My daughter and husband love ramen and we go out to eat ramen too often. My I have a dental surgery today and they wanted to eat ramen. I just want to make real ramen, like a Japanese.
My daughter says that I make everything taste too Chinese. Hm. So I decided to do a ‘real’ ramen without one of those of my own inventions, or adding my own taste. It took all of 30 minutes to cook my ramen, beginning with making the cha su made from pork spare ribs. What’s interesting is that my daughter concurred that it finally tastes like Japanese ramen, after she has added her own soya sauce, making it the shoyu (soya sauce) ramen. Mine’s always a shio (or salt) ramen.
Simple Ramen
Ingredients
Cha su
- 500 g spare ribs
- 2 Tbsp soya sauce
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 2 Tbsp cooking sake
- 1 knob of ginger bruised
- 1 Tbsp of spring onions
- 1-2 cups of water enough to just cover the pork
Egg
- 4 eggs at room temperature
- 1 Tbsp soya sauce
- 1 Tbsp sake
- 1 Tbsp mirin
Toppings
- Chopped green onions
- Bamboo shoots
- Yaki nori
- Anything you like!
- Dashi stock or make this yourself
Instructions
Cha Su
- Put everything for the cha su into a pressure cooker and cook for 20 minutes on high. If not using the pressure cooker, cook until soft and pork pierce through easily, which is about 2 hours.
- Cut into 1/2 inch thick slices and toast or bake until slightly brown.
- Cool the liquid for the cha su in the freezer and once very cold, remove the oil floating above.
Eggs
- Place the room temperature eggs into room temperature water and bring to a boil.
- Add four minutes to the boiling and then remove.
- Remove egg shells and soak into soaking liquid for eggs. Then slice into halves.
Gather
- Mix a laddle of cha su liquid with as much dashi as desire (I use 50-50), and place ramen into the stock. Add toppings.
You can find a longer recipe here from Cooking with Dog. I didn’t really follow their recipe but I think the outcome is at least 80% close to theirs. The main difference is that the method I use cuts the cooking time from almost three hours to 30 minutes.
