Thank you for reading this book! This has been a long time coming. Over the last several years I have tinkered with the idea of making a book, to help everyone - from hardcore ramen-lovers to those simply intrigued by interesting food - find an all-inclusive resource of recipes and ideas on how to make ramen. I felt like it would make sense to make this as widely accessible as possible. An e-book format made the most sense, free for anyone to view at any time.

Many of you probably have never had ramen beyond the dry noodle packages found regularly at your local grocery store. This book is not about that kind of ramen, which is more akin to instant noodles. While tasty in their own right, instant noodles aren’t quite the same thing as the dish discussed in this book. Ramen, a dish originating from Japan, is a complex soup that is challenging to make and, even to this day, still has quite a bit of mystery. I’m hoping I can at least break apart the ambiguity a little, primarily through discussing concepts rather than solely relying on recipes.

As for the rest of you, I know what you are thinking. A book on ramen? That sounds awfully specific. Who is this guy? Why should I even care? Why is an American making ramen? Is this a poor man’s Ivan Orkin?

Not exactly.

My name is Mike. I’m a food nerd who lives in Chicago, and I am particularly obsessed with ramen. Most folks know me by the name “Ramen_Lord” on Reddit, which is pretty ostentatious, I know. The username was tongue-in-cheek at first. I thought I might post some of my creations to the ramen subreddit, /r/ramen, have some fun in the process, and learn along the way. I did not, however, expect my posts to catch on at all. And despite this, people started paying attention.

But what sparked this weird obsession? In all sincerity, it was kind of a coincidence. Many years before my interests really kicked in, I’d been studying Japanese in highschool and college, eating ramen with some mild regularity. Usually, I’d go out to a Japanese market in Chicago called Mitsuwa and splurge on miso ramen. The bowls I had were good, but nothing that really sparked the passion I had now. Driven by my interest in Japan, I stumbled on an opportunity in college to move there as part of a study abroad program at Hokkaido University. Naturally, I applied and was accepted to the program, where I moved to Sapporo for a year. Coincidentally, miso ramen was designed, created, and invented in that city. I thought, hey, I like Japanese food, and ramen is good, I ought to get a taste of the real deal. I mean, surely, it must be better than what I’d eaten before.

I tried a few bowls in touristy destinations like Ramen Yokocho. Felt fine. Packed it up.

But it wasn’t until a friend suggested I try out a shop named Sumire that my total worldview on ramen changed. I remember the experience vividly: I climbed some shambly metal stairs to the side of an office building in the drinking district of Sapporo known as Susukino. I walked past a hanging curtain over the door, and selected “miso ramen” from a ticket machine, sitting down, oblivious to what would happen next.

What arrived was ethereal. A scalding hot bowl of rich intense miso and pork soup, with punches of garlic and ginger and a slight tinge of spice. A blanket of melted lard floating on top, trapping the soup’s heat in the bowl. The aggressively chewy, crinkly yellow noodles, the delicate sprinkling of thinly sliced green onion, tender slices of braised pork. This was unlike ramen, no, any food,I’d ever had. Prior, I’d assumed ramen was tasty junk food. With Sumire, this whole idea of “kodawari”, or obsession with quality, became obvious to me.

All I could think was, “THIS is Sapporo’s legacy!” I had to find more of the stuff.

For the next year in Sapporo, I basically went out for ramen whenever I could. I bought guide books, rented textbooks from the library, and asked friends for recommendations. I even asked a teacher if I could do an independent study on the dish. I started interviewing cooks and writing reviews of places. I made a blog about the best shops. Ramen became my life in Sapporo, the city changed me.

After I’d left Sapporo, I had no choice. I had to start making ramen to satisfy this craving I had built up. Most of my first bowls were just awful. The broth, normally rich and complex, was a putrid mess. The noodles, complete mush. The toppings, a bland and overcooked waste of ingredients. I expected something different and was massively disappointed. Still, I persevered. I continued making ramen for years after, desperately chasing the proverbial dragon, trying to recreate something I had tasted that had transformed me.

When I started posting to /r/ramen, I felt compelled to make ramen more often and share what I could. The community inspired me, as I kept running into other ramen nerds who loved noodles, tiny shops, the broth’s fat glistening on their faces as they slurped to their heart’s delight. I wanted to grow that community and share that love. Over time, my ramen got better. I got better at plating. I developed a better understanding of the dish. Through it all, I found my voice and the direction I wanted to take my craft. Without the support from people in the subreddit, to keep pushing myself and my knowledge, I wouldn’t know half of what I know today.

Today, ramen has effectively exploded with new recipes everywhere. Over the years, I’ve developed more than 20 different recipes for various styles. Although many of these recipes have been posted to Reddit, it’s clear that Reddit isn’t an effective platform for consolidating all of the information available.

Now, I could have just consolidated all my info into a binder and shipped it off. But that’s not really effective for making a great cookbook. A great cookbook has a bunch of literary bells and whistles. It’s gotta have a strong narrative, organized structure, appropriate style, a clear voice, accurately validated claims (of which there are many), while also being accessible. None of that is straightforward, especially when talking about ramen. To make things more challenging, the existing body of knowledge is mysterious, and the content out there is either inaccurate or conveniently omits important details. I know this dish intimately, and I realize that ramen can be broken down into digestible pieces. Really, I firmly believe anyone can improve their ramen making skills… if only they avoid the same mistakes I made along the way. Navigating all of these challenges is pretty hard, so I realized that I needed to consult an expert. Or at least consult a person I knew with experience talking about technical ideas and making them accessible. For everyone.

Enter Scott.

Scott is my twin brother. Don’t let the shockingly similar appearance fool you, although we’re really similar in some regards, we’re also clearly distinct in others. Scott wasn’t as enthusiastic about ramen as I was when I was first writing this book (at least at the start!), even if he knows his way around a kitchen and has plenty of home cooking experience. But being his brother and knowing he’s a decent cook weren’t really the reasons why I wanted his help. Scott is also an experienced scientific and technical writer. While he painstakingly worked through a PhD program, he cultivated a passion from science communication and technical writing, so much so that he still does this for a living in his current profession. He’s been writing about this stuff probably more than anyone I know personally, for just about any audience you can imagine. As an added bonus, his broad scientific background informed a lot of ideas on why certain things worked and others didn’t.

That seemed to be pretty valuable. So, I asked him if he wanted to help me write it, and he jumped at the opportunity. Over several years, we worked together, where I developed recipes, came up with ideas on concepts, and gathered preliminary knowledge, and he meticulously reviewed, edited, structured, and added content along the way. I could not have written this book without him. Seriously, it would not be the book it is today without his contribution, and I’m proud to have him as a coauthor.

So, here we are.

What can you expect from this book? Let’s start with what this book is not. This is not a history or anthropology book on ramen. Although I find the history of ramen fascinating, several authors have already written books on it to a level of detail I couldn’t realistically add to. (Some good ones worth reading are “Slurp, a Social and Culinary History of Ramen: Japan’s Favorite Noodle Soup” by Barak Kushner, and “The Untold History of Ramen: How Political Crisis in Japan Spawned a Global Food Craze” by George Solt1,2.)

And this isn’t a cookbook, per se. There are many cookbooks out there for ramen. Ultimately, this book is meant to break apart ramen into its five components and explain them thoroughly, to help amateurs and cooks understand the components of the dish and to make more thoughtful composed bowls. This book has plenty of recipes, but they’re only examples, archives of the work I’ve done over the last 10 years. They are by no means the be-all-end-all of ramen. I hope that by reading the book, both amateurs and professionals alike will better understand what ramen is made of so that they can create their own exceptional bowls.

So, welcome. Let’s have some fun.

Starting with the Basics: What is Ramen?

To understand what ramen is, I find it’s easiest to break the dish down into its components, since ramen’s broad historical definition is pretty complex. Each component varies tremendously, so two bowls of ramen side by side might look completely unrelated and still fall under the same umbrella. Even with the definitions I’ll list, there are variations between the five components.

Component 1: Noodles are one of the cornerstones of ramen. Ramen noodles are the most rigid in their definition of the dish. All ramen noodles require some amount of the following ingredients:

wheat
alkaline salts (kansui)

No dish is truly ramen without these specific noodles. For me, the ratio of these ingredients (and others) may vary, but the actual approach to making the noodle for a home cook is basically the same.

Component 2: Soup is the other cornerstone of ramen. Except for a handful of soupless styles, all ramen has soup. Japanese consumers overwhelmingly taste the soup first when trying the dish, so the importance of balancing it and delivering it correctly cannot be overstated. Soups range in complexity but can be generally broken down into two categories:

chintan: These broths are clear, light, and delicate on the palate. This is the standard broth for most common styles. If you imagine a delicate consomme or chicken stock, this is right in line with that, similar to most stocks you’d find in western cooking
paitan: These flip western-style stock-making techniques on their head by rapidly boiling the contents in the pot. This process results in a cloudy, almost creamy consistency.

These broths can be broken down further, based on the viscosity, intensity of flavor, additional additives, or ingredient choice, but the point is that soup exists on a host of stages and styles.

Component 3: Tare is a potent sauce or paste that effectively seasons the bowl; without tare, the soup has no salt. Tares often contain flavor compounds to add additional complexity and umami. Tares are numerous and range in style, but they typically fall into three broad categories depending on the primary ingredient used:

shoyu (soy sauce): The original tare. Soy sauce was paramount to the proliferation of ramen in Japan, providing not only high levels of salinity, but also glutamic acid, a compound responsible for the illustrious “umami”. Umami, being another one of the tastes our tongues recognize along with salt, sweet, bitter, and sour, is described as having a “savory” or “meaty” quality. Soy sauce allowed umami to be easily incorporated in the dish and was a familiar flavor to Japanese diners.
shio (salt): Not to suggest this tare is simply made of salt, but merely that it doesn’t contain soy sauce. It still usually includes a host of other umami-rich ingredients, like dried seafood or kombu, a dried kelp product common in Japanese cuisine.
miso: A newcomer to the tare style, miso is a thicker tare using the namesake miso. Unlike the other two tares above, this one tends to add body to the broth. Miso, being a fermented soy product like soy sauce, is loaded with umami.

Component 4: Toppings: Toppings are perhaps the component of ramen with the most versatility. They create the ultimate visual impact of the bowl.

Toppings tend to fall into several categories:

proteins: The most common variant of this is chashu (a braised pork roast, typically made from belly or shoulder), but chicken or fish products are also typical. Other non-meat-based proteins, such as soft boiled eggs, are also common. Regardless, virtually all ramen has some form of protein as a topping.
aroma boosters: Toppings are often used as an ingredient that boosts aroma, or enhances the flavor of the soup and noodles. Onion, typically some kind of scallion, regularly fill this role. Alliums, the family of plants that onions, garlic, and scallions belong to, contain a compound called MMP, which resembles savory and meaty flavors. As a rule of thumb, your ramen should use some onion. Alliums of all sorts will work as aroma boosters, but other fragrant plants, like grated ginger or chilies, can also provide complexity and aroma.
texture providers: Without this, ramen is missing texture contrast. Menma, which are cured and sweetened bamboo shoots, are crunchy in texture and provide this needed depth. Texture can also be provided in things like bean sprouts, cabbage, corn, wood ear mushrooms, or any other snappy, firm, crunchy things.

Component 5: aroma oil: If tare is the most secretive component of ramen, aroma oil is easily the most overlooked, particularly outside of Japan. Fat is a critical component of ramen’s taste; it provides mouthfeel, glossy visual appeal, and fat-soluble flavors. Modern ramen shops diligently control the fat content of their final dishes, often adding additional fat that has been cooked with aromatic items like alliums, vegetables, or other aromatic ingredients. Ramen most often uses animal fats, though cooks don’t completely rule out vegetable oils.

Those are the main components of ramen. In this book, I dedicate a chapter to each component, and a final chapter to particular styles, their assembly, and which components they use. Ultimately, I want you to understand the nuances and methods of each component, so that as you get comfortable, you can swap between specific components based on personal preference. Over time I hope you’ll be inspired to create ramen that aligns with your style and tastes.

A Note on Measurement

While subjective preferences drive a lot of the decisions involved in ramen (and in all food), ramen can be an art in precision. Sometimes units like cups and ounces aren’t precise enough to consistently create the intended bowl of noodles. So, as a fan of consistency, this book uses metric for all of the units of measurement, using English units as an occasional backup. As you’ll soon discover, grams and milliliters have the right amount of precision for making noodles. Truthfully, the metric system, more formally known as the International System of Units, is king, and I plan to stay true to that mantra. Also metric is just so much easier to deal with. Like, get it together America.

If you’re going to be making the recipes in this book, you will need a scale, preferably one that has at least 1 g precision (and for noodles, you’ll want one preferably that goes to 0.1 g). I use the OXO good grips 5 lb scale for most measurements, and for noodles, I use a small jeweler’s scale that measures within 0.1 g precision3,4. Scales have wide-ranging applications in your kitchen, even outside of ramen. Everything from cookies, pies, cakes, breads, and stir-fries are just so much more consistent when you start weighing some of the ingredients you put in your food.

