Food and Cooking

I call it "lazy lamen":

• Dice chicken thighs and season them with brown sugar, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, vinegar.
• Brown them in a pot with a bit of veg oil, without worrying too much about cooking them thoroughly.
• Add chicken broth (or water). Add more seasoning as necessary. Perhaps some sesame oil.
• Add vegs and noodles to the pot, depending on their cooking times. (For reference: sliced carrots, cabbage and 5min ramen noodles take roughly the same time to cook.)
• Garnish with some chives, and enjoy.

It won't look fancy like those lamen pics that you see on the internet, but it has a great balance between being tasty, nutritious, practical and fast to prepare. That's what makes it my favourite.

One chicken ramen.

Chicken is far easier for broth. Grab a cooked rotisserie chicken from the store, remove the skin and put aside, remove all the meat and also put aside, put the remaining parts in a pressure cooker (instant pot or similar) with half an onion and a carrot, and some water. Do not season. Pressure cook for 1-1.5 hours.

Strain and there's a decent chicken broth.

While waiting, Put together a basic tare, using soy Sauce or water and salt, which is mostly going to be reducing the liquid down after simmering some konbu(kelp) and if you have some msg throw some in there too. It needs to be reduced at a low heat until the salt level is too much for putting directly in your mouth. You can google more instructions on tares, this is just a super basic one.

Once the tare and broth are done, take the skin from earlier and fry it until its crispy. Just before that's ready slice some of the breast meat and fry that for like 1-2 minutes until it gets a bit of browning too.

Boil noodles according to package, in separate water.

Put some broth in a bowl, add tare until seasoned to your preferred level. Then add strained noodles. Top with wlmeat and crispy skin. If you have some green onions, or nori, throw those on.

If you like an egg with your ramen, you can do that too.

tbh when im lazy its just chicken broth and soy sauce... maybe a little shiitake powder if I have any. then for toppings whatever veggies I have in the fridge and maybe some sliced silken tofu. takes me about 10 minutes.

fried aromatics plus miso base for the tare, then just add water, noodles, and whatever else you got left in the fridge.

For the tare base, I found JustOneCookbook to be super approachable. https://www.justonecookbook.com/homemade-chashu-miso-ramen/

My favorite is: a miso base with whatever we have in the fridge. Literally. That is it. Purists may argue, but I'm not a traditionalist about my ramen. I just like soups.

My better half is vegetarian so we don't put meat in the main dish, but if I have leftover meat from some other meal, I might add slices to my bowl. Beyond that, we always have: ramen (or soba or other noodles), misos, various onions, and eggs. We usually have a few different types of dried seaweed (purple laver is my fave for soup) and veg so some of each will go in. Sometimes we'll have julienned carrots and bok choy, sometimes turnip greens and mushrooms. I usually grate some fresh ginger in there and add a little oil: plain, chili oil, or sesame. I might add Korean gochujang paste or sriracha, or any other sauce/paste that strikes me. It is a great way of making something new from leftovers.

Maruchan chili lime shrimp package with an egg and precooked frozen shrimp added. It's pretty good and takes about 5 minutes to make after the water boils.

First, I have to recommend Way of Ramen’s YouTube channel; he makes great videos, and I use several of his recipes in my Ramen.

I make WoR’s super simple Shio tare to start Ingredients:

• 450ml Water
• 70g Sea Salt
• 25ml Hon Mirin
• 7.5ml rice Vinegar
• 25ml Usukuchi shoyu
• 5g caster sugar
• 2.5g (1/2tsp) msg

Directions:

• Bring 450ml of water to a simmer
• Add salt, stir to dissolve
• Add mirin, sugar, shoyu, vinegar, 1/2tsp MSG Stir, then let cool and store

The bowl of ramen contains the following:

• 36ml Shio Tare
• 1Tbsp Chicken fat
• 400ml Hot water (or chicken stock or any good soup you have on hand)
• Pre-made noodles (look up Hakubaku or j-basket, both should be on Amazon or in your local Asian market)
• Toppings:

• Green onions
• Sautéd Red Bell pepper (skip if I’m not in the mood)
• 1/2lb. Fried chicken tenders (the stuff from Publix is magic if you’ve got one near you)

This can all be done in one day, but the tare recipe makes enough for at least a dozen bowls, so you’ll just warm it up later.

Do you have a pressure cooker? Tonkotsu is much easier if you do. (Or instapot). The book of ramen has a section on it I think.

Alternatively, the book "let's make ramen" is easy to follow and splits things up well. I don't think I've had anything come out poorly from that book yet.