Homemade Chashu for Real Ramen

If you’ve been to Japan, you'll know ramen is serious business. It’s not about Top Ramen versus Maruchan Ramen. It’s not about thick noodle versus ultra-thin. There is a whole culture of occult followers who worship ramen and ramen masters. If you're not familiar, I recommend you watch the movie Tampopo. It’s a classic Japanese film made back in the late 80’s parodying fanatics of ramen, and how foods and food culture of all sorts intersect deeply into our everyday lives.

The clarity of the soup, flavor, temperature, balance of ingredients in the soup, quality of the noodles, and the list just goes on on how many levels you can approach ramen meditation. Even if you aren’t so crazy about ramen, once you try the best kind (from a small ramen shop inside a quiet alley between sky-high office buildings in Tokyo or backstreet Yokohama with an endless stream of people), you will never look at ramen the same way again.

The soup base is always the most important element of the soup. And it’s always the trade secret. There are hundreds of thousands of recipes out there that claim they figured out the secrets, but where do you exactly find pig feet (actually, more easily than you might think)? Or Hidaka kombu from Hokkaido? And what the heck is souda bushi?

To me, ramen is a casual, quick food. Something that I fix on a lazy Sunday for brunch. It should be more than just tasty, but I wanted to create a recipe that’s simpler without compromising the taste. I want people to discover how real ramen tastes like without the expense of traveling to Japan. (Now that I live in a major metropolitan city with larger community of Japanese people, I’ve tried many ramen shops around, but even so, there are only few that I can call it real. And back when I was living in the Midwest, I didn’t see any at all.)

Recently I came up with the idea of making the chashu and ramen soup base all in one, which I’m sure I’m not the first one to think of it, but sometimes a simple idea like this doesn’t really click in your mind unless you actually cook it. By making chashu and soup base together, you can save a lot of time. While actual cooking time for chashu is two and a half hours, the prep takes no more than 5 minutes. Most ingredients are left whole and dumped into the stock pot, which is hard to screw up. After trying this recipe a few times, I find the soup to be even tastier if you chill the soup and chashu in the fridge overnight. (This is also a good way for skimming off the fat if you are concerned about the amount of fat. However, be aware that ramen is quite high in sodium, so if you have a heart problem, you should opt out of drinking the soup part.)

Typically a real shoyu-based ramen is served with semi-hardboiled egg, slices of chashu (not too many), shinachiku (pickled bamboo shoots) and chopped scallions. But some other variations include adding other vegetables such as bean sprouts, spinach, sautéed carrots, or adding chili oil for spiciness. Have fun and re-introduce real ramen to your palate. You will never have to go back to those strange college dorm room experiments with instant noodles ever again.

Recipe of the Day - Homemade Chashu for Real Ramen

Ingredients (serves 5-6):
3.5 qt water
1.6 lbs pork butt, twined
2 cloves garlic, peeled, whole
1 green part of negi or 4 stalks of scallions (green part only), washed, whole
2 pieces of kombu (dried kelp)
1” cube fresh ginger, unpeeled, washed
4 dry shiitake mushrooms
1 c chicken broth
1 tsp salt
¼ c + 3 Tbsp Japanese soy sauce
1 Tbsp sugar

In a large pot, combine water, pork, garlic, negi, kombu, ginger and shiitake mushrooms. Stir in rest of the ingredients. Heat the pot over medium, covered and simmer for 2 to 2 ½ hours. Turn off the heat. Let the soup cool at the room temperature until it’s cooled enough to be stored in the fridge. Refrigerate it overnight. Remove from the fridge. (Skim off the fat if you prefer at this time.) Remove the chashu from the soup, remove the twine and slice it thinly.

Remove all the solids in the soup. When ready to make the soup, slowly reheat the soup over medium-low.

For making ramen:

Bring a large pot of water to boil. Cook the noodles for a few minutes. Stir well while cooking to make sure that the noodles don’t stick together.

Serve hot with chopped scallions, semi-hard-boiled eggs, and whatever else you wish.