That doesn’t mean volumes are pointless though. Volumes play an important role in cooking, like for measuring liquids in large quantities where precision is less important, as well as being helpful when assembling ramen. Mass, by contrast, works much better for measuring more precise amounts of liquids and for measuring virtually any solid. Scott argues that you can measure volumes precisely, and he is right... but am I really going to ask anyone to buy a bunch of (expensive!) pipettes to make ramen? Probably not. Scott thinks it could be worth it anyway. Scientists, I swear.

Common Abbreviations for Units of Measure

mL: milliliter

L: liter

in: inch

cm: centimeter

g: grams

mg: milligrams

lb: pounds

oz: fluid ounces

°F: degrees Fahrenheit

°C: degrees Celsius

tbsp: tablespoon

tsp: teaspoon

Chapter 1: Noodles

Noodles’ creation, at its core, is a combination of art and science. But many home and professional cooks overlook the science part, resulting in vast oversimplification of this otherwise complex process. They often provide inadequate guidance and inaccurate recipes, all while avoiding the nuance of different noodle styles and how different noodles pair with different broths. In this chapter, I’ll cover all of those aspects, from general noodle rules of thumb, to the oft neglected science, and techniques behind making excellent ramen noodles at home.

Before I begin, I should note: noodles are the most labor-intensive part of ramen making for home cooks. Ramen was designed when noodles were manufactured by machines. It doesn’t have a history of hand-making like soba or udon. The dough has a very low water content compared to other doughs you might work with at home, making it challenging to wrangle. As a result, most modern ramen noodles are machine made. Even the majority of shops in Japan outsource noodle production.

For a home cook, they suck to make. You will swear, sweat, and ache the first time you make them. So for beginners, I highly recommend skipping noodle-making until you feel comfortable with the other components of ramen. Many noodle brands exist; go to your local Asian grocery store and look in the freezer section. I particularly like Sun Noodle (they make a wide variety of noodle styles), but whichever noodle you buy, it will save you a ton of time. Disclaimer aside, if you’re still interested in noodle making, read on.

What is a Ramen Noodle?

Regarding the etymology, the term “ramen” has a vague history, with some claiming it’s derived from the Chinese “la-mien” hand-pulled noodles, and others telling folk-etymology stories where a cook in Sapporo called out “Hao-la” when he was done making his noodle soup, to tell waitstaff to get the bowl. Regardless of the origins of the name, ramen noodles are not produced the same as hand-pulled noodles. Attempting to hand pull a ramen noodle dough will result in some serious frustration.

In terms of definitions, then, ramen noodles must contain both of the following ingredients: wheat, and kansui (the alkaline salts). These requirements are non-negotiable; to sell a noodle under the name, “ramen” in Japan, it needs these two ingredients. Seriously, it’s the law, the Japanese government formally defines ramen this way. Udon, rice noodles, pasta, while all delicious, aren’t ramen, and the contents of this chapter specifically refer to ramen. Despite what appears to be intense rigidity, you can incorporate plenty of complexity into ramen noodle making, like using additional additives, or playing with the amounts of wheat and kansui. But these two ingredients are pretty set in stone. All of the recipes in this book, therefore, contain both wheat and kansui.

Noodle Ingredients

Despite the ingredient list being small, the details of each ingredient contribute substantially to noodle quality. In this section, I’ll go over the science and importance of each of these ingredients.

Wheat

Wheat flour is the primary source of starch and protein in all ramen noodles and is a requirement for ramen to exist. This isn’t just for definition either. Both starch and protein (gluten) in the flour play vital roles in the design of a noodle.

Wheat starch provides the majority of the structure to the noodle. If noodles could be compared to a brick house, think of the starches as the bricks themselves. They do all of the heavy lifting. As starch is introduced to water, it hydrates, taking on the water and swelling, resisting compression and tension. In close enough proximity with other starch granules, the starch gels, forming a tight network of tough macromolecules that bump into each other. This starch gel has a pleasant texture, particularly if the gel is uniform (more on how to achieve this in the method section of this chapter).

The other component is gluten. Wheat gluten, in particular, is composed of two proteins; gliadin and glutenin. When water is added to flour and the flour is agitated (mixing, kneading, stretching, etc.) these two proteins combine by a chemical reaction known as crosslinking to form an elastic mesh, known as gluten. Gluten, in the brick house analogy, is the mortar, gluing the load-bearing starches together in a matrix of protein. Those air bubbles you see in bread? They were trapped by a gluten reinforced starch matrix. Without gluten, noodles, let alone most wheat-based foods, would have a very different appearance. Different levels of protein in the flour change how much or how little gluten develops in the noodle.

Gluten’s structure allows the starches to gel properly, gives the noodles additional tensile strength, and also gives them more water repulsive, or hydrophobic, properties. Extremely developed gluten dramatically increases the cooking time of noodles as a result, and results in firm, difficult to work with noodles.

Other components of flour that impact ramen noodles are:

ash content: The mineral content of flour. Typically, the majority of the minerals in flour come from the bran or germ, which is one of many reasons why whole wheat flour, which includes all the bran and germ, is touted as healthier than white flour. Ash is typically described as a percentage of total mass and is often less than a full percentage point. Ash has a few effects on noodles, but generally speaking, the higher the ash content, the harder the flour will be to make ramen without adding water. These minerals indicate that trace pieces of bran and germ are leftover, which impact gluten formation. Luckily, most bread flours and all-purpose flours in the US have a low ash content, and you’ll probably have a tough time finding high ash flour (if you so choose) rather than low. Most white flour in the US is around 0.5% ash, which is suitable for ramen making. Ramen-specific flours can often go as low as 0.35% ash. Conversely, that doesn’t mean that high ash flour can’t be used for ramen; sometimes it can. But lower ash helps improve noodle workability.
moisture content: Flour absorbs moisture from the surrounding air, meaning that the amount of water you can add to it can change depending on the humidity and time of year. Flour also contains some natural moisture, as a plant-derived product. Scientists like to say it’s “hygroscopic”, which just means it likes to absorb water. This has to be accounted for when making noodles. More on this later.
wheat varietal: Different strains of wheat have different characteristics, the biggest of which is the protein content. Most varieties of wheat fall into either “hard” or “soft” categories, which means essentially high protein and low protein, respectively. For ramen, I prefer hard wheat-based flours. If you’re trying to be particular about the protein percentage, it should be available as well. When in doubt, contact the manufacturer to understand how good a particular flour is at developing gluten. As a rule of thumb, flour with a lot of available protein is often called “bread flour”.

Note: protein percentage doesn’t completely predict how readily gluten will form (all other things equal), as different cultivars of wheat can create different protein compositions. Some wheat varietals form more or less gluten than others because their composition of gliadin and glutenin isn’t equal. So, protein makeup can be different between varieties even if the protein percentage is identical. For example, a hard red winter wheat flour may have the same protein percentage as a hard red spring wheat, but the hard red winter wheat will develop gluten more readily because its composition permits it.

milling size: The actual size of the granules of flour has an impact on how quickly and easily a flour will absorb water. As an example, a common form of flour in Italy is “00” (double-O) flour, which is an extremely finely milled flour. Using this flour in place of all-purpose flour, you’ll notice that you need upwards of 20% less water to hydrate. For simplicity’s sake, I use standard milled flours in the US, but the milling size does have an impact.

As you get more accustomed to making noodles, it’s a good idea to consider the above components when selecting which flour you’d like to use. But to start, keep it simple; bread flour works very well. I like to use King Arthur bread flour because the protein content is around 12.7% the weight of the flour, and the flour gives consistent results. Most of the recipes for noodles in this book will use this flour. As you get more comfortable, feel free to adjust flours.

Kansui

Kansui is a catchall term for the alkaline salts used to increase the pH of the water, which affects the gluten structure in the noodle5. Food scientists don’t quite understand why gluten’s structure is impacted by the pH of the environment it’s in, but from an empirical standpoint, the effect is well known. As alkaline (or higher pH) environments are introduced, gluten’s rigidity and tensile strength increases6, leading to noodles that need more force to snap, but also aren’t able to stretch as much. Kansui, therefore, contributes to the difficulty in making noodles, as the alkaline environment may make the noodles more difficult to roll and press. Kansui also aids in changing the color of the dough from white to slightly yellow, as the alkaline environment causes unique compounds in the flour called “flavonoids” to detach, turning yellow5. Yellow color and brightness of noodles have been shown to increase with higher pH, however introducing pHs that are too high may compromise the noodle quality by making them tough and less enjoyable7. Kansui also gives ramen noodles their characteristic taste, a sort of eggy, slightly sulphuric flavor (which sounds off-putting, I know, but it works).

Kansui can refer to several different salts. In American kitchens, the most common salts are sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate. While these might sound intimidating, they’re pretty easy to get, particularly sodium carbonate. Apart from buying sodium carbonate under the name, “soda ash”, you can make sodium carbonate at home. The same method also applies to potassium carbonate. The full method I use goes as follows:

Ingredients:

500 g sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) or potassium bicarbonate

Steps:

In a small saucepan, dump in the powder and heat over medium heat, stirring constantly
The contents of the pot may initially become liquid-like, as it flows easily. While it heats, small geysers of gas will erupt from the surface. It will look like it’s boiling.
Eventually, this action will subside after around 15 minutes, and the powder will become difficult to stir. At this stage, remove the pot from the heat, cover, and allow it to cool.
You can optionally now weigh the final powder. You should be left with approximately 330-350 g powder, around 66% the original weight.
Transfer the powder to a container and store indefinitely in the pantry.

What’s happening here: The heat causes the bicarbonate to become carbonate, water, and CO2, where the latter two evaporate off while the cation (sodium or potassium) is nonreactive. The gas you’re seeing is mostly water like you’d see when boiling water, except it’s being created by a chemical reaction, not just by adding heat to water. Eventually this stops and the texture changes once all of the bicarbonate is converted.

Conversely, Harold McGee discussed creating sodium carbonate in the oven, baking the powder on a sheet tray at 121 °C/250 °F for an hour5. This method takes longer and is harder to judge when it is complete, but can be effective.

Sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate have different effects on the dough at a subtle level. In my experience:

sodium carbonate results in a chewier texture in the final noodle
potassium carbonate results in a firmer, more taut texture

Both affect gluten’s structure, but in different ways. Though this interaction isn’t very well understood (much like how we don’t quite know why pH impacts gluten’s rigidity), I spoke with Dr. Eric Schulze, the Senior Scientist at Memphis Meats on the matter. Here’s what he guesses might be the reason for this effect:

“Flour with removed cations hydrates rapidly, so the gluten network forms rapidly too. The potassium ions, being more reactive than sodium ions, would then proceed to further “protect” the gluten network from other negative charges, allowing for it to scrunch up tight and stiff.”

In other words, potassium does a better job of latching on to gluten molecules than sodium. This is JUST a possibility, not proven beyond evidence from my kitchen and some discussion from manufacturers. But the rule seems to apply: If you want a less firm noodle, use more sodium, if you want a more firm noodle, use more potassium.

Kansui can be found in both liquid and dry forms. To me, dry is both easier to use and easier to come by. It also gives you flexibility in adjusting the alkaline content without having to fiddle with how much water you need to add. Basically, it makes the math easier. I don’t have to do algebra to understand the relative water content of the liquid alkaline solution. I simply add a weight percentage to the ingredients. My all-purpose sweet spot is to use around 1-2% the weight of the flour in the recipe, but your taste may differ, and changes in hydration or flour type may warrant different kansui amounts.

Water

Pretty much all noodles use water, and ramen noodles are no exception. Water is the basis by which flour becomes dough. But, there’s a small problem. Most tap water in the United States is loaded with dissolved minerals (i.e. it’s considered “hard”). These minerals impact the dough’s ability to hydrate and can impact pH adjustment. For ultimate control, use distilled water when making the dough. Some manufacturers, like Sun Noodle, use pure water in their processing for this very reason8.

Ramen noodles are distinct from other doughs in that the amount of water added to them (described as the “hydration” or “hydration percentage”), is noticeably low. In most ramen applications, hydration spans anywhere from 22% to 42% the weight of the dry flour solids. By contrast, most bread doughs start at about 60% hydration. This means that the treatment of the dough is noticeably different (and I’ll discuss this more thoroughly when I cover the methods) because the dough is much more difficult to work with.

What does water actually hydrate then? Other resources discuss this in more detail if you want to go down the rabbit hole9, but I’ll only mention the most important ones here.

Gluten, the foundational protein in wheat that develops much of the structure of the noodle, does not develop without water, and so water is critical.
The starches in the flour. These starches take up additional water as they cook, but like all starches, the water causes them to swell and become malleable.
Pentosans. Similar to starches, these molecules are polysaccharides. However, they differ in that they are made up of only five-carbon sugars (i.e. pentoses), not six-carbon sugars like glucose. They also take up some of the water. These tend to be found in very small quantities, and are usually controlled by manufacturers, but they can increase the thirstiness of the dough. In my experience, I have not paid much attention to these, but I imagine that you would gain greater control over your dough if you did.

