The broth process generates a lot of discarded stuff, which seems too good to waste. So the spent konbu has been sliced and vinegared, to use as a garnish. They look like green noodles. The spent shiitakes are being pickled, meaning simmered with vinegar, sugar, soy sauce and ginger. These are supposed to be a yummy treat, after they refrigerate for awhile.

Not quite 4 pounds of chicken leg meat is simmering in the stockpot. I'm not sure what I'll be able to do with the spent chicken. I was thinking about shredding, seasoning and then dehydrating it. There must be a use for chicken powder.

5 pounds of pork neck bones has been roasting for a couple hours, and will go in the stockpot next.

The oven has been doing double duty, because I am also making tare which is basically Japanese BBQ sauce. You put the bones from a couple chickens in a large sauce pan and roast it for an hour, until the bones are brown and a lot of dark find has collected in the pan. The chicken fat keeps the fond from burning, hopefully. Then you move the pan to the burner, add sake, mirin and soy sauce, and simmer the bones for an hour. I transferred everything to a smaller pot so that the bones would be submerged. Then remove the bones and simmer the sauce to desired thickness.

Two hours of cooking and still nothing to eat! Anticipating this woe, I picked up a pound of chicken gizzards and roasted them in - yes, sake mirin and soy sauce - the trinity as common in Japanese cooking as onion celery and garlic are in other cuisines. I'm happily snacking on roasted and glazed gizzards.

This post was edited by johnliu on Sun, Oct 27, 13 at 1:11

Roast pork neck bones ( and some pork feet) have been simmering in the broth for about 2 hours and a pound of bacon has as well. The bacon is about to be fished out and, I'm sorry to say, discarded. Then the pork bones and feet will simmer for another 5 hours. I'm hoping to finish this broth tonight.

Pork belly was coated with sugar and salt, then roasted an hour at 500 F, and another 2 hours at 350 F, braising in its own rendered fat. This will be sliced into ramen topping. I cut off the skin and made chicharrones as a snack. A pork shoulder, also salted and sugared, will roast for another couple of hours and then be pulled apart and added to the ramen.

Hopefully this ramen will be tomorrow's lunch. There will be some whole poached eggs, simmered bamboo shoots, toasted nori, and baby bok choy. Dear daughter may be recruited to fry some tofu cubes.

Since I couldn't make my own noodles, I decided to experiment with different store bought noodles. We have fresh yakisoba noodles, fresh ramen noodles, and dried rice noodles.

A few progress pictures.

This is what making tare looks like. Simmering roast chicken bones in sake, mirin and soy sauce.

This is pork belly. I stupidly sliced one before remembering the trick is to refrigerate it before slicing.

Here is the sliced and vinegared konbu. It is mostly for looks.

It is making me going nuts reading this post.

I don't eat breakfast. I had a busy day and didn't get a chance to have lunch.

I am about to microwave something quick.

dcarch

John, I wish I were in your kitchen right now, I've even eat the pickled konbu, even if it is just for appearances!

Your ramen broth takes even longer than my chicken broth and has a LOT more ingredients. I think I'd like it a lot.

Annie

We went to a dance performance last night, so all the cooking was interrupted for a few hours. I don't trust my appliances enough to leave burner or oven on unattended. So I am behind schedule.

Got up early this morning, and it is raining. I have to help paint sets for the middle school play today, and have a bunch of other things to. Sigh. I skipped my bike ride - lazy ass loser - and went to finish up the ramen prep.

The pulled pork shoulder is supposed to be roasted for 6 hours at low temp, but last night I just didn't have time so I transferred it to a pressure cooker to braise with some sake and in-progress broth, and gave it an hour at high pressure. This morning I pulled it and poured in the braising liquid to further saturate the meat.

I stewed the sliced bamboo shoots in sesame oil and sirachi sauce, and slow poached some whole eggs.

The broth is in its final hour. Otherwise, I am all ready for a ramen dinner. Here is everything waiting in the fridge (except the broth and eggs):

That is two kinds of fresh noodles, konbu, pickled beets, pickled shiitake, chicken gizzards, pork belly wrapped in foil, pulled pork shoulder in a ziplock bag, stewed bamboo shoots in another bag, tare sauce, and some bok choy that I'll slice into the soup at the last minute.

This evening we finally had the ramen. It was pretty good, actually. I made another bowl with the konbu and poached eggs, but forgot to take a picture. Next time, I will make a double recipe of broth; I'd hoped to have plenty to freeze, but no such luck. I would also like to clarify the broth next time. There is a method that seems easier than the tedious "raft" technique, that uses gelatin and refrigeration; I will try that.

I borrowed dear daughter's camera to take these pictures. Apparently there is a difference between an iPhone snap and a D200 with a 85mm f1.4 prime lens. I have to work on focusing, though, the top-down picture is not sharp. This is a manual focus lens with an extremely shallow depth of field when wide-open, and it has been a while since I've done anything but point and shoot.

Anyway, ramen is a fascinating dish. There are four or five primary types of ramen, defined by the style of broth, and dozens of regional variations. My favorite, in a good ramenya (ramen noodle shop) is tonkotsu or bone broth ramen, which I will try making some day. It requires boiling ground up pork bones all day, and I'm not sure how I'll grind the bones. I recently had a burnt leek ramen; the broth is black from the char of burned leeks, and it tastes great and not bitter at all.

This post was edited by johnliu on Mon, Oct 28, 13 at 0:18

What a meal! Two thumbs up!

