The BEST Ramen Recipe! Traditional Shoyu Ramen

Hi guys, I'm Seonkyoung Longest. Welcome to Asian at Home. It's been rainy, cold, wet in North California for a while and all I can think about is a warm bowl of ramen. The shoyu ramen we had in Kyoto, Japan will warm up our soul for sure. So that's what I'm making today. The house smell is so amazing because I've been simmering my ramen broth for three hours and by now the ramen broth must have amazingly deep deep flavor that no packaged ramen could ever have. We started from six pounds of pork neck bones. You can find the pork neck bones really easily at any Asian grocery stores or ask your butcher shop. They might have some. Soak the pork in cold water for one hour. This process will help to get rid of a lot of blood from the pork meat and the bones. Discard the water and bring enough water to boil and blanch those pork bones for five to seven minutes. Drain and discard the water. Some of you might worry, oh those are all the flavors you're throwing away. No, we are throwing away all those bone bits, blood, and dirty scums from the meat and the bones. They are dirty flavors that we do not want in our broth. The key point of Kyoto shoyu ramen or all Japanese ramen is super deep flavor yet super duper clean as well. So this step is necessary. Wash each bones under the running cold water. You can get another pot out or just wash the same pot real quick like I did and place those clean pork bones into the pot. Now let's add lots of flavor fragrance vegetables. Two ounce of sliced ginger, two bulbs of garlic cut in half, one large leek. Cut it in half and wash it through really well because the leek contains a lot of dust and mud in between the layers. So make sure you wash it really well and then add into the pot. A large piece of kombu or dried kelp. It's about one and a half ounce and if your kombu has a lot of white stuff on the surface, go ahead and swipe it out with a damp towel. Lastly, one and a half tablespoon of chicken powder and this is a little my cheating like I'm making home style instead of making another whole pot of chicken stock. This is, you know, making easy and fun at home part, okay? And pour 24 cups of cold water. Bring it to boil over high heat with no cover. And first, 15 minutes of hard boiling. Go ahead and skim all the scum on the surface and at this point, remember not to stir the soup because we want to get rid of all the scum coming up to the surface because if you stir the soup, it will all sink down under the soup again and we don't want that to happen. Now cover, reduce the heat to medium and simmer for three hours. After three hours of simmering the broth, this is the time to add the pork, actually pork meat for the char siu to put it on top as a garnish on the ramen. You will need two pounds of pork shoulder or pork belly and if you're using like a one big two pounds of big chunk, then go ahead and simmer for additional one hour or if you're using like mine, like a little two small pieces of one pound each, then go ahead and simmer about 30 to 45 minutes. Meanwhile, the pork and the broth is finished cooking. We are gonna make tare. Tare means sauce in Japanese and in Japanese ramen shops, they actually do make this sauce separately and mix with the broth later, right before when they're serving the ramen. I just added the ginger and the garlic into a little sauce pot and now I'm going to add one and a half cup of soy sauce and three quarter cup of sake and mirin. In Japan, there are many different types of ramen out there and the most signature one is shoyu ramen, miso ramen, shio ramen, and tonkotsu. Shio ramen is the ramen just seasoned with only salt, a very clean basic ramen broth and miso ramen is seasoned with miso and shoyu ramen is seasoned with soy sauce. That is what we are making today. That's why we need one and a half cup of soy sauce today and tonkotsu is another type of ramen that is a creamy milky broth. I think that's the most popular ramen in America. I'm gonna share the recipe sometime soon too, so tune in. Now we are going to bring this tare to boil over high heat and let it keep hard boil for five to seven minutes. All right, I just removed my pork piece from the broth. I boiled them about 30 minutes and my tare is ready to go. It's cooling down but obviously you can tell the pork has no color outside at all. So what I'm gonna do is put a little bit of tare onto the pork so the pork will actually have a little bit of color around it and if you want you can go ahead and make my char siu recipe for this ramen but I really wanted to recreate how we tasted it. The shoyu ramen in Kyoto, that ramen shop, the pork char siu wasn't cooked separately and simmered in different sauce. It was actually like nothing against from the natural broth flavor. So I believe this is somewhat very similar flavor that we had in Kyoto. So I'm just gonna move the pork around. See that little bit darker color actually makes this pork already looks more yummy. Now all we have to do is cool this pork in the refrigerator completely so it'll be easier for us to slice them thinly and then we are going to drain our ramen broth. All right, my ramen broth right here and you do not have to drain. When you start cooking, go ahead and put all the vegetables, the garlic, ginger, leek, and everything in a cheesecloth so you can just remove it and ta-da! Broth and pork bones right there. But in Japan, the ramen shops, they usually do not use the pork bone or serve