Broad effects that water has on the dough as hydration increases include:

more workability of the dough: As flour is hydrated, the dough becomes softer, more supple, and easier to work with. Ramen noodles with more water will be easier to roll and cut than those with less water. In this book, I err on the side of caution with higher hydration doughs.
rapid development of gluten: Gluten forms more readily in higher-hydration environments. As ramen noodles are low hydration, however, it's unlikely that full gluten development occurs (not all of the gluten is hydrated). This means that to develop a sufficient amount of gluten in a ramen noodle, you need less initial gluten in a dough with a lot of water, than one with less. As an example, the tsukemen recipes in this book are so well hydrated that the gluten forms very readily, and so the recipe doesn’t require high gluten flour at all. This developed gluten, as mentioned in the flour, also improves the noodle’s ability to maintain its structure in the hot soup.
more likely to hold a curl: because the gluten in higher hydration doughs is more hydrated and active, the gluten is more prone to developing structure and in turn denaturing during cooking.
more even cooking: as the starches hydrate, they essentially give a jumpstart during the cooking process, allowing for a more even starch gel and a less noticeable starchy core.

Broadly, as noodles become thicker, hydration increases, and as noodles become thinner, hydration decreases. Yamato10 provided a summary of this relationship, and it’s worth a look. In their opinion, thicker noodles tend to have more water, and less protein, while thinner noodles tend to have less water, and more protein.

I also mentioned earlier that flour is hygroscopic, and therefore also has moisture. Despite being “dry,” all flour contains some small amount of water. And that isn’t surprising. Water has a high affinity for lots of different compounds. It’s often nearly impossible to scrub all of the water from plant and animal products, and flour is particularly finicky. This can make things tricky too. Flour’s water content differs significantly by season and geography. Dry climates have less water readily available in the atmosphere for flour to absorb, while humid climates have more water in the air. In most baking, this distinction isn’t very noticeable, but in ramen making, because the amount of water you add to the dough is precise, every percentage point matters. Of course, an easy way to limit variability is by storing your flour in a cool, dry, place, limiting its exposure to air. But, if you find yourself making a lot of baked goods (and hopefully noodles!), a good rule of thumb is to increase the hydration of the dough by 1-2 percentage points more than you would normally. All that considered, if you find your dough still isn’t quite coming together, and you’re making more than one portion of dough, add a few additional grams of water. Won’t hurt.

Other Ingredients Worth Discussing

salt: That’s right, good old sodium chloride. Salt performs a similar, but different, function to alkaline salts on the structure of the dough. Sodium ions from the salt help the gluten retain rigidity, prevent overhydration, and increase your ability to mix the dough without over-developing gluten11. Sodium carbonate would also contribute to this by providing sodium, but because it’s alkaline, it serves a different chemical function. Salt also adds flavor to the dough. In all recipes I use, I add 1% the weight of the flour/dry solids in salt.

egg white: The albumen of egg whites contains a mixture of protein that denatures (that is, the protein changes shape and physically weaves with other albumen molecules to form a sturdy matrix). These proteins only denature under intense shearing (like whipping with a whisk) or through heat (like when cooking an egg in a pan). Technically the action between these two examples is different, but the main point is that egg white protein is harder to link up than gluten via physical agitation.

Egg whites, therefore, help with the texture of the noodle by providing some chewiness, but without creating elasticity when raw. Egg white also increases the cooking time of the noodle, as egg white absorbs additional energy when it undergoes denaturation. For ultimate control, I prefer powdered egg white, since the amount here is consistent, but you can also use fresh egg white, you just need to adjust the water in your dough accordingly. Egg white is made up of around 90% water, so using the weight of the egg white, decrease your water by 90% of the weight of your egg white. Assume the 10% is the weight of the solids.

additional gluten (in the form of vital wheat gluten): While vital wheat gluten (that is, gluten isolated from the wheat) isn’t quite the same as the gluten found naturally in flour, it can still provide extra structure. For really chewy noodles, I prefer to add some form of gluten, in addition to using high-gluten flour, to get the total gluten content even higher in the dough. Most vital wheat gluten is approximately 75% protein, so I make my substitutions accordingly. (Adding 1 g adds 0.75 g of protein).

yellow food coloring (typically riboflavin or gardenia based pigment): Although kansui does change the color of the dough somewhat, for more color I add a food dye. Riboflavin in trace amounts dissolved in the water amps up that yellow color. Several manufacturers use riboflavin as a dye to change the color of their noodles, and you can see this on the back of the packaging as part of the ingredients. You can use other dyes (some manufacturers use gardenia-derived dye), but this is pretty much optional. If you want extra color, this is the way to go.

tapioca starch: Much like gluten and egg white, some ramen manufacturers add tapioca starch to their dry ingredients. I find the texture to be more snappy than chewy, so I tend to avoid using it. But some shops rely heavily on tapioca starch, especially shops in Kitakata. I find that no more than 10% replacement of flour is acceptable.

rice flour: Rice flour is an interesting addition in that it increases slipperiness on the palate, due to the amylose rice naturally contains. I find that no more than 10% replacement of flour is acceptable.

flavor enhancements: Some shops will add flavoring agents directly to the noodle dough, such as spices or powders. Green tea, chili powder, cumin, there are many options for creativity. This book doesn’t give specific recipes for these, but in general, an addition of 1% or less is usually sufficient to enhance the flavor of the noodle without changing its texture or workability.

adjunct grains: some noodle makers opt to add various grains to introduce new flavors. Whole wheat, rye, and buckwheat are all options, though spelt and ancient grains can also be additions, depending on the chef’s creativity. Ivan Ramen is famous for using rye in particular. In general, these grains inhibit gluten formation and can be detrimental to the final structure of the noodle. I opt for no more than 10% replacement of flour with these additions for this reason. You may be noticing a pattern here.

malt: traditionally in bread baking, some amount of malted barley is added to the flour to promote rapid fermentation; the malt provides readily available sugars that yeast can munch away on. As a result, some flours, particularly bread flours, include specific amounts of malt to be used during fermentation. This has less of an impact on ramen, which is not fermented, but the resulting noodle can have a slight slippery quality (like rice flour imparts) due to the higher amylose content. Malt also gives the noodles a tanner appearance. I personally wouldn’t add malt directly to the flour, but you can buy higher malt flours if you like the effect this provides.

Final Noodle Ingredient Remarks

Having said all of that, the ratios you use for these ingredients can greatly impact the noodle. An adjustment of 1-2 percentage points in weight can have a measurable impact, something I’ve found when comparing results done with different types of flour, water, and kansui. Precision is important in the noodle-making process. As mentioned earlier, a scale is really important for accurate ramen noodle-making. All noodle recipes in this book will use weight measurement. While other recipes in this book will contain weights of some kind, they’re much more flexible in interpretation, but noodle making probably needs the scale the most. Unlike measuring cups and tablespoons, the amount of error here is reduced dramatically when using a scale. Factors like how airy your flour is (was it sifted before? Has it been sitting around awhile?) can change how much a “cup” of flour is. Don’t believe me? Measure out a cup of flour, then tap the cup on a table a few times. Notice how the cup of flour sinks below the lip of the cup? What you measured can differ dramatically based on how you fill the cup. Also, the regulation on cup size is extremely loose. A volumetric cup can be up to ±12% in size. So even your different measuring cups may give you different amounts of flour from person to person. By contrast, 100 g of flour weighed today, or next week, will consistently be the same amount of flour.

Finally, there is no combination of ingredients that works for every noodle. As an example, noodle thickness can also dictate how much gluten you want to develop. Thicker noodles with a lot of gluten can end up being overly chewy and incapable of cooking fully. Gluten also increases the cooking time of the noodle, which may be problematic for thicker noodles. This can be a process of trial and error. To save on time, I’ve adjusted the noodle recipes according to my preferences.

Lastly, I would be remiss to say that the Yamato group has done an extensive amount of research on the effects of pressing, cutting technique, and aging of noodles and their scientific approach has shed new light on many of the topics above. Their content is always worth having a look12.

Making Noodles

Now that we know the main ingredients, how do you combine them to make noodles? The methods are almost if not just as important as the ingredient selection.

To illustrate the method, we’ll start by going over the primary steps.

The following process is derived from several methods I’ve seen, both from professional manufacturers as well as from other amateurs. For noodles with high hydration (above 36% the weight of the flour being used), this method works quite well.

As a side note, as of this writing, I’ve yet to be able to make a noodle consistently with hydration below 36% at home. Industrial manufacturers in Japan can buy specialty flours that are milled finer, which can absorb less water and can purchase expensive presses that can apply a very large amount of pressure to the dough. Home cooks rarely have access to this kind of flour or technology. For the sake of the recipes in this book, all hydration amounts will be 36% or more.

Step One: Ingredient Prep

Before we even do any form of mixing, we need to get our ingredients in order. I like to combine all of my ingredients into two separate mixes.

“dry” ingredients:

wheat
wheat gluten
egg white powder or egg powder
other additives like chili powder, matcha powder, etc.

“wet” ingredients:

water
alkaline salts (kansui)
salt
riboflavin or food dye (gardenia-based pigment is common in Japan)
other additives (Some folks add alcohol or sorbitol as a preservative, I don’t. Fresh eggs would also be included here.)

Weigh out and combine the dry ingredients, either in the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, or a food processor with the processing blade.

In a separate vessel, weigh out your water.

There is a particular way I add other wet ingredients to the water:

First, add alkaline salts: Alkaline salts, particularly sodium carbonate, form small bonds and clump together if added to water quickly13. These clumps prevent dissolution. The easiest way to avoid this problem is to add each salt one at a time, slowly, in an even stream, while stirring the water continuously. The water will start cloudy, but eventually turns back to fully transparent with enough stirring. If the salts do clump, they’ll still eventually dissolve, it just takes longer to stir into solution.
Next, add (sodium chloride) salt: This salt will take a bit more time to dissolve. Be patient, it will fully dissolve eventually.
Finally, add colors or additives: Riboflavin in powdered form will take even longer to dissolve. It’s just not very water-soluble. Just keep stirring.

Once you’ve combined the wet and the dry, you’re ready to start making the dough!

Step Two: Partial Hydration

Unlike with Italian pasta, ramen dough is pretty low in hydration. This means it is of the utmost importance that the flour is hydrated evenly, so that the dough comes together easily later on, particularly for the home cook. If you’re making the dough by hand or using a standing mixer, splitting the addition of water into parts will help assure that the dough is evenly hydrated.

In a vessel like a bowl or standing mixer, mix the dry ingredients for around 30 seconds to aerate them and make sure the dry ingredients are combined thoroughly. For me, this is “stir” on the standing mixer.

While the mixer is running on this lowest speed, add around 2/3rds of the wet ingredients in a slow and even stream. At first, it’s going to look clumpy, messy, and uneven. But stir for around 3 minutes, it’ll start to combine into a sandy texture. Sand is good. Sand is great.

Step Three: Remaining Hydration

Once the dough has that sandy, even texture, you can add your remaining liquid. As done before, I like to add the remaining liquid in a slow even stream.

At this stage, let the mixer run, but keep an eye on the time. If you mix too much, the gluten will be so active that the dough won’t come together easily. So I like to mix for no more than a minute. As the mixer runs, the dough will start clumping together. This clumping will also essentially knead the dough clumps as they spin in the mixer, quickly building dense balls of dough. Once the wet and dry are fully mixed, you’ll have a crumbly mess of dough, it will be unlikely to come into a cohesive ball of dough. Folks call this “soboro,” a term meaning “shreds” or “clumps.” That’s ok; ramen dough is crumbly by nature. It doesn’t have a lot of water. 1 to 2-inch pieces for most doughs is a good sign. To compensate, we need to go to the next phase.

Step Four: The First Rest

You’ve added a bunch of water to a dry starch, spun it around, and developed some stringy gluten. You’ve also incorporated air into the mix by tossing around the starch and water. Now you have to stop doing anything. Leave the dough alone. Don’t touch it.

I know, it seems counterintuitive. But this is absolutely required.

Cover the mixing vessel with plastic wrap, or store the dough in an airtight container, and leave it on the counter for a while. At least 30 minutes. Sometimes an hour. If you’re short on time, you can stick it in the fridge and leave it there overnight.

Why?

