feels excessive. Don’t let me stop you. Go do what I cannot.