Tonkotsu Miso Ramen

Ramen. I've wanted to do this forever and to be completely honest with you, I've been procrastinating a little just because of how long it takes to do something like this. I mean giving the

ramen

that tender love and care that you need to give it to make it perfect; I just haven't had time for that yet. But now is the time. I know many of you have been ordering

ramen

for so long. So today we are going to make Tonkotsu ramen. Tonkotsu ramen is a fan favorite and you may not recognize that word, but trust me, you know exactly what it is.

It's that ramen with that rich, fatty pork broth, those beautiful, soft, chewy fresh noodles, a soft, sticky egg cooked to perfection, a beautiful, juicy pork belly, and whatever topping you want. Now, since this recipe is going to take me a long time, I've already started a couple of things, but I started them yesterday. I had a different haircut, it was different weather outside, but I had to do a couple of those steps beforehand to make sure this could work today. So for now, let's go back to yesterday, when I still hadn't shaved and my hair was longer, and we'll go to an Asian market.

We just arrived at this Asian grocery store. Here we are going to choose some unique and amazing ingredients because I really need to make sure this broth is delicious. So the first thing we're going to grab is a bunch of pork bones and chicken bones to get that really tasty broth. This place literally has everything in this market. These silky black chickens, there are so many interesting things here. Then we'll have a couple of duck wings and chicken wings separately. All the fish they have in this place are live in tanks. They have some very fat melons in this place.

Let me tell you, I can't read some of this stuff. So I have a little trouble finding the mirin, but I know where the soy sauce is. In an attempt to make this broth more flavorful, I'm also going to put in some dried mushrooms and they have a great selection. I don't know what a wonderful memory means. So I'm looking for Enoki mushrooms, which are really fine and pretty and you can sometimes see them in ramen, so we get them. I think we found them. They have all the soy sauce in the world. I could absolutely bathe in this thing.

It feels like negative 8 million degrees here. I am frigid. Praise the mirin gods, we finally made it. It's lovely. The sweet nectar of the mirin gods. Oh wait, there's no room there. Basically, we couldn't get the pork belly at the last place, but I did get it in front of the guy at Whole Foods. I stood there waiting and he was like, "Hey, this is weird, but has anyone ever told you that you look like the guy who throws knives on the Internet?" I thought, actually, it's me, but we have pork belly, so let's go home and make ramen.

Let me tell you and I mean this in the least perverted way possible, there is nothing like a good Japanese eggplant. I have to find a place to put this for the trip. So now that we're back from the store, I'm going to start making that amazing ramen broth because, to me, that's the most important thing we're working with here. I'm actually doing this the day before, but let's move on. First, in this big pot here, I'm going to put all my chicken wings. That will give us some of the flavor we're looking for, but I'll get it from three different proteins.

Next, I'm going to start taking these pork thighs that we bought at the Asian grocery store and putting them right in with our chicken. As you can see here, there is some meat on the outside. But we have a big piece of bone that will give us tons and tons of flavor. Once I've added all those pork bones (make sure you don't put this in there), I'll go ahead and add my last serving of protein, which is duck wings. These again should give us a unique and incredible flavor. Now I'm going to cover all of this with some cold, crisp water.

Then, turn up the heat and let it come to a good boil, which will remove a lot of nasty impurities. Once it has boiled, skim off some of the foam that starts to form on top. Some people will tell you to rinse it completely, but I like to retain all the flavor of the bone that is still left, so I don't like to rinse it. Once you've removed the foam, we're going to add a good handful of white button mushrooms, a handful of those dried shiitake mushrooms that we got at the market, which will hopefully give us that umami flavor.

Then add some good ginger balls, a quartered onion, a few cloves of garlic and, last but not least, a generous handful of salt. Now is when we let this sit overnight for 12 hours. This will do all the work for us while we go to sleep. Next we will make our Chashu Pork Belly. That part, of course, is really important. Whenever you see ramen with a big piece of pork, that's what we're talking about right now. Now, you don't have to do this part overnight, but I'm going to do it sous vide so it's really soft and tender.