Resting has several major benefits:

reduce the rigidity of the gluten in the dough: Because the mixing we just performed partially kneaded the dough, the gluten strands have become “active”. After being exposed to force, the gluten in its current form makes the dough springy, tough, and difficult to roll out. Just like with other doughs, you need to let this dough rest.
even hydration: Your dough is low hydration. The water and alkaline salts need time to mingle with the starches and flour, something that, with higher hydration, isn’t as much of a problem. There’s just more water to move around to do the job when you have pizza or bread dough. But for ramen noodles, that isn’t the case, the starches have less available water and therefore won’t hydrate as quickly. You’ll notice when you next handle the dough that it feels wetter than when you covered it as a result of giving it that time to hydrate.
degassing of the dough: the dough is filled with both large and small air pockets. These pockets can disrupt a strong, tightly packed gluten network and a rigid starch gel that’s integral to the structure and texture of the dough. If you have way too much air, these pockets also expand in cooking (as heat causes air to expand), creating a spongy texture in the final dough. By resting, you essentially let gravity and capillary action force out small bubbles in the dough. Noodles, as a result, will appear more translucent as air is forced out.
begins enzymatic activity in the dough: enzymes in the dough get to work once the flour is hydrated. In ramen, we care specifically about proteases, which start snipping the chains of gluten into smaller pieces. When this occurs, these pieces are effectively primed to be stitched back together into longer, stronger chains of gluten when kneaded. While this might seem counter-intuitive, this enzymatic activity improves the strength of the gluten in the long term.

It’s critical either way. Rest your dough!

Step Five: The First Pressing

Taking the crumbly dough, it’s time to do the first pressing. Get a batch you can handle and press into a thick sheet you can eventually stuff into a pasta machine.

You should have a pasta machine for this. As mentioned earlier, ramen comes from heavy industrial processing, with massive rollers. We don’t have this, but we do have pasta machines!

Some manufacturers, like Sun and Yamato, suggest pressing by no more than 30% of the previous thickness. So if your initial dough thickness is 2 millimeters, you should decrease the thickness by no more than 0.6 millimeters per pass. I’m not at all sure where this number comes from, but your pasta machine likely has these ranges built-in. Don’t sweat it.

Take the thick sheet, and roll it through your widest setting. Press it between the rollers if you need to. It’s going to look ragged and terrible. Don’t worry about it, just try to keep it together. Roll out to the 2nd, and then the 3rd largest setting one by one.

At this stage, fold the dough over itself, and run it through the 2nd largest setting. This is called “compound pressing,” and essentially gives you more bang for your buck. You’ll then repeat this process another time, folding in half, and then running the dough through the largest setting.

The dough needs to go through the machine in the same direction. Folding should always happen through the middle width of the sheet. The reason for this is that, in this rolling technique, you’re aligning the gluten to run horizontally through the sheet of the dough. You’ll notice this effect as you roll, the dough will have white lines running lengthwise as your dough rolls and becomes more cohesive.

This adjustment of the gluten network means that, upon eating the noodles, your teeth bite perpendicularly to the gluten network, rather than along with it. Much like biting into a steak that’s cut with the grain, the dough will feel considerably chewier and more robust. This structure also has the benefit of helping make sure that the starches gel closely together.

Alternatively, for doughs with more water, you can also throw the dough into a plastic bag and step on it a bunch but… that always felt a little too crude for me. Some shops do this believe it or not. But the goal here is to develop gluten fully, get the starches to connect nicely and to have something you can roll out into noodles.

Step Six: Rest it (AGAIN)

Remember how I said gluten is really active when you press it? Well, you just made it even more active. You also probably incorporated some small air bubbles. So cover the sheets of dough with plastic and rest them for 30 minutes. This will make it easier to roll and cut later on. For those who have made pasta before, this should be familiar.

Step Seven: Roll and Cut

Take your sheets, and starting with the largest setting, roll out setting by setting to your desired thickness. Dust the sheets with cornstarch or potato starch as needed, and then, when the dough is to your thickness liking, cut lengthwise into noodles. I use a noodle cutter attachment, but you can also cut by hand if you like that rustic flair.

Once the noodles are cut, you can do one of two things before storing:

Ball ‘em up into portions, you’re done!
Knead the noodles into one another. This technique is called “temomi”, or hand pressing, and creates an irregular, wavy texture. I like to dust the noodles with cornstarch, knead them together into a ball, and then detangle them. You can also press the noodles repeatedly into the surface of your workspace for a similar effect.

Some shops will do the kneading right before cooking. I can only hypothesize that the kneading immediately before cooking causes the gluten to become active, resulting in more rigidity and slower cook time when the noodle is finally cooked. When kneading right after cutting, but not before usage, the method is primarily to change the appearance of the noodle.

Step Eight: Mature Noodles

Ok, so you have beautiful, cut, perfect noodles. Time to eat?

Not so fast! These noodles need time! Sensing a pattern here?

Maturation is the final phase of ramen noodle making, and it’s extremely helpful for developing ramen. In this final resting phase, the noodles… sit around. And as a result, some final effects on the dough occur:

Final degassing. Any residual air trapped in the dough will eventually leave. This is where nice noodles become glossy, translucent, and ultra chewy.
Hydration redistribution: residual water in the dough evaporates (you might notice some minor condensation in the container over time). This results in a more consistent product.
Enzymatic activity occurs. Enzymes in the flour get to work, developing flavor in the dough, and snipping proteins, which result in a more robust mesh of gluten.

Different noodles need to mature for different amounts of time. Generally though, the more water you have in the dough, the longer the noodles should mature. A good starting point is at least 24 hours for any noodle, but experiment as you get comfortable with noodle making.

Some manufacturers will mature their final cut noodles at room temperature, which rapidly improves the quality of the starch network. In the fridge, the starch gel is much firmer than at room temperature, so the starch gel takes longer to effectively collapse and become dense when cold. Essentially, the room temperature approach is a rapid, faster method. It is a quintessential technique of Sapporo style noodles. However, you need to be careful; at room temperature, there’s a possibility for pathogen growth. Noodles with an appropriate level of alkalinity, or preservatives like alcohol or sorbitol, can withstand room temperature better.

While refrigerated, noodles keep for several weeks. For long term storage, noodles can be kept in the freezer for easily 6 months with no reduction in quality.

Noodle Recipes

For these recipes, I’ll be using the standing mixer approach, which is my favorite. But you can also do them by hand or with a food processor.

Tokyo Style Noodle

This is a good, all-purpose noodle, usable in many different ramen applications. You can cut it with a standard 1.5 mm cutter, or thinner. It can be crinkly or straight. It works with most soups. It’s also relatively easy to make compared to other styles.

Ingredients (per portion):

99 g King Arthur bread flour
1 g vital wheat gluten
1 g egg white powder
38 g water
1 g salt
1.2 g baked soda, or powdered kansui (if using powdered kansui, use 0.5 g sodium carbonate, and 0.7 g potassium carbonate)
optional: pinch of riboflavin (a literal pinch, less than .01 gram is all that’s required)

Steps:

Add kansui powder and salt to the water (and riboflavin if using), dissolve completely. If using both sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate, add them one at a time. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve. You can make the solution several days before to get a jumpstart, just hold the liquid in an airtight container.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add your flour, wheat gluten, and egg white powder. Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 30 seconds to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir, add two-thirds of your water mixture slowly, in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 3 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for another minute, until small clumps begin to form.
Turn off the mixer, and add the mixture to a sealable bag. Close, and let this rest for 1 hour at room temperature. Don’t skip this.
Knead it, by using an electric pasta machine to sheet the dough, going through the largest setting, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Take the dough and fold it, sheeting under the 2nd widest setting, then fold it again and sheet it under the widest setting. Repeat this until the sheet is quite smooth and not ragged.
After kneading, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30 minutes.
Pull out your dough. Portion into workable sizes, and roll out to desired thickness, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking.
Cut your noodles to your desired thickness. 1.5 mm by 1.5mm is standard for these.
Bundle the noodles into 130 g portions and place them in a sealable bag. Put the bag in the fridge and allow it to rest for at least a day.

New Wave Tokyo Style Noodle

This is a modification on the Tokyo style noodle, using rice flour to achieve additional slipperiness and texture. Suited well for Shoyu style broths.

Ingredients (per portion):

90 g King Arthur bread flour
10 g rice flour
1 g egg white powder
38 g water
1 g salt
1.2 g baked soda, or powdered kansui (if using powdered kansui, use 0.5 g sodium carbonate, and 0.7 g potassium carbonate, around 40% sodium and 60% potassium)
optional: pinch of riboflavin (a literal pinch, less than 0.01 g is all that’s required)

Steps:

Add kansui powder and salt to the water (and riboflavin if using), dissolve completely. If using both sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate, add them one at a time. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve. You can make the solution several days before to get a jumpstart, just hold the liquid in an airtight container.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add your flour and egg white powder. Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 30 seconds to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir, add two-thirds of your water mixture slowly, in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 3 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for another minute, until small clumps begin to form.
Turn off the mixer, and add the mixture to a sealable bag. Close, and let this rest for 1 hour at room temperature. Don’t skip this.
Knead it, by using an electric pasta machine to sheet the dough, going through the largest setting, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Take the dough and fold it, sheeting under the 2nd widest setting, then fold it again and sheet it under the widest setting. Repeat this until the sheet is quite smooth and not ragged.
After kneading, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30 minutes.
Pull out your dough. Portion into workable sizes, and roll out to desired thickness, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking.
Cut your noodles to your desired thickness. 1.5 mm by 1.5mm is standard for these, though oblong, such as 2.0 mm by 1.5 mm is also nice.
Bundle the noodles into 130 g portions and place them in a sealable bag. Put the bag in the fridge and allow it to rest for at least a day.

Jiro Noodle

Jiro noodles are defined by a few main characteristics that are highly unorthodox for ramen making:

Jiro noodles are almost entirely made with a specific brand of flour from Nisshin Seifun Group called "Ooshon", a higher mineral flour with high protein content. Chances are you can't get this flour, so we'll use bread flour with a high ash content. King Arthur’s High Gluten flour is a good option for this. The resulting noodles will be a light tan hue.
Jiro noodles are low hydration, typically 33%, and thick. As I mentioned earlier, anything lower than 36% is often too difficult to work with at home. I found 36% made the dough easier to work with without impacting texture. Add more water as desired. The noodles will be extremely firm, and they will take a long time to cook.
Jiro noodles are cut oblong, typically rolling the dough wider than the openings of the cutters, in a technique called “Reverse cut.” This creates a frayed effect on the exterior of the noodle that is good at picking up soup (but bad for the cutters, so don't do this often!)

Ingredients (makes a small portion, multiply as needed):

100 g High protein bread flour (with an ash above .5, greater than 14% protein)
36 g water
1 g powdered kansui (60% potassium 40% sodium)
1 g salt

Steps:

Add kansui powder and salt to the water, dissolve completely. If using both sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate, add them one at a time. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve. You can make the solution several days before to get a jumpstart, just hold the liquid in an airtight container.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add flours. Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 30 seconds to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir, add two thirds of your water mixture slowly, in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 5 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for 3-5 more minutes, or until the crumbly dough does not leave flour residue on your hands when you touch it.
Turn off the mixer and add the mixture to a sealable bag. Close the bag, place it on the ground, and step on the dough to compress it into a flat sheet, then let this compressed dough rest in the closed bag, for one hour. This dough is low hydration and hard to work with without stepping on the dough, this jumpstarts some of the structure.
Press the dough, taking portions of the dough from step 5 and, using an electric pasta machine, sheet the dough. Start with the largest setting, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Take the dough and fold it, sheeting under the 2nd widest setting, then fold it again and sheet it under the widest setting. Repeat this until the sheet is smooth and not ragged.
After pressing, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30-45 minutes to relax the gluten.
Pull out your dough. Roll out to desired thickness with the pasta machine, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking. I roll these to about 3 mm.
Cut your noodles to your desired thickness. Given the above, I use a 1.5 mm cutter, standard with a Marcato Atlas. At this thickness, the noodles will fray as they exit the cutters.
Bundle the noodles into 180 g portions and place them in the sealable bag. Put the bag in the fridge and allow it to rest for at least a day. This is a LOT of noodles per person. Feel free to adjust as you like

Sapporo Style Noodle

This is my favorite noodle (because I’m a Sapporo ramen nerd). The key is to make sure it rests aptly during mixing, and in the fridge. I like them after at least two days in the fridge, but you can go much longer.

Ingredients (per portion):

98.5 g King Arthur bread flour
1.5 g vital wheat gluten
1 g egg white powder
38 g water
1 g salt
1.6 g baked soda, or powdered kansui (if using powdered kansui, use 1.3 g sodium carbonate, and 0.3 g potassium carbonate)
optional: pinch of riboflavin (a literal pinch, less than 0.01 g is all that’s required)

Steps:

Add kansui powder and salt to the water (and riboflavin if using), dissolve completely. If using both sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate, add them one at a time. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve. You can make the solution several days before to get a jumpstart, just hold the liquid in an airtight container.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add your flour, wheat gluten, and egg white powder, Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 30 seconds to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir, add two thirds of your water mixture slowly, in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 3 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for another minute, until small clumps begin to form.
Turn off the mixer, and add the mixture to a sealable bag. Close, and let this rest for 1-2 hours at room temperature. Don’t skip this.
Knead it, by using an electric pasta machine to sheet the dough, going through the largest setting, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Take the dough and fold it, sheeting under the 2nd widest setting, then fold it again and sheet it under the widest setting. Repeat this until the sheet is quite smooth and not ragged.
After kneading, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30 minutes.
Pull out your dough. Portion into workable sizes, and roll out to desired thickness with the pasta machine, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking.
Cut your noodles to your desired thickness. 1.5 mm by 1.5mm is standard for these, but 2.0 mm by 2.0 mm is also nice.
Take the noodles and compress them together, sort of like making a snowball, then detangle them, to create a wavy, crinkled pattern.
Bundle the noodles into 140 g portions and place them in a sealable bag. Put the bag in the fridge and allow it to rest for at least two days. You can, conversely, rest these noodles at room temperature for one to two days for additional density in the starch gel and a slightly translucent look.