the pork bones on top of the ramen. That's not the visual I'm looking for here. So I'm just gonna go ahead and drain. Nice good Jacob to help me out. And I actually not gonna waste my delicious pork bones because it has a quite a bit of meat. I'm just going to keep it separately so I can add into the soup whenever I want it. All right, Jacob, can you help me out? This is super heavy. Can you drain this soup out for me? Thank you, babe. Oh, the steam on my eyeglasses. By the way, did you notice my new eyeglasses? So cute. Anyways, I will put the link down below where can you purchase. Because they make it like, you know, like Asian 2D face perfect. As you can tell, this is a lot of broth. Unless you're doing 100 pounds ramen challenge at home, you definitely want to keep this in the refrigerator or freeze them. Like put in the freezer safe container, airtight container and freeze them. It will last up to a month or keep it in the refrigerator. It will last about seven days. Yeah, ramen shop in your home. How awesome. And when you're ready, just go ahead and put about two cups of broth into the small pot and just bring it to boil when you're ready to eat. Oh, look at this beautiful broth. Oh, I'm gonna take about four cups out now because I'm gonna make some right now for you or for me. I don't know. Okay, this is perfect. Now I'm going to bring this soup back to boil along with another pot of water to boil to cook my noodles. All right, my pork is cooling down, my broth is ready to go. My tare is done. I'm waiting my water to boil to cook my ramen noodles. So meantime, I'm just gonna go ahead and chop up some green onion real fast. My green onion is ready to go and let's talk about the noodles. So you can use any ramen noodles that you can find at your local grocery stores, either dry, or fresh or frozen. There's a variety of choices. But if you can go to your local Asian grocery store or a Japanese store, they usually have either fresh or frozen ramen noodles that you can find. But one thing I noticed the shoyu ramen we had was actually not a traditional ramen noodles, but it was more close to Chinese style egg noodles, little more thicker side, but still that has that ramen texture into it. And I was so lucky to find out this ramen noodles. I mean, this is just egg noodles, but it was almost identically same. So when I tasted it, I was like, this is it. So if you can find actually this brand will be the best for this ramen noodle recipe. So this one is not frozen, it's actually fresh one. This brand doesn't have any description on the package. And I noticed that just about two minutes to two minutes 30 seconds is just perfect texture for my taste. So I'm gonna take two servings like this, take it out, shake it off all the excess. This is cornstarch and all. All right, the noodles are ready to go. I'm going to go ahead and blanch my bean sprouts first, and then cook the noodles. All right, my broth is simmering, and all my toppings, the bean sprouts, green onion, char siu, and egg is ready to go. And I just drained my noodles. All I need is just a bowl that I can bring everything together. First thing what we need is the tare, the soy sauce mixture. You need about quarter cup to one third cup, depending on how salty ramen that you'd like. Then put the broth, the ramen broth. I just pour it, why not? About two cups. All right, that's perfect. And here, the noodles is still hot. I'm gonna add one portion of the noodles. Just follow the direction of the package you're using when you're cooking the noodles, just like so. And just stir them a little bit, and grab a bunch, lift up, and lay them down. This is how the ramen shop makes their noodles like super duper pretty. All I prepared is for two bowls of ramen, but I'm making one for real kick right now. So half of this bean sprouts prepared. It's gonna be so good. A lot of char siu, and bunch of green onions, egg. Like I said, it's optional, but it is not in long guest house. And this is totally optional. Jacob and I love fresh garlic grated into the ramen, so I'm just gonna do so. This is it. This is it, guys. Okay, I'm gonna taste the broth first. How is it? Is it good? Like how good? Like pretty much same good. Same as Japan good. Told you. It is really good. I feel like I'm in Kyoto right now. So good. Like she said before she recipe tested, this one is like three, four, five times better than the last one. And that was the recipe she was gonna share with you guys, and it was still good enough to share. This one's even better. This is exactly what I was looking for. So clean, so deep, so simple. Really well executed. I know I made it, but yeah, really well executed. Oh, so good. And thank you so much for watching. If you liked it, I might show you around. No, I was gonna make a confession. Why is it a confession? It doesn't need to be cold to enjoy this. It could be like 150 degrees, and you're still gonna enjoy it. Because that's how delicious it is. I can't even talk, it's so delicious. So yeah, guys, if you liked my show your ramen recipe, please give me a thumbs up and subscribe my channel for more inspirations and idea of Asian home cooking. Thank you so much for watching me today. And remember, you can always cook Asian food at your house, making it easy and fun. I'm Sungkyung Longest, and this is Asian at Home. And we will see you next time. Bye. Get my merch. Get my merch and noodles. Ramen face steaming. This is my skincare secret, guys. This is my skincare routine.