So I'll leave this overnight as well. This pig has been very bad, so he has to be tied up. First, I'm going to roll it all the way up, like this, making it as tight as I can. Then I'm going to go under it with some butcher's twine, and then, tying it as tight as possible, I'm going to tighten it very well. This way we can cut it into nice rings when we go to have our ramen. We are going to repeat this process on all of our pork belly. For our sous-vide, the first thing we will do is put this finally rolled pork in a nice big bag.

To the bag we are going to add four cloves of garlic, a few pieces of ginger, three chopped green onions, a cup of soy sauce, try to make it a good high quality soy sauce, a cup of mirin, which is a really delicious sweet rice seasoning that tastes a little similar to sake, 1/3 cup of this extremely spicy fish sauce, a good handful of white sugar, about half a cup or so, and really anything else what you wish. to be creative. Then, inside the bag, we will massage our meat. Now we are going to roll it very well and seal it.

And now, with our water at 175 degrees Fahrenheit, I'm going to slowly submerge that pork and cook it overnight for about 12 to 15 hours. In the morning we should have the most tender pork ever. I will see you in the morning. Well, it's the next morning. I was tending to that ramen broth all night. I'm not sure if you can see it, but it's in that silver pot back there. I kept adding water throughout the night while boiling to allow the broth to concentrate even more and my entire kitchen smells amazing. Not to mention that slow cooked pork in there.

We had so much going on here that we blew the fuse three times last night, but now we're ready to move on to the rest of those steps. So let's start with our soft-boiled eggs. Now that the water is boiling, we're ready to add those eggs, but first we'll add a tablespoon or two of vinegar, which will actually prevent the whites from leaking out if any of these eggs crack. . At this point, we'll quickly add our six eggs and then almost immediately start our timer because timing here is extremely important. I'll drop my six eggs, burning my fingers in the process, put the lid on, and then I'm not sure if you can see the time here, but we'll do it for six minutes and nine seconds. , which I promise you, sounds silly, but it's the perfect time for a soft-boiled egg.

Begin! Once the time is up, we'll prepare to cold shock our eggs because given how precise they are, we don't want them to overcook. Here I have a very cold ice bath and when the eggs are done, I will plunge them directly into the ice bath to stop them from cooking. We are timing them precisely for a reason. So once they're all in the ice bath, give them a little toss to make sure they're evenly coated. For our egg ramen marinade, we will combine 3/4 cup mirin, 1/4 cup soy sauce, and 1/4 cup dark soy sauce. If you can't find dark soy sauce, that's okay.

Just add a little brown sugar and try not to spill it all over your shoe. Now it's time to peel the eggs, but first I wanted to show you how perfect the yolk looks on the inside. I told you it's amazing. Now we're going to peel these eggs quickly, trying not to ruin them in the process, and I actually think it helps to peel them overhead and in cold water. Now, once you have those perfectly peeled eggs, place them in that soy bath. That's where that color and flavor will permeate the eggs. Once you're done peeling all those eggs, you'll want to weight them somehow so they get a uniform color.

I will cover them with plastic wrap and let them soak for several hours. Our eggs are ready. Next we are going to perform our tare. It is a very concentrated flavoring that is used in many Japanese soups. It is a kind of base and we are going to add it to our broth to give it a little more flavor. First, we'll start with our dashi and there are five different types of dashi in Japanese cuisine. Kombu, katsu, iriko, shiitake and awase. I apologize if I pronounced any of that incorrectly, but we're going to do awase and it's a combination of several.

So to start, we're going to turn up the heat and add about three and a half to four cups of water. Now in that water, we're going to start with three kombu leaves and let it heat up to start bringing out some of the flavors, but we don't want to boil it. In fact, we're looking to hit around 170 degrees Fahrenheit here. Basically, dashi is a Japanese soup broth packed with umami. It is used in many different things and this is how we are going to build the base of our tare. Now that our kombu has had some time to soak and is softening a bit, I can really soak up all that flavor.