Makeshift-Hakata Style Noodle

These are “makeshift” because most Hakata style noodles are very low hydration (<30%), something most home cooks can’t do. But they’ll still have some similarity to the real deal; they’re very toothsome and cook quite quickly. These noodles are particularly hard to make, so try them out once you’re more comfortable with a Tokyo approach.

Ingredients (per portion):

99 g Bread flour
1 g vital wheat gluten
35 g water
0.5 g baked soda, or powdered kansui (if using powdered kansui, use 0.1 g sodium carbonate, and 0.4 g potassium carbonate)
1 g salt

Steps:

Add kansui powder and salt to the water, dissolve completely. If using both sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate, add them one at a time. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve. You can make the solution several days before to get a jumpstart, just hold the liquid in an airtight container.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add your flour and wheat gluten. Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 30 seconds to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir mode, add two thirds of your water mixture slowly in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 5 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for 2 minutes.
Turn off the mixer, and add the mixture to a sealable bag. Close, and let this rest for 2 hours at room temperature. Don’t skip this.
Knead it, by using an electric pasta machine to sheet the dough, going through the largest setting, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Take the dough and fold it, sheeting under the 2nd widest setting, then fold it again and sheet it under the widest setting. Repeat this until the sheet is quite smooth and not ragged.
After kneading, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30 minutes.
Pull out your dough. Portion into workable sizes, and roll out to desired thickness with the pasta machine, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking.
Cut your noodles to your desired thickness. 1.0 mm by 1.0 mm is around standard for these.
Bundle the noodles into 120 g portions and place them in a sealable bag. Put the bag in the fridge and allow it to rest for at least a day.

Kitakata Style Noodle

This style of ramen is meant to be put together extremely quickly, with noodles being cooked almost as soon as they’re cut. As a result, the hydration is high, and the kansui amount is high, while also being primarily sodium, allowing for the dough to be noticeably extensible. Additional tapioca is used to help provide structure in the event you want to cook the noodles immediately.

Ingredients (per portion):

95 g King Arthur all purpose flour
5 g Tapioca starch
45 g water
1 g salt
1.9 g baked soda

Steps:

Add kansui powder and salt to the water, dissolve completely. If using both sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate, add them one at a time. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve. You can make the solution several days before to get a jumpstart, just hold the liquid in an airtight container.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add your flour and tapioca starch. Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 30 seconds to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir, add two thirds of your water mixture slowly, in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 3 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for another minute, until small clumps begin to form.
Turn off the mixer, and add the mixture to a sealable bag. Close, and let this rest for 1 hour at room temperature. Unlike with all other recipes, you can actually skip this, as kitakata noodles are often made by hand in the same day.
Knead it, by using an electric pasta machine to sheet the dough, going through the largest setting, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Take the dough and fold it, sheeting under the 2nd widest setting, then fold it again and sheet it under the widest setting. Repeat this until the sheet is quite smooth and not ragged.
After kneading, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30 minutes.You may also skip this, though the noodles will degrade in quality in the fridge if you don’t use them quickly.
Pull out your dough. Portion into workable sizes, and roll out to desired thickness using the pasta machine, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking.
Grab a sheet around 12 inches long, and cut into noodles approximately 3 mm wide. You can do this by hand, or by a cutter.
Take the noodles and compress them together, sort of like making a snowball, then detangle them, to create a wavy, crinkled pattern.
Bundle the noodles into 150 g portions and place them in a sealable bag. You may use the noodles immediately, or store them in the fridge for a few days.

Akayu Style Noodle

The Akayu noodle is distinct for being ultra thick, plush but firm, and crinkled, in large part due to the high water content. The dough itself is marvelously easy to put together, and results in tender, wriggly noodles, great for thicker soups.

Ingredients (per portion):

100 g King Arthur Bread flour
42 g water
1 g salt
1.2 g baked soda or powdered kansui (If using powdered kansui, use 0.7g potassium carbonate and 0.5 g sodium carbonate)

Steps:

Add baked soda and salt to the water, dissolve completely. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve. You can make the solution several days before to get a jumpstart, just hold the liquid in an airtight container.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add your flour, Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 30 seconds to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir, add two thirds of your water mixture slowly, in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 3 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for another minute, until small clumps begin to form.
Turn off the mixer, and add the mixture to a sealable bag. Close, and let this rest for 1 hour at room temperature. Don’t skip this.
Knead it, by using an electric pasta machine to sheet the dough, going through the largest setting, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Take the dough and fold it, sheeting under the 2nd widest setting, then fold it again and sheet it under the widest setting. Repeat this until the sheet is quite smooth and not ragged.
After kneading, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30 minutes.
Pull out your dough. Portion into workable sizes, and roll out to desired thickness using the pasta machine, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking. In this case, around 2 mm thick.
Grab a sheet around 12 inches long, and cut into noodles approximately 3 mm wide, with a cutter.
Take the noodles and compress them together, sort of like making a snowball, then detangle them, to create a wavy, crinkled pattern.
Bundle the noodles into 180 g portions and place them in a sealable bag. Put the bag in the fridge and allow it to rest for at least a day.

Iekei Noodle

This recipe is an attempt at replicating the noodle made by Sakai Seimen for Iekei style noodles, most notably those served at Yoshimuraya, but at countless other spinoffs. They are denoted by being “reverse cut,” or cut using a cutter notably thinner than the thickness of the dough. In this instance, a cutter with 1.5mm gaps, but with a dough thickness of 2mm. This recipe was designed for professional noodle machines (I use a Yamato at the restaurant), so it may be difficult to attempt at home.

Ingredients (per portion):

100 g King Arthur All Purpose Flour (if possible, King Arthur Galahad is preferred)
31 g water
1 g salt
1.2 g baked soda or powdered kansui (If using powdered kansui, use 0.7g potassium carbonate and 0.5 g sodium carbonate)
Riboflavin for color

Steps:

Add baked soda and salt to the water, dissolve completely. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve. You can make the solution several days before to get a jumpstart, just hold the liquid in an airtight container.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add your flour, Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 2 minutes to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir, add two thirds of your water mixture slowly, in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 4 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for another minute, until the dough is homogenous and no longer sandy, around 5 more minutes.
If using a professional machine, immediately press in the following intervals: 1.5 mm, 2 mm compound, 3 mm. If at home, step on the dough, repeatedly, until the dough is homogenous.
After kneading, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30 minutes.
Pull out your dough. Portion into workable sizes, and roll out to desired thickness using the pasta machine, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking. In this case, the dough should be 2 mm thick.
Grab a sheet around 6 inches long, and cut into noodles approximately 1.5 mm wide, with a cutter.
Bundle the noodles into 140 g portions and place them in a sealable bag. Put the bag in the fridge and allow it to rest for at least a day.

Thick Tsukemen Noodle

This noodle uses a bit of whole wheat flour in addition to standard white flour. This whole wheat accomplishes a few things:

adds more wheat flavor: A lot of the flavor of wheat is captured in the bran and germ, rather than the clean endosperm. In normal white flour, the bran and germ are excluded, resulting in a clean, simple profile that is versatile. But for wheat flavor, sometimes it’s good to add a bit of the brown stuff. We’re not looking for full-on whole wheat noodles, but this will add flavor no doubt.
changes the color/appearance: The bran and germ contain the majority of the mineral content in the wheat berry. In flour milling, this mineral content is called “ash,” and higher ash flours tend to have a browner hue. For this tsukemen, I wanted to increase the ash content of the dry ingredients slightly, just from a visual perspective. Rather than searching for high ash flour, this move gets you pretty close (and some nice flecks too).
reduces some gluten formation: Because tsukemen noodles are so thick and so hydrated, you don’t want a large amount of gluten. Developing the gluten too much will cause the noodles to be extremely, unpleasantly chewy, and require extensive cooking time.

Ingredients (per portion):

94 g all-purpose flour (10.5% protein by weight)
6 g whole wheat all-purpose flour
40 g water
1 g baked soda or powdered kansui (60% potassium, 40% sodium)
1 g salt

Steps:

Add kansui powder and salt to the water, dissolve completely. If using both sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate, add them one at a time. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve. You can make the solution several days before to get a jumpstart, just hold the liquid in an airtight container.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add your flour. Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 30 seconds to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir, add two thirds of your water mixture slowly, in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 3 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for another minute, until small clumps begin to form.
Turn off the mixer, and add the mixture to a sealable bag. Close, and let this rest for 1 hour at room temperature. Don’t skip this.
Knead it, by using an electric pasta machine to sheet the dough, going through the largest setting, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Take the dough and fold it, sheeting under the 2nd widest setting, then fold it again and sheet it under the widest setting. Repeat this until the sheet is quite smooth and not ragged.
After kneading, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30 minutes.
Pull out your dough. Portion into workable sizes, and roll out to desired thickness using the pasta machine, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking. For this noodle, rolling to around 3mm thick is ideal.
Cut your noodles to your desired thickness. 3.0 mm by 3.0 mm is ideal for an extra thick noodle.
Bundle the noodles into 180-200 g portions and place them in a sealable bag. Put the bag in the fridge and allow it to rest for at least a day.

New Tsukemen Noodle

This noodle uses different flours to achieve a unique, slightly translucent appearance. It pairs well with lighter broths.

Ingredients:

30 g King Arthur high protein flour (14.7% protein by weight)
70 g Swan’s Down cake flour (9% protein by weight)
40 g water
1 g baked soda or powdered kansui (60% potassium, 40% sodium)
1 g salt
optional: pinch of riboflavin (a literal pinch, less than 0.01 gram is all that’s required)

Steps:

Add kansui powder and salt to the water (and riboflavin if using), dissolve completely. If using both sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate, add them one at a time. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve. You can make the solution several days before to get a jumpstart, just hold the liquid in an airtight container.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add your flour. Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 30 seconds to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir, add two thirds of your water mixture slowly, in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 3 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for another minute, until small clumps begin to form.
Turn off the mixer, and add the mixture to a sealable bag. Close, and let this rest for 1 hour at room temperature. Don’t skip this.
Knead it, by using an electric pasta machine to sheet the dough, going through the largest setting, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Take the dough and fold it, sheeting under the 2nd widest setting, then fold it again and sheet it under the widest setting. Repeat this until the sheet is quite smooth and not ragged.
After kneading, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30 minutes.
Pull out your dough. Portion into workable sizes, and roll out to desired thickness using the pasta machine, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking.
Cut your noodles to your desired thickness. 2.0 mm by 2.0 mm is nice for these, but you can also go thicker.
Bundle the noodles into 180 g portions, and place them, in the sealable bag, in the fridge and allow them to rest for at least one day.

Taishoken Style Tsukemen Noodle

This noodle, based on the Higashi Ikebukuro Taishoken style of tsukemen, has an almost soft, light noodle. Higashi Ikebukuro is the originator of the tsukemen style of ramen. I won’t get into the history of the dish in full (there are much better scholars on the dish), but It’s meant to be very delicate in contrast to a lighter, slightly vinegary broth. Whole egg in the noodle helps add some tenderness via the yolk (their original recipe, somehow claims to add one whole egg for every 300 portions, I’ve opted for slightly more here). So this recipe is essentially designed for a thinner, more tender noodle. A 200 gram portion is not difficult to eat.

One note: because these noodles are meant to be on the softer side, they do not age well. Aging the noodle results in a denser, firmer texture, which is distinctly counter to the result you want. If you make these noodles, they’ll be good for only about 24 hours in the fridge.

Ingredients:

60 g All Purpose Flour (~11.7% protein by weight)
40 g Swan’s Down cake flour (9% protein by weight)
37 g water
4 g whole egg (a standard egg has 50 g, so adjust accordingly)
1 g baked soda
1 g salt

Steps:

Add the kansui powder and salt to the water, dissolve completely.. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve.
Add in the egg, whisking to combine thoroughly.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add your flours. Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 30 seconds to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir, add two thirds of your water mixture slowly, in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 3 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for another minute, until small clumps begin to form.
Turn off the mixer, and add the mixture to a sealable bag. Close, and let this rest for 1 hour at room temperature. Don’t skip this.
Knead it, by using an electric pasta machine to sheet the dough, going through the largest setting, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Take the dough and fold it, sheeting under the 2nd widest setting, then fold it again and sheet it under the widest setting. Repeat this until the sheet is quite smooth and not ragged.
After kneading, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30 minutes.
Pull out your dough. Portion into workable sizes, and roll out to desired thickness using the pasta machine, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking.
Cut your noodles to your desired thickness. 2.0 mm by 2.0 mm is as close to the Taishoken standard as most folks can get.
Bundle the noodles into 200 g portions, and place them in a sealable bag. You’ll want to use these within a day, the texture changes dramatically as they age.

