How to Make Delicious Home Made Ramen

My new knife, a Tojiro santoku

My ingredients: garlic, ginger, onion, mushrooms, kale, bok choy, carrot, jalapeno, green onions, and shrimp. We’re going to create a basic stock.

Peel a hunk of ginger, smash some garlic to peel…

… then throw them in a food processor. You don’t want them to be paste, but you want them to break down.

Setting up your mise is very important – make sure before starting any cooking job your prep is done; you don’t want to be scrambling to prep ingredients while other things are cooking. On the left is my stock ingredients, on the right is what’s going to go into the finished soup.

I wanted to show this to you guys, the proper way to cut green onions. My chef just showed this to me last week and I felt like an idiot going my whole life cutting green onions wrong. Most of the flavor will be concentrated towards the roots (same for hot peppers, leeks, etc). So you want to start at the bottom and use only about 2/3 of the green onion.

Cut the tips off…

and cut about 2/3 of the way up. The further towards the tops you go the tougher and less flavorful they’ll get.

When peeling shrimp, make sure to remove the pointy end by the tail (as seen on the shrimp on the left). Getting one of those under your fingernail will ruin your day.

All prep work done

My wet ingredients. I like the Roland brand, they’re from NYC and they make very decent quality products for a good price.

In the pot goes veg oil and a little bit of chili oil

Heat it until it starts to smoke, then throw in the ginger / garlic mix until it starts to brown

After everything was nice and browned, I added a bit of white wine to deglaze the pot and get all that delicious brown that’s stuck on the bottom into the mix.

Add in all the other chopped veg. At this point I realized I needed a bigger pot, so I made the switch.

Then I added everything else in moderation (you can always add more, you can’t take away) – soy sauce, fish sauce, rice vinegar, salt and pepper.

Filled the pot up with water and let it boil, then turned it down a bit to a simmer.

While the pot was simmering, I made my noodles. I already had a portion made from last week, but the ingredients list would be: 3 cups AP flour 1 tsp vital wheat gluten 1 tsp baked baking soda (or kansui which you can order on Amazon. By baking baking soda for about 45 minutes at 190 you’ll change the alkalinity of it. I’m no scientist but it makes the noodles springy.) 1/2 cup or more of water Mix everything together, add the water slowly. You want the dough to be dense, but not heavy, nor do you want to overwork it – knead it for just a few minutes. When it’s done, wrap it in plastic wrap and let it sit for 20-30 minutes.

When you’re ready to roll it out, cut it into quarters, then put it through a pasta machine.

Start on 7, then I go down to a 3 for some thickness.

Putting it though the spaghetti attachment. If you don’t have a pasta machine (they’re like $20-$30 for a perfectly decent one), you can roll the dough out with a rolling pin, flour it a bit, then fold it over itself a few times and slice it thin with a knife.

Stock is done. Taste and adjust ingredients as necessary.

Strain it, then return it to the pot on the stove.

Stock!

Get it boiling again, set a timer for 6 minutes. When it’s boiling, add an egg, and start the timer. 6 minutes will vary, but that’s a good approximation for a nice soft boiled egg.

When the timer is done, put the egg in an ice bath, add the noodles and stir vigorously to loosen them up. Cook them for just a couple of minutes.

Bam, ramen. Not the best looking bowl I’ve made, but probably the best tasting.
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