Actually, I want to get a quick facial. We're not filming, right? Yes, good. Oh Lord. Now it's time to add a few more things. What I have here is called niboshi, which are these dried baby sardines. I've been soaking these sardines overnight. So first I'll pour them into our broth, or our tare I should say, followed by a cup of bonito flakes, which if you've never heard of them are fish flakes, plus a handful of our dry. shiitake mushrooms. Now, I'll be completely honest, I'm not sure if what I'm doing now is allowed under Japanese ramen laws, but the way I see it, I'm bringing tons of umami flavor here and creating an even more flavorful broth atmosphere.

I'm also using ingredients that would be used in a traditional dashi anyway. Once it has had a good amount of time to soak, I will turn off the heat and set it aside, letting it soak a little longer. Once that amazing dashi is ready, and I can't even begin to describe the flavors that come out of this, we'll strain it into a nice big bowl. The broth here smells incredible and already looks like it will be a delicious treat to sip slowly. But now, keeping about two cups of our dashi, we're going to create our tare by adding one cup of soy sauce, one cup of mirin, 1/2 cup of sake, two tablespoons of vinegar, six cloves of garlic that I'm going to press. through my garlic press so they spread and get more and more flavor and by the way, if you like using garlic but hate getting it on your fingers, I highly recommend the garlic press, about a cut piece of two inches.

Add ginger and then about two tablespoons of black peppercorns. Now we are going to let our tare rest just like the eggs so that they are impregnated with all these flavors and we will strain it at the last minute. Now our ramen. I don't know what I just did with my hands. I don't know why I did that. Let's start by adding six grams of baking soda to 160 grams of water. Then we're going to whip this up and let it go. You see, ramen noodles are very interesting. The first thing I will say is don't use dry instant ramen noodles.

This is absolutely prohibited. Don't worry, I'll still eat that. Ramen noodles are very different in that they need to be alkalized. It's basically a fancy way of saying we put baking soda in the dough, but another trick is to boil regular spaghetti with eight cups of water and a couple tablespoons of baking soda. With that you can also get those delicious chewy noodles that we look for in ramen. Once all the baking soda is mixed, we will add a pinch of salt and mix that too until it dissolves. Then we will leave the water aside. And now, in a large bowl, we will add about 400 grams of bread flour and four grams of the vital wheat gluten.

You may have to order vital wheat gluten online if you want to make them homemade, but again, you can take the easy route and boil the spaghetti in that baking soda water. Now we're going to beat this until it's well combined, making sure the wheat gluten is evenly distributed and now we're going to add this bowl to our mixer with the paddle attachment and whisking slowly, I'm going to add about half of my water. so that this is evenly distributed. It should start to get nice and crumbly and once those crumbsstart to become more uniform, you can prepare to add that second batch of water.

Now we will add that second amount of water, letting it soak evenly into our dough. It should start to come together more at this point and if you need to add a little more water to make the dough come together completely, do so. Once it is chunky and well combined, we will turn off the mixer and let it sit. Cover it with plastic wrap for 30 minutes. Once the dough has had time to rest, separate it into two separate balls and press them together. The good thing about this dough is that you don't need to knead it.

After we've rolled them out a bit with our rolling pin - you'll love a good handy rolling pin - we'll start rolling out our noodles. Again, this will be extremely dry, but be confident and let the mixer do all the work. After rolling it, take some bread, flour and sprinkle it on the ramen dough, then roll it again. We just want it to be nice and smooth to the point where we can make some great noodles. Again, this dough is very difficult to work with because it is a little dry and also has a lot of gluten.

So to be honest, if there are any steps I would skip when making homemade ramen and you're a little nervous, I'd probably skip this part. Once you have it spread out almost completely, we are ready to cut it into a spaghetti shape. Fire up that spaghetti head and you'll be ready to roll. Give yourself a big pat on the back right now because what you're looking at here are your gorgeous homemade ramen noodles. I have to say, I've never done this before, but they look absolutely fantastic. In fact, I could almost wear them like a nice scarf, just throw them over me and walk around like that in public.