Tapioca Tsukemen Noodle

The Tapioca in this tsukemen noodle gives the resulting noodle an interesting bounce and helps it maintain a straight shape, due to lower gluten development.

Ingredients:

90 g all-purpose flour (10.5% protein by weight)
10 g Tapioca Starch
40 g water
1 g baked soda or powdered kansui (60% potassium, 40% sodium)
1 g salt

Steps:

Add kansui powder and salt to the water, dissolve completely. If using both sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate, add them one at a time. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve. You can make the solution several days before to get a jumpstart, just hold the liquid in an airtight container.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add your flour and tapioca starch. Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 30 seconds to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir, add two thirds of your water mixture slowly, in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 3 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for another minute, until small clumps begin to form.
Turn off the mixer, and add the mixture to a sealable bag. Close, and let this rest for 1 hour at room temperature. Don’t skip this.
Knead it, by using an electric pasta machine to sheet the dough, going through the largest setting, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Take the dough and fold it, sheeting under the 2nd widest setting, then fold it again and sheet it under the widest setting. Repeat this until the sheet is quite smooth and not ragged.
After kneading, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30 minutes.
Pull out your dough. Portion into workable sizes, and roll out to desired thickness using the pasta machine, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking.
Cut your noodles to your desired thickness. 2.0 mm by 2.0 mm is nice for these, but you can also go thicker.
Bundle the noodles into 180 g portions, and place them, in the sealable bag, in the fridge and allow them to rest for at least one day.

Mazesoba / Soupless Ramen Noodle

Mazesoba noodles, or noodles used for dishes that don’t contain soup, can contain a variety of different approaches. But the broad theory of them is that they actually need less structural integrity, because they don’t sit in soup. We supplement this in this recipe by borrowing from Italian pasta ideas, namely, using a lower protein flour, and an increased egg content. All purpose flour is suitable here because the egg provides more structure than in a standard ramen dough, and makes the dough relatively easier to work with. Using egg yolk as part of the ingredients further tenderizes the dough, as fat prohibits some gluten formation, making this dough even easier to work with. And since the egg content is high here, the noodles are resilient in cooking, the egg white helping reduce overcooking potential.

Ingredients (per portion):

100 g All Purpose flour
14 g whole fresh egg (or around 1 egg for every 300 g flour)
24 g water

Note: Total hydration including fresh egg is around 36%. If using powdered egg, use 36 g water, and 3 g egg powder

1 g salt
1 g baked soda, or powdered kansui (if using powdered kansui, use .8 g sodium carbonate, and .2 g potassium carbonate)
optional: pinch of riboflavin (a literal pinch, less than .01 gram is all that’s required).

The egg yolk from the whole egg will provide some amount of color, but not as much as in true egg-pastas, so some dye helps.

Steps:

Add kansui powder and salt to the water (and riboflavin if using), dissolve completely. If using both sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate, add them one at a time. Go slowly, stir constantly until clear. This will take a while, but eventually, the contents will dissolve. You can make the solution several days before to get a jumpstart, just hold the liquid in an airtight container.
Add the whole fresh egg to the solution, mix until fully incorporated.
In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, add your flour. Turn the mixer to “stir” and run for 30 seconds to aerate the mix.
While running the mixer on stir, add two-thirds of your water mixture slowly, in an even stream. Let the mixer stir the flour and water mixture for 3 minutes.
Add in the remaining water mixture with the mixer running, run for another minute, until small clumps begin to form.
Turn off the mixer, and add the mixture to a sealable bag. Close, and let this rest for 1 hour at room temperature. Don’t skip this.
Knead it, by using an electric pasta machine to sheet the dough, going through the largest setting, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. Take the dough and fold it, sheeting under the 2nd widest setting, then fold it again and sheet it under the widest setting. Repeat this until the sheet is quite smooth and not ragged.
After kneading, put the dough back in the plastic bag, and rest at room temp for another 30 minutes.
Pull out your dough. Portion into workable sizes, and roll out to desired thickness, using potato or cornstarch as you go to prevent sticking.
Cut your noodles to your desired thickness. 2 mm by 2 mm is standard for these, though you can go as thick as you’d like here.
Bundle the noodles into 180 g portions and place them in a sealable bag. Put the bag in the fridge and allow it to rest for at least a day. These noodles will oxidize and darken in appearance considerably if left in the fridge for more than 2-3 days, so for long term storage, freezing is recommended.

Chapter 2: Soup

Within ramen, there are two routes a soup can go. It can either be made from fresh meat products that require long cooking times, or dried fish products that require short cooking times. Each of these soups on their own has various applications.

Ramen is, historically, a meat-based dish. Chinese cooks were making meat soups in the early 20th century and, depending on your historical source, some number of industrious Japanese business owners adapted those soups to local tastes by adding soy sauce to the final dish. Meat and ramen are quintessential pairs, it’s hard to imagine ramen’s popularity without meat-based soup.

So the focus of this chapter will be primarily on meat-based soups, though fish-based soups are discussed later. When I refer to soup in this chapter, I specifically mean one that uses some amount of animal bones or tissue to achieve its flavor and viscosity.

Soup often seems like an extremely complex part of the process. The soup lore is astounding, with some shops cooking their soup in big vats for years, continuously adding new bones and water. There are stories of tonkotsu shops that boil their soup for over 40 hours. Some chefs meticulously monitor their soups, making sure the temperatures hover in each specific degree, no more no less. And none of this covers the recent growing popularity of other cooking techniques, like sous vide and pressure cooking, which can both be used in soup making (more on that later!).

But the reality is, soups are easy. Seriously. All soups made with meat products can be divided into two categories, and the method for making them is very straight forward, virtually all recipes you will find are simply variants of the methods we will describe.

The two categories of soups in ramen are:

chintan soups, or clear soups
paitan soups or cloudy soups

There are endless variations on these two, but all soups (yep, all of them) fall into one of these two categories. Admittedly, it’s more like a continuum than a pure categorization, some soups are slightly cloudy, others less so. But this is all soup is.

In my experience, this means the variation by soup is rarely on technique and much more by ingredient selection. The process for meat soups, in almost all cases, goes as follows:

Cook animal parts in water to extract flavor and convert collagen to gelatin, which adds thickness and mouthfeel.
Add aromatics for complexity and to provide water-soluble flavor compounds (this includes dashi elements).

So, what happens when you make soup? Let's discuss in detail:

Collagen Conversion to Gelatin

Connective tissue within an animal is made up of a molecule called, “collagen.” Collagen is a tight mesh protein that is not water-soluble that gives structure to this tissue. Virtually all animal meats contain collagen in varying proportions. Under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t want to eat collagen. It’s hard and pretty gross. Think gristle in your steak, as an example.

But when we introduce collagen to prolonged heat, it undergoes a chemical change where it effectively breaks down into gelatin. Gelatin, unlike collagen, is water-soluble. Through cooking pieces of meat with collagen in water, that collagen converts to gelatin and dissolves.

Items that are collagen-rich tend to be muscles and parts of the animal that serve multiple purposes: they can act as a barrier of some sort, need to move often, or connect different tissues together. Feet, bones, tendons, ligaments, skin, these items have loads of collagen. This does not mean you want to make a soup entirely from these ingredients; you can certainly have too much gelatin in your soup.

When gelatin dissolves into water, several things happen:

The gelatin molecules increase the viscosity of the liquid, as they attract water molecules and prevent their movement. Too much, and the gelatin causes the soup to almost feel sticky on the palate. Too little, and the gelatin doesn’t attract enough water, making the soup feel thin and watery.
When cold, the gelatin molecules link up to form a mesh of protein, entraining water. In ample quantities, this mesh can resist forces like a solid and retain its shape. It’s meat Jello, basically.

Cooks control the gelatin content of soup by cooking the bones/tissue for enough time to ensure full extraction and conversion, and by using the right amount of water. They also control the gelatin content by using an appropriate amount of ingredients that are high in collagen.

Essentially, if your soup feels too watery, reduce it or include more bones/connective tissue in subsequent cooks. And if it feels too thick, you can add water to it or increase the ratio of water to bones in subsequent cooks.

Myoglobin Denaturation and Scum Formation

Myoglobin is a protein that gives muscle its red color. Unlike other proteins found in blood, myoglobin is water-soluble. You’ll notice when soaking bones, or when you first start cooking bones, that the water turns a pinkish-ish hue. That is myoglobin, not necessarily hemoglobin, the protein that gives blood its distinct color and the key oxygen transporting protein found in red blood cells. All bones and tissue in the animal parts contain some level of blood, so some hemoglobin will be there, but most of what you’re seeing is myoglobin.

As the temperature of the water increases, myoglobin denatures. This denatured version of myoglobin also has a tendency to link up with itself and other proteins. As the denatured myoglobin combines with other denatured proteins, they conveniently float to the top of the soup. Chefs call this mix of proteins “scum,” and often choose to skim it away.

So, you might be wondering, why do we skim the scum, and do we need to? Scum, as the name implies, is sort of gross looking. That seems like a pretty reasonable explanation, get rid of the gross stuff. But is it really all that gross? Maybe not. Most chefs I’ve spoken to suggest that keeping scum can lead to an off appearance, darkening the soup, and an off, almost metallic flavor. On the other hand, Daniel Gritzer at Serious Eats suggests that by leaving the scum, it improves the clarification of the final soup, as debris invariably gets trapped in the mesh of proteins floating on the surface14, and only minimally affects soup color.

In some applications, skimming the scum helps improve color. Over a long enough time, particularly in a scenario where the soup is boiling vigorously, the scum will turn brown and solubilize. For pork bones, you may wish to blanch or soak the bones overnight, to remove myoglobin before cooking, as these bones produce more myoglobin to skim than chicken parts.

I almost always skim the scum. It doesn’t take very long and, let's be honest, I have an eye for details. But there isn’t a hard and fast rule here.

Fat Rendering

Meat products contain fat, even in trace amounts. Animal fats melt at a temperature much lower than boiling, though the specific melting temperature depends on the fat in question. As the soup is cooked, rendered fat rises to the top of the water and stays there until it is skimmed off or emulsified. You can use this fat for later cooking purposes (see the Aroma Oil section), or discard. The fat rendered in the soup making process contains all of the fat-soluble flavor compounds extracted, so it has a markedly different flavor than a fat rendered on its own. You may or may not want this in the final bowl of ramen.

Aroma and Flavor Extraction

The primary purpose of cooking ingredients in water, aside from dissolving gelatin to improve the body, is to add flavor to the liquid. Animal tissue has a TON of trapped flavor. Flavor extraction from meat is directly related to the temperature and time on which it is held. As meat and bones cook, the protein within them denatures, squeezing out water and water-soluble flavor compounds, which then solubilize in the surrounding soup. For many of these compounds, the speed and quantity of this extraction increase with increasing temperature15. Chemical reaction speeds often increase with temperature, so this is not surprising.

Other aromatics, which generally refers to vegetables and herbs, also follow this rule. Aromatics, however, do not take as long to release their flavor into the liquid as meat-based ingredients do, as their cells usually break down faster under most cooking conditions. This is why onions and carrots are very soft after a few hours of cooking. Applying heat also creates new chemicals, or releases existing chemicals, that produce aromas. We can smell these aroma producing compounds only because they are volatile, evaporating from the soup over time. Aromatic compounds don’t really stop being released (otherwise what would you be able to smell?), and they continue to volatilize while the soup cooks. Unfortunately, those ingredients can only release so many aromatic compounds before they run out. Release too much of them, and you won’t have much left to enjoy in the soup. A soup with onions cooked for 6 hours will be far less oniony than one cooked for only an hour.

Depending on what you’d like your final soup to taste like, you can increase or decrease the aromatics’ cooking time accordingly. For brighter vegetable flavors, cook them in the soup for less, for muted ones, cook them more. For most applications, I’ve found that I sufficiently extract the aromatics’ flavor compounds into the soup after an hour, at 88-93 °C (190-200 °F), though chopping or dicing the aromatics into smaller pieces rapidly increases the speed in which your extraction occurs. I find large pieces, cooked in the soup for an hour, is sufficient (and my recipes will mention the size desired for the ingredients).

One additional comment on aromatics: garlic is a unique ingredient in that, depending on how the clove is prepared, the pungency of the flavor in the final soup changes12. As garlic’s cell walls are ruptured via crushing or cutting, an enzyme in garlic called “alliinase” is released, which converts alliin (the foundational flavor of garlic) into allicin. Allicin is the compound that gives garlic its sharp, sulfuric quality. Heat stops the activity of this enzyme, so you can effectively control the sharpness of the garlic’s flavor in your soup depending on the treatment of the cloves before adding them to the soup. Put in whole, the enzyme is pretty inactive, and so the garlic flavor in your soup will be much milder. Crushed with the heel of a knife, the clove experiences some enzymatic activity, and some sharpness will remain. If you completely obliterate the garlic into a paste, the flavor will be very sharp and intense. Getting the right amount of garlic punch can be tricky though, as it’s balanced by not only how it’s prepared, but how long it’s cooked. Much like I mentioned earlier, cooking aromatics like garlic for a long time causes many of their flavor compounds to volatilize, making them gone for good.