Also great pictures. The skill for plating and composition is there, the only thing missing is 10 minutes to adjust the white balance of your camera setting, or get a daylight CFL bulb.

dcarch

Dear daughter has a photo studio in the basement with backgrounds and photo lights with umbrellas, tripods, etc. I think I will use that.

I did some color corrections on your photos, I am telling you, you got some very beautiful pictures.

dcarch

Yum, John, that looks delicious, much better than those little hard bricks that my girls ate in high school and tried to convince me they were actually a food substance...

Annie

It looks absolutely marvellous. I'm just wondering that with all the boiling, simmering, pressure cooking..... what did it actually cost in the end for a bowl of noodles?

What a great post and such lovely photos! My daughter has a photography studio in our basement, too, but I've not bothered to figure out the pocket wizard thing to activiate the Alien Bees. Maybe this winter...

It's my guess that
If that is even half as delicious as it looks,
It's well worth all the time and work involved.
And I do admire your patience and tenacity.
No way I could ever work my way through all those steps.
No matter how good the end product.
I can (and do) do beef and chicken broth.
Usually in the crock pot now.
But it can pretty much be 'thrown together'
And forgotten for hours.

Thank you for sharing this project with us!
Wish we could share the meal, too!

Rusty

islay, that is an interesting question.

The heat for the cooking doesn't cost much. Running my large burner on simmer costs about 1 cent/hour, even running it on high only costs about 16 cents, and I had over a gallon of broth going which is, say, 10 bowls' worth.

The ingredients are a different story. 4 lb chicken legs, 5 lb pork neck bones and feet, 1 lb bacon, 2 c dried shiitake, 2 sheets knobu - off the top of my head, maybe $18 for the pot of broth. So that is about $1.80/bowl, just for broth.

Add all the toppings - the pork belly, pork shoulder, bamboo shoots, nori, beets, etc etc - and the liquids used - sake, mirin, soy sauce - I'm going to throw out a very rough estimate that each bowl of ramen cost me $4.50 to make.

Which make me respect a good noodle shop all the more. Their food costs are lower than mine, but they have labor and rent and taxes, and yet still serve a big bowl of ramen for $7 to $11 depending on location and stay in business doing it.

I love your project. I have learned something from each of my "from scratch" attempts. Even if I never do it again. You truly understand the essence of something and that makes your appreciation and enjoyment better.

So would you do this again?

Yes, but next time I would make two or three times the quantity of broth, reduce it down to a concentrate, and freeze individual portions. I might make and freeze individual servings of the pork as well. My goal would be to make a basic bowl of ramen into a 10 minute project - reheat broth and toppings, boil dry noodles, assemble - to better compete with the convenience of Top Ramen.

On the first really cold rainy weekend this winter, I have been planning to do a demi-glace project, and I think I will add ramen broth concentrate to the day's tasks. I have two large pots - a 32 qt stockpot and a 40 qt lobster pot - and it doesn't take any more effort to babysit two simmering pots versus one.

John - I enjoyed reading and seeing your project. September's Food & Wine had a recipe for rye ramen that got me reading about what exactly defines ramen vs other noodles. Their version uses toasted baking soda.

I've always read the distinguishing characteristic is hard wheat with an alkaline additive which, through oxidization, makes the noodles yellow without using eggs.

I would really like to make some ramen noodles from scratch sometime. I will start looking into hand-cranked pasta machines.

Ramen burgers are popular.

dcarch

I asked my son if he wanted to make one next weekend. Despite being a big burger and ramen fan, he said no. A purist, he feels these two flavors should be kept apart.

Still, I am interested in making something similar. I would like to make a "shell" of fried ramen that fully encloses a filling of pulled pork. The ramen shell could be larger and disk-shaped like a sandwich, or small and spherical like a meatball.

You should open a restaurant!

Cool project, John. I love ramen, but it's hard to find it vegetarian.

After all that work, I wondered if you made the noodles also. It's interesting to find out what makes the noodles unique.

Sally

I have a hand crank pasta roller (atlas) but find I wish I had a third hand to use it. The Kitchenaid attachment is on my wish list, but I'm not convinced I'd use it enough to justify the cost. I suppose I should make homemade pasta a few more times to decide if it's worth it or not. I know I enjoy it, but I'm not sure I enjoy it that much.

I notice that the hand cranked pasta rollers are not that expensive, but I wonder if they need to be bolted or clamped down to the table? FOAS, is that what you mean by wanting a third hand? Also, how thin a noodle will your machine make?

My husband is the bread, pasta, noodle guy, but this is in our files. After resting, he makes the final cut by hand. I've never assisted in the pasta hand-crank rolling. He is well past the learning curve that does take a few tries.
This article is interesting...

Here is a link that might be useful: For Old-Fashioned Flavor....

They have a clamp. But when the sheets get long it would be easier to control if you didn't have to crank at the same time. Maybe it's my lack of experience; it's not impossible but I find it awkward.

And this is a good tutorial with historical information and many links in the readers responses...

Here is a link that might be useful: homemade ramen noodles

I picked up an inexpensive "Fantes" pasta machine at Cost Plus. $30 after a $10 credit. This is the basic China-made model, I probably should have kept looking on Craigslist for the nicer Italian-made model, but whims are whims.

I also found some links about roasting baking soda to increase the alkalinity, and using that to make ramen noodles. I'm going to try it, maybe next weekend.

By the way, I'd never visited the Fantes website before, