This recipe is Momofuku and Brodo inspired. A stripped-down version, simple to execute but still complex in flavour and oh so comforting. Akin to making ramen with training wheels or maybe just a cheater version... regardless, it’s a step up from my household’s obsession with Ichiban and it has all the health benefits that bone broths are full of.
The basics of ramen are this - a piping hot bowl of broth, noodles, toppings and taré.
In this case, we’ll be using a broth made from roasted pork bones. The noodles of choice are alkaline ramen noodles, but soba or udon also work well. As far as toppings go, for simplicity, I usually just have a ramen egg, but most will doctor their ramen up with a variety of other ingredients. Lastly, the taré is added for depth. Taré is kind of like the secret sauce that makes ramen so damn tasty.
My taré is based on Momofuku’s Tokyo inspired taré, but generally, it’s seen as a Japanese bbq sauce made from chicken fond (the fatty liquid that caramelizes on your pan when you roast bones) reduced with sake, mirin and soy until it’s a dark, magic bullet of a sauce.
For this recipe, because we are using pork bones only, I just use the pork fond leftover in the roasting pan and I scrape that out and pour into a pot, add a splash of sake, mirin and soy sauce and reduce until saucy. Lastly, I add some fresh cracked pepper to the taré.
(If you want to know more about the amazing world of ramen here’s a good place to start. Enjoy the rabbit hole.)
Serves: 4-6
Cooks: 2-18 hours (as long as you can simmer that broth for)
INGREDIENTS
Bone Broth Ingredients
5 L of water or just fill up your largest pot
A handful of dried mushrooms, in my case I used morels but shitakes are great too
A handful of meaty pork bones like knuckles, necks, and bones with marrow
Few cloves of garlic
1 medium onion cut in half
1 cup of soy sauce
½ cup saké
½ cup of mirin
Taré or (use soy sauce, salt and mirin)
Ramen Bowl Ingredients
1 pack of alkaline ramen noodles (the yellowish noodles). Udon or soba also works well.
½ cup of rice vinegar
dash of fish sauce
dash of sesame oil
dash of chilli oil if you'd like
4 ramen eggs (soft boiled eggs, peeled & marinated in equal parts soya sauce, mirin and rice vinegar for a couple of hours)
Other ramen toppings to your liking, these include but aren’t limited to seaweed, enoki mushrooms, scallions, sesame seeds, canned bamboo shoots, garlic, pickled ginger, spicy mustard greens, bean curd strips, or pork belly.
INSTRUCTIONS
Preheat the oven to 375˚F. Roast the pork bones on a baking sheet for 1 hour. Flipping them halfway through to evenly brown them. (Roasted bones impart a darker, richer, colour and extra depth of flavour to the broth.)
While this is happening, fill the largest pot you have with water.
Chuck in the dried mushrooms. Bring the water to a boil and then turn to a simmer for 30 minutes.
Add the roasted pork bones to the broth. Keep it simmering. (I don’t skim the fat off the top of the ramen broth while it's simmering - I like it to emulsify back in. This leads to a creamier/murkier looking broth similar to Tonkotsu style broth.)
While this is going on make your taré. Scrape the caramelized fat on your baking pan into a pot and deglaze with saké. Add a splash of mirin and soy sauce and reduce until thick and saucy. Crack some fresh black pepper on it. Set aside.
Add the onion and garlic. simmer for 1 hour or more if you’d like. (The longer you cook those bones, the more nutrients you’ll get out of them. I like to simmer for a full day)
Remove and discard the bones and vegetables
Finish the broth by seasoning it to taste with mirin, soy sauce, and/or sugar. Realistically just a dash of each.
While this is going on, in a separate heavily salted pot, boil the noodles according to the instructions on the back of the package.
For assembly, place a dash of sesame oil, taré, chilli oil, and or fish sauce in the bottom of your bowl. Add the noodles. Then add 2 ladles of broth. Next dress the bowl with your ramen egg and whatever other garnishes you want and then finally finish with a touch of stock. Enjoy.
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