In western cooking, particularly in French methods, flavor generation also usually involves browning aromatics and meat first, then covering with water, allowing the browned flavor to permeate the liquid as it cooks. In ramen making, browning of aromatics and bones is extremely rare. To be honest, I don’t know why this is, but I feel that unbrowned soups tend to pair better with ramen noodles. As a matter of preference, browning could be okay as a part of your soup-making process. I just don’t personally do it.

Soup, therefore, represents one component used to create the flavor profile in ramen, primarily from water-soluble flavors. All done primarily through boiling. Soup might sound like it isn’t doing anything very important at first, but it is. Without soup, a lot of the potential water-soluble flavors produced by vegetables and meats would be completely absent.

Emulsification

Up until this point, I’ve been awfully quiet about the difference between the cloudy paitan and clear chintan soups. It’s all for a good reason, as there’s a simple but big difference: emulsification. What’s an emulsification, or an emulsion? Interestingly enough, Scott has some expertise on this. Emulsions are suspensions of two insoluble liquids. At least one of those liquids, sometimes called a “phase”, is suspended in the other as many teeny-tiny droplets. Making a stable emulsion is, funny enough, a science. You need the right compounds to keep the emulsion stable (and enough of them), as well as enough physical activity on the liquid to shred the insoluble liquid into small enough droplets. Scientists call this whole ripping thing “shearing.” How do you shear a fluid? Avoiding too much of the technicalities, you move it, usually in a container. The more you move it, the harder you shear it.

So what distinguishes our main two soup types? Paitans are emulsions, and chintans are not. That’s it. Does anything else, say, mineral content, bone granules, aromatics, pot size, and/or protein preparation matter? Nope, none of those explain why paitans are opaque. Only emulsified fat makes ramen soups cloudy. Why do fat droplets make soup cloudy? If you remember refraction from highschool physics, fat has a different refractive index than water. Put simply, light passes through it differently than water. Those globules refract light in all sorts of different directions than if the light were to just pass through water, which makes the soup cloudy.

Us ramen cooks use a bunch of tools to help emulsify fat into soup. We can add emulsifiers, compounds that promote oil in water emulsification, and we can shear it with the right tools and techniques. First, let’s talk about the most prominent emulsifier in ramen soups: gelatin.

Gelatin As An Emulsifier

Gelatin, as an emulsifier, is attracted to fat and water, so it kind of snuggles between the surface of the fat droplets and the water. Because it’s also a large protein, it pushes other fat droplets away. So, rather than combining, these globules of fat end up “bumping” off of each other or passing each other in the soup. Gelatin keeps the fat emulsified really well, so those droplets stay suspended for a long time. Which is awfully convenient. When we make soup, we extract gelatin from the animal parts. It’s already there for us.

But, when you want to make an emulsion, you need an emulsifier and enough shearing. Just extracting a bunch of gelatin and fat from meat in water won’t make an emulsion on its own. Shearing, as it turns out, is pretty simple, but you gotta put your elbow into it a little. Gelatin is a good emulsifier, but it's got limitations like everything else. To get really small droplets, we need to add some physical energy to the soup.

I’ve found two common methods work to get the droplets small enough:

rapid boil. This is the most traditional method. Just get the soup boiling aggressively. This rapid boil moves the soup around, which shears it. Over time, that shearing turns the fat into tiny droplets.
using a blending device: Hand blenders or jar-style blenders accomplish the same emulsification by ripping up the fat into tiny, tiny droplets.Blending devices stir a lot more aggressively than a boil. As a result, you can emulsify fat much faster using a blending device than with a rapid boil.

Contrary to many recipes found online for paitans, you do not need to shear the cooking liquid for the entire duration of the cooking time. Gelatin, with enough shearing and fat, emulsifies very quickly (in as little as 30 seconds in a blender). And because gelatin is a strong emulsifier, it stays that way once it’s done.

Gelatin’s ability to emulsify fat and water is a double edged sword. A clear chintan will basically become a paitan if you accidentally boil it too aggressively. So if you want to make a very clear stock with no emulsified fat, I recommend holding the cooking temperature to around 88-91 °C/190-195 °F.

Other Emulsifiers: Starch and Protein Blending

Although you might get enough gelatin from the animal parts, sometimes you don’t. Poorly emulsified soups, usually from a lack of gelatin, create a thick layer of fat on the surface of the soup, which congeals when cooling or sitting in the serving bowl.

And no extra shearing will be enough if you don’t have enough emulsifiers. Even a high quality blender, as aggressive as it is, won’t work if you don’t have enough emulsifiers. Instead, you have to add more emulsifiers, whatever those end up being. There are tons of these, from modernist ingredients like lecithin or gums that trap residual water, to simple ones, like starches and protein sources.

Now, you could just add more gelatin to the pot, like with powdered gelatin, but what about other emulsifiers? Perhaps the most readily available for most home cooks is white rice. Rice is great because it’s effective and doesn’t add flavor to the final dish. The method itself is simple: add a few tablespoons of rice to your soup an hour before blending. As the rice cooks, it releases starch, which traps residual fat globules and helps suspend them in the water-based soup. Blending any starch-containing vegetable can yield similar results. Potato is another common addition, though the flavor is more noticeable.

Protein slurries, such as blended meat scraps, can also provide similar emulsification. Tenkaippin, a Japanese ramen shop chain, uses a technique where they take cooked, shredded, chicken thigh meat, and blend it into the soup until it’s viscous and emulsified. The tsukemen recipe listed here uses this technique.

Measuring Gelatin and Emulsion Quality

Maybe you’re unsure if you’ve reached the desired amount of emulsification and gelatin extraction. Fear not, you can measure the quantity of gelatin in your soup via a few methods and tweak the results from there:

the empirical test. Taste the soup. Does it feel full-bodied? Do you like the texture of it on your tongue? That’s the gelatin and fat increasing the viscosity.
the chill test. After cooking, let a sample of your final soup chill completely in the fridge. How firmly does the gel hold? A firmer gel is the result of more gelatin in solution. The downside is that this requires time for chilling.
check the dissolved solids using a refractometer. Large ramen chains and meticulous chefs use this method to maintain consistency of the final soup. A refractometer effectively checks the amount of dissolved and emulsified solids in solution by measuring how much a solution refracts light. As the water becomes more viscous, it refracts more light. The most common scale of the measurement of dissolved solids in ramen is called “Brix,” and most refractometers use this scale. It can be helpful, then, to check the viscosity of the solution in Brix, because the measurement scale is commonly used, and you can gain reference points for the degree of Brix you enjoy. This is the most accurate approach, but it requires special equipment.

I prefer the first approach, simply because I like to cook in the moment. But if I'm feeling particularly scientific, below are some Brix levels I like to hit, based on the type of soup I’m making. This is all personal preference:

Soup Use Case	Chintan/Paitan	Brix
Sapporo Miso	Chintan	2
Tokyo Shoyu	Chintan	4
Chintan for Double Soup	Chintan	5
Tonkotsu	Paitan	6-8
Chicken Paitan	Paitan	6
Tsukemen	Paitan	11+

You’ll notice that the paitans above have a higher Brix than the chintans. That’s intentional. By keeping the Brix low, we don’t have to worry about making the soups accidentally emulsify a ton of fat for chintans, so it helps with clarity. But when we want lots of emulsified fat, we need enough gelatin for the job.

Cooking Soup: Many Approaches

For soups, cooks most often use a large stockpot to hold the contents, completely cover them with water, and cook everything over a burner at the desired temperature until the soup is complete. Traditionally, chintan soups are delicately simmered, while paitans are rapidly boiled (at some point or for the entire cooking process), both for long periods of time. In most restaurants, cooks usually use either approach. Making soup in large quantities is a not-so-trivial endeavor, and these methods work for making lots of soup.

Using the knowledge mentioned earlier and this little bit of information, you can start making soup. However, you can use some alternative approaches to make either chintans or paitans, especially if you’re a home cook.

Sous Vide

Sous vide is a relatively new and exciting option for some soup applications, as the precise temperature controls ensure a very specific extraction. Particularly for dashi, where some chefs demand specific temperatures, sous vide can be useful. But this comes with some limitations. Namely, wand-style circulators are not designed to circulate soup, only water. Circulating soup can damage the device. Other temperature-controlled technologies, such as thermometer assisted induction cooktops, can also work, but the equipment can either be expensive (like the Breville Control Freak, currently $1,50016), or inaccurate. But they are intriguing.

Sous vide is very useful for a lot of other components in ramen, not just soup. I’ll describe how this technique can be useful for those applications later in this book. While all of the recipes that use sous vide here will have the details you need to get cooking, you can improve your ramen making abilities, as well as your general culinary skills with some background knowledge. You can find plenty of great resources just by looking through the internet. However, in my opinion, the best source of fundamental info on sous vide can be found in Douglas Baldwin’s book, “Sous Vide for the Home Cook17.” Baldwin is a friend and former colleague of Scott’s, so there is just a tinge of bias, but seriously it’s absolutely worth a read. Baldwin’s website is also packed with useful information18.

Pressure Cooking

Recently, pressure cookers have become popular recently, and that’s particularly true in the ramen scene. I use a pressure cooker in almost all of my soup making. Pressure cookers build pressure in a vessel by trapping the water vapor that is created during boiling. As pressure rises in the pot, the boiling point of the water also increases, and as this boiling point increases, the contents within the pot cook faster. Most pressure cookers hit around 15 psi of pressure or about one additional bar, increasing the boiling point to 121 °C/250 °F. According to a rule of thumb, that amount of additional pressure and temperature decreases cooking time by around 8-fold. That’s quite the time savings.

Many ramen purists profess dogma against pressure cooking due to the speed in which soups can be completed in them. Shops that would slave away at a tonkotsu all day can now complete these soups in a matter of hours. In my experience, soups made in a pressure cooker are indistinguishable from those made on the stovetop. I won’t say they’re perfectly identical, they probably aren’t. But I’m not sure if the difference is all that big.

Pressure cooker substitution approach: For recipes in this book, you’ll need to replace the time spent cooking the meat before adding aromatics with a reduced time under pressure. Pressure cookers release pressure two ways, either through opening a valve and venting, which is called a fast release, or by allowing the soup to cool with limited venting, called a natural/slow release. Fast release introduces a negligible amount of extra cooking time, but this isn’t true during a slow release. If using a natural/slow pressure release, the time spent during the release needs to be included in the total cooking time, even though it isn’t as impactful to the cooking time as the cooking time under pressure. This might sound complicated, but I’ve used a simple relationship between normal cook time, time under pressure, and the pressure release time to produce consistent results:

The release time depends on the manufacturer of the pressure cooker and can be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. You’ll need to experiment with your pressure cooker to figure this out, but I assume that 30 minutes is pretty standard. Using the formula is otherwise pretty simple. For instance, a soup that takes 8 hours to cook takes 1 hour to cook under pressure using a fast release, or 45 minutes under pressure with a 30-minute natural release. This works well for both stovetop models and electric models. Although electric models hold slightly less pressure than stovetop models, I’ve found similar results using both.

Pressure cooking is a great alternative to making soup via traditional stovetop methods, if only from the time savings. But, there’s a caveat; you still have to consider accidental emulsification. Pressure cookers can create emulsions differently than through traditional stovetop methods in two ways:

During pressure buildup, pressure cookers boil the contents of the pot. If this buildup phase takes time, the contents of the pot can boil, and this boiling can suspend some amount of fat in the liquid.
Once the cook is done, if a fast release mechanism is applied, the contents of the pot will boil rapidly, also resulting in an emulsion.

In some instances, such as with paitans, you want to create an emulsion. So the general rule of thumb is, for chintan soups, a natural release is preferred over a fast release. For paitans, a fast release can jumpstart the emulsion.

Finalize Soup and Storage

Once the soup is complete, you need to hold it hot or chill it thoroughly and quickly. Soups are protein-rich aqueous solutions that bacteria absolutely love, and can become prime places for pathogen growth. If the soup sits in what the FDA calls “the danger zone” or a temperature between 5 and 60 °C (41 to 140 °F), bacteria have the opportunity to grow. During cooking, you’ll be far above 60 °C, but eventually, you’ll need to cool the soup, and it will cross into this threshold as it cools. If you’re only making small batches of soup, this isn’t usually a problem, but for large volumes, cooling the soup fast enough requires some extra thought.