I think people would like me to be like that. Now, once you have the ramen in good portions, roll it into little nests and hit it with a good splash of bread flour so nothing sticks. Now our ramen is ready to be cooked. Here is our 24 hour ramen broth. You can see it's been running for so long that we have that darker, more robust color. All that pork, chicken and duck is more tender than anything you've ever seen before. The bones have been completely cleaned of all their flesh. And what we have here is a complex, fatty, umami-filled broth, perfect for ramen.

We're going to strain all of this broth so it's nice and smooth, since we don't want any of these solids to get into the final product. I like to use a very fine strainer here just to make sure I get every last solid out. And now what you see here is our broth. Concentrated, delicious and ready to use. Next, we have our Chashu, which is our Japanese pork belly that we need to cut. Let's hear that again, folks. There will be juice everywhere here. I know this is going to be complicated. Do you know what time it is?

It's time to get our hands dirty. Now I'm going to go in very gently and try to lift this pork belly without breaking it. You can see it's falling apart here. Oh my gosh, that's good. That's so good. I'm going to start by adding a little bit of that excess liquid into our pot here because we can also use a little bit of that in our ramen broth since it has more pork flavor than anything we can imagine. Now I'm going to place this on our counter. What you're seeing here is pork belly cooked overnight. This is all so unstable.

This here is crumbled pork belly. Just look at this piece of fat that can crumble onto my gloves and the meat is coming off the sides. Even our garlic cloves melt in your hands. This pig is something out of my dreams. It's dripping juice and it's incredibly hot. You can see where each of the pieces of butcher's twine goes next here. But I can't help it, I have to spank him. Lastly, I want you to look at the meat on the sides. You can see all that pork is almost shredded like this soft and perfectly tender pulled pork.

For everyone watching right now. If you're not drooling now, I'm sorry. I don't know how I can please you. I don't know if you'll be able to watch my videos anymore because I think this is the best I can do. Pork Belly, It's been a pleasure meeting you these last 24 hours, but now it's time to get started. Oh, pork belly. I didn't mean to do that. I'm sorry. Now for our ramen, we want these beautiful rings cut from this pork belly. So let's grab a couple of nice slices over here. You know, it's funny. It's almost so soft and tender that I can't really cut any slices, but given how tender it is, this is the best we're going to do here and it looks like what you'd see in a bowl of ramen.

So that's enough for me. Once I've taken the thong out of the pork belly, I can squeeze in a few more good slices, but again, inside, I'm laughing because it's almost too tender to do what we're looking to do with it. Once you have a couple of good slices that you can place in your ramen bowls, we are ready to prepare the rest of the ingredients and make this ramen. While we have you here, I want to give you one last chance to see how delicate this is. Look how easily my knife cuts through this. No!

Just kidding, we don't need a knife. Look at that pulled pork! Now, to finish off our tare, which is, of course, a very important part of this, we're first going to strain out all those little things that we added in there to give it that extra flavor. Then we'll add a little bit of that pork liquid, just to give it a little more pork flavor. And last but not least, what I have here is shiro

miso

, which I'm actually going to open up and add a few spoonfuls directly to my tare. In addition to that

miso

flavor, of course, that will give us that nice cloudiness that we look for in a very good miso broth.

So once I beat this, our tare is done. We can put this aside. Now, what I have here are Enoki mushrooms, and they're quick and easy, just a nice topping to put on our ramen. I'll just cut off the base, which has those dirty areas, and then I'll steam these beauties for a few minutes and they'll be ready to go. Now is the time to finally crack open those soft-boiled eggs and I know you've probably been waiting for this moment. First, let's keep our fingers crossed that we get that color out of those eggs. Indeed, we did it.

Just to show you a little spot on the top of the egg that wasn't submerged should give you that contrast to show you how incredibly well it colored with our soy. Now, for one of the most exciting things, we are going to cut that egg very clean and keeping all the yolk inside. As you can see, the outside of the egg has clearly received some of that soy. And boy, boy, boy, aren't those yolks amazing? Just look at how soft and amazing it is. When cutting them, use a very sharp knife to get a nice clean cut.

Now we have reached the final plane where we meet. I know this is the moment you've all been waiting for, so let's get started. To start, after mixing it a little, I will add one or two tablespoons of my tare. Again, that will give you that beautiful umami broth base. Next comes my actual broth. The entire top layer is fat, that precious pork fat we look for in our broth. And with that, I'm going to scoop several big spoonfuls right into my big bowl. This is what we all came for. We worked incredibly hard on this gorgeous broth, so it's amazing to finally be able to put it in the bowl.

One more scoop and we should be complete. Now you might be wondering: where are the real ramen noodles? These should be placed in this hot broth immediately when finished. So, into this pot I will pour a lot of boiling water, without salt. And once it's boiling over very high heat, I'm going to add our ramen. I'll stir this just to make sure nothing sticks. And then for just a minute and 30 seconds or so, we're going to let it cook. Admire how amazing my homemade noodles are. And after one or two shakes, I'll put it directly into my ramen broth.

This already looks amazing and now we are ready for the final coating. Then our Enoki mushrooms come in, evenly spaced to give it a beautiful side look. Then we'll go right down the middle with those precious eggs. Then we have our beautiful pork, which will sit right next to our ramen, then a generous handful of green onions, and last but not least, some nori that I actually bought directly from Japan. And that right there is one of the most beautiful bowls of ramen I've ever seen. Now before I eat this, I want to brush the pork with a little more fat and then torch it a little to give it a little color and flavor.

Now our ramen is ready to eat. Now before we eat, I want to say that this is one of the most beautiful bowls of ramen I have ever seen and yes, I feel like I say that often with the things we make, but think about how much time and effort goes into it. All of these things. I will always tell you the truth too, about how things taste. Look, I've tried a lot of things out there, so I love food, but I'm rarely that impressed with food anymore, and I don't mean that in a picky or greedy way.

I've been very lucky to try so many things and food has been my whole life, so it's rare to find things that really blow me away, but I'll eat anything. Take me to Popeye's for lunch and I'll be the happiest person ever, and take me to a really nice restaurant and I'll enjoy it too. But I will say that I am very excited about this ramen. I think the first thing I want to do, since we put so much time and effort into it, is try that broth. So let's delve deeper. I'm going to take a small spoonful, mix it up a little to fill it up, and then take a sip.

This is really special and I mean it. I was in Japan once and tried a lot of ramen there. I've had ramen everywhere. I'm not kidding at all and you can try it yourself if you don't believe me by following all these steps. But this is definitely one of the best ramen broths I've ever tried. It's fatty, which is exactly what you want. It's super, super tasty, with so much umami and such depth of flavor. It's also a little thicker in the mouth. You've got that cloudy miso in there, I mean, it's just one of those broths where you don't need the rest of the ramen.

It's an incredibly magnificent thing on its own. Now, next, I want to try one of these eggs quickly. Now, I don't normally like eggs and I still don't like these simply because I don't like eggs that much. But I love that the soy has permeated the edges a little and gives it a unique flavor and texture. It's really tasty. But next, we have to try those homemade ramen noodles because we really worked hard on them. So let's see if we can get that consistency. I mean, it doesn't really surprise me, but they are delicious. Similarly, fresh pasta is a little more delicate and fresher than boxed dried pasta.

This has those same qualities that I love. Just one more little bite of that crumbled pork. We are not going to play around with this ramen at all and I will say it without asking questions, without even having to stop and think. We have incorporated parmesan wheels in this channel. We have eaten tons and tons and tons of fresh fish. Living things all the time that come directly to the kitchen and moments later we eat them. Ridiculous burgers made with wagyu, from Japan. But suddenly all that doesn't matter so much anymore. This is the best thing we've done so far on YouTube and I mean it, 150%.

This is crazy. Now, this bowl is probably a little bigger than my head, so it's going to take me a while to eat it, but let me tell you this quickly. Please don't forget to leave a like on the video. Definitely subscribe and if you already are, hit the notification button. It's there waiting for you and you don't want to miss anything like this. And also, we have almost two million subscribers, which is crazy. So you could be number two million and that would be very special, but I really hope you enjoyed the video. I'm telling you right now, this ramen was absolutely insane, so definitely, definitely, try it if you're thinking about it and I'll see you next time.