Modeling how the heat is removed from a container of soup relies on a lot of factors, including the material the pot is made out of, the size of the pot, and the amount of liquid in the pot, how the pot is covered, the surface it’s sitting on, etc. Even with all of those differences, we can find some good strategies to cool soups quickly with a little science. Newton’s law of cooling helps with this understanding as an approximation of what’s going on, and is described by the following equation:

No need to pull out the textbooks for this equation, we won’t be solving it for soup! You just need to know what the equation means. First, let’s define the variables. The left side of the equation represents the rate of heat transfer from the soup to the environment. Meanwhile, on the right side of the equation, h is the heat transfer coefficient (a property affected by the materials used), A is the surface area, T(t) is the temperature of the soup over time, and Tenv is the temperature of the environment. Looking at this equation, we get a few important concepts.

The larger the difference in temperature is between the soup, T(t), and the environment, Tenv, the more rapid heat will transfer. An ice bath is therefore an effective method to rapidly get the soup to cool without staying in the danger zone very long. So is using a freezer if you’re being careful.
Dividing soup into smaller volumes will increase the surface area exposed (increasing A). You can do this by pouring the soups into small quart style deli containers instead of keeping the soup in a single large container. Just dividing the soup into two containers instead of one will more than double the surface area, and therefore halve the cooling time.
Keeping soup in conductive containers, as long as they’re stored in cold places, will also allow them to cool faster (by increasing h). Stirring the soup in a cold environment will also cause the soup to cool more rapidly by increasing h as well, though this might be less practical in the area you’re trying to cool the soup in.
Containers should be cooled in temperatures that are significantly lower than 5 °C. The soup temperature, T(t), is a function of time. As it decreases, so does the rate that heat is removed. If the temperature isn’t sufficiently low enough, the soup will stay warm long enough to promote bacterial growth. You should keep your refrigerator lower than 5 °C anyway19.

Once the soup cools completely, it’s ready for use after reheating. So far, I’ve found virtually no loss in quality after the soup has been reheated. You can keep soups for up to a week in the fridge, or up to 6 months in the freezer.

Cooking Times by Ingredient

In general, bird bones are more porous than those of other land animals, and thus they require less cooking. Below is a generalized time table for making soups.

Ingredient	Stovetop (At 88 °C/190 °F or higher)	Pressure Cooker (at full pressure, 15 psi, assuming 10 quarts max capacity)
Chicken (whole, backs, feet, all chicken)	6 hours	45 minutes (or 30 minutes with 30-minute natural release)
Pork neck bones	8 hours	1 hour (or 45 minutes with 30-minute natural release)
Pork femur bones	18 hours	Up to 2 hours
Fish	1 hour	10 minutes

Dashi

Before we dive into styles of soup, there’s a critical soup component that needs a little more detail and needs to be made ahead of time. Ramen chefs often add liberal quantities of this ingredient to their soups, and that is also true for the recipes in this book. I’m talking about that subtle but umami amplifying stock, used in all sorts of other Japanese soups, dashi.

Dashi is a cornerstone of Japanese cooking and it would be a disservice to not mention it in some capacity in this book. The term “dashi” is often used as a catchall term in modern Japanese for soup, but most typically refers to a soup made from kombu and dried fish products. An entire book could be written on dashi. In fact, Heston Blumenthal already wrote one20. Dashi has been the subject of intense discussion, debate, and research, due to its importance to the Japanese culinary arts, and it’s remarkable ability to add a meaty flavor to food.

Ajinomoto, a prominent supplier of ingredients used in cooking, suggests that dashi was the inspiration for the discovery of umami, and in turn, almost everything else that produces umami (which I’ll cover in the tare section more fully). Chef and food scientists alike spout all sorts of specific temperatures, times, and approaches on how to extract the most umami and flavor from core ingredients, but they’re inconsistent. One study by Mouritsen et al. showed that holding kombu in water at a temperature of around 60 °C/140 °F for 45 minutes extracted the same amount of umami producing compounds as boiling the kombu21. Others claim that soft water improves the extraction22, while Mouritsen et al. did not show that this was true. David Arnold’s work with kombu suggests that steeping kombu in cold water before cooking using sous vide can also provide ample extraction of umami ingredients, though he used an operating temperature of 65 °C23. Other recipes, such as Ivan Orkin’s, insist on using 80 °C/176 °F as the optimal cooking temperature24.

This can be very confusing. Who’s right here? In general, I don’t fuss about the specifics, I think you can make good quality dashi even with tap water. Still, excessive heat impacts the final result considerably, so I try to avoid boiling dashi ingredients. Much like tea, extremely high temperatures can extract unwanted flavors from these ingredients, and it’s best to err on the side of caution (even if Mouritsen et al. are correct). But I don’t think you need to constantly monitor the temperature, especially when you’re using it for ramen.

Dashi can be added to soup, but I find that it’s easier to add the ingredients used in dashi to soup directly. The ingredients used in dashi add fantastic complexity to ramen. Katsuobushi is smoky, niboshi is fishy and pungent, clams are briny and sweet, and kombu is oceanic. For simplicity, I often just add these ingredients at the end of the cook, much like with other aromatics. By the time these ingredients are added, the soup is no longer boiling and it’s at an appropriate temperature for most extractions. Still, you’ll have to play around with what works for you.

Alternatively, if you’d like to add dashi to soup, rather than adding just the ingredients, below are a few dashi recipes. They are by no means exhaustive (again, dashi is inherently complex stuff with many variations). Dashi can also be used to thin out thick soups in a pinch or will be used as part of the soup technique known as “double soup” (more on this one later).

Basic Dashi

This is an all-purpose dashi. If you’re not sure where to start, this is a safe bet. It’s simple but versatile.

Some variants of dashi also suggest an overnight soak before cooking can increase the amount of flavor extracted. To do this, simply combine the kombu (and niboshi or shiitake, if using) and water, and place in the fridge for 12-24 hours before cooking. Then proceed with step 2.

Ingredients:

1 L cold water
10 g kombu
25 g katsuobushi (or replace with niboshi, or shiitake, as desired)

Steps:

Add the cold water and kombu to a pot (if using niboshi or shiitake, add with the kombu).
Heat over medium-low heat until just below simmer, around 80 °C.
Turn off the heat and allow it to steep for 10 minutes.
Remove the kombu, add the katsuobushi (if using).
Bring up to a simmer, then turn off the heat again, cover, and allow to steep until flavored to your liking, anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes.
Strain through a fine-mesh strainer and reserve until needed.

Dashi degrades quickly in flavor, so it only keeps for a few days in the fridge if you decide to make it in advance. Luckily, it’s relatively simple to put together.

Clam Dashi

Clam in ramen is becoming more popular and this is a simple soup that can be combined with others to create complexity. This dashi is clam forward, containing only 3 ingredients, but some additional steps are needed to treat the clams appropriately. This dashi can also have dashi elements like katsuobushi or niboshi steeped in it after it is complete, should you choose to do so. If you’d like to use the clams for eating after, you’ll need to remove the grit from them first (see the first steps of this recipe).

Ingredients:

1 L cold water
20 g sake
500 g clams (manila or cherrystone)

Steps:

To remove the grit from the clams, place them in cold water and allow them to sit undisturbed for one hour.
Wash the clams and scrub their exteriors to remove any residual dirt on the outside.
Combine 1 L cold water, sake, and cleaned clams in a pot.
Heat over high heat until reaching a simmer.
Cook the clams at a simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until the shells have opened and the clams are completely cooked.
Strain through a fine-mesh strainer and reserve until needed. You can then harvest the meat for alternative purposes.

Much like the previous dashi, this only keeps for a few days in the fridge should you choose to make it in advance.

Bacon Dashi

This idea is blatantly ripped off from David Chang and Peter Meehan’s cookbook, “Momofuku: a Cookbook25.” I won’t even pretend to have come up with the idea. It’s excellent for those who struggle to find Japanese ingredients, the bacon providing smoke and umami in place of katsuobushi.

Ingredients:

1 L cold water
10 g kombu
100 g bacon (raw, preferably thick cut or end pieces from a whole slab)

Steps:

Add all ingredients to a pot.
Heat over medium-low heat until just below a simmer, around 80 °C/176 °F.
Turn off the heat and allow it to steep for 10 minutes.
Remove the kombu.
Bring up to a simmer, then turn off the heat again, cover, and allow to steep until flavored to your liking, around 30 minutes.
Strain through a fine-mesh strainer and reserve until needed.

These dashi recipes will pop up on occasion in the next soups. But onto the main methods for Chintan and Paitan.

Basic Chintan Method

Ingredients:

Animal parts (such as chicken backs, pork neck bones, femurs, or other bones of your liking)
Some amount of water (starting at equal parts, and going up to two parts, by weight, depending on the result and amount of connective-tissue laden ingredients).
Aromatic vegetables and ingredients for complexity

Steps:

Submerge the animal parts with water.
Heat over high heat until the pot begins to boil.
Skim the scum that rises to the top.
Reduce the heat to below sub-simmer (around 88 °C/190 °F) to preserve clarity.
Cook for the recommended time based on ingredients.
In the last hour, add the aromatics.
Strain the soup.

From this framework, you can make a host of different soups. Want a beef soup with caramelized onions? Cook the beef bones for 8 hours, then toss in those onions at the last hour. Want a super fishy, really rich, but clear chicken soup? Cook the chicken parts, being sure to include some feet, for 6 hours, adding in dashi elements like bushi products or niboshi, at the last hour.

Below are some common recipes I use for chintan, depending on need.

Tokyo Style Chintan

This recipe is a combination of chicken and dashi elements. It’s simple and effective with many different ramen tares.

Ingredients:

one stewing hen (approximately 3 kg/6.6 lb), broken down into primal sections (legs, wings, breasts, frame)
1 kg/2.2 lb chicken feet
6 L water
1 onion
10 cloves garlic
1 5-cm/2-in piece of ginger
20 g kombu
20 g niboshi
20 g katsuobushi

Steps:

Add the chicken to a stockpot, cover with water.
Bring the soup up to a boil briefly, skim any scum. Hold here for 5-10 minutes, or until scum subsides.
Reduce heat back down to below simmer (around 88 °C/190 °F), hold for 5 hours.
Add your onion, garlic, ginger, niboshi, and kombu. Cook for an additional 45 minutes.
In the last 10 minutes, add the bonito flake and steep.
Strain the soup and hold it until needed.

“Doubutsu Kei” Style Chintan

This recipe combines chicken and pork products to produce a more round amino acid profile. Lighter in body, this soup is excellent in Miso, it’s also good with shoyu applications. I like to blanch the pork neck bones to remove some of the myoglobin and preserve clarity, but this is optional.

Should you desire, you can also use all chicken backs, or all pork bones, for this recipe.

Ingredients:

2 kg/4.4 lb pork neck bones
2 kg/4.4 lb chicken backs
6 L water
1 onion, peeled and halved
10 cloves garlic, peeled.
1 2-inch piece of ginger

Steps:

Blanch the pork neck bones briefly by covering them with cold water in a pot, bringing them to a boil, and cooking for 15-20 minutes, or until the scum subsides. Strain the bones and reserve.
Add neck bones and chicken backs to new water in a stockpot, bring to a simmer, and skim any scum that rises, for around 5-10 minutes.
Reduce heat back down to below simmer (around 88 °C/190 °F), hold for 7 hours (additional time to account for the pork bones).
Add your onion, garlic, and ginger. Cook for an additional hour.
Strain the soup and hold until needed.

All-Purpose Chintan

This recipe is very similar to the doubutsu kei soup mentioned before, but excludes the ginger and pork, making this an overarchingly all-purpose soup, even in non-ramen applications.

Ingredients:

4 kg/8.8 lb chicken backs
6 L water
1 onion, peeled and halved
10 cloves garlic, peeled.

Steps:

Add chicken backs to fresh water in a stockpot, bring to a simmer, and skim any scum that rises, for around 5-10 minutes.
Reduce heat back down to below simmer (around 88 °C/190 °F), hold for 5 hours
Add your onion and garlic. Cook for an additional hour.
Strain the soup and hold it until needed.

New Wave Chicken Chintan

The new wave of shoyu ramen emerging in Tokyo is based on a very specific trend of using only chicken, and nothing else. The method is effectively the same as other chintan applications.

Ingredients:

4 kg/8.8 lb chicken backs (or two small chickens, broken down, breasts removed)
4 L water

Steps:

Add the chicken to a stockpot, cover with water.
Bring the soup up to a boil briefly, skim any scum. Hold here for 5-10 minutes, or until scum subsides.
Reduce heat back down to below simmer (around 88 °C/190 °F), hold for 6 hours.
Strain the soup and hold it until needed.

Eifukucho Taishoken style Chintan

This recipe is derived from a video I found some time ago showing some of the ratios used at Eifukucho Taishoken, a legendary ramen shop in Tokyo, one of the oldest continually operating shops in Japan, and is in general indicative of old-school ramen from Tokyo, heavy with pork and fish products. They focus on a fish-forward soup, with lots of vegetables, and a relatively low quantity of pork. The soup is simple to produce but maddeningly complex. Of note, the final soup is noticeably murky, but this isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Old school soups are not as clear as modern interpretations.

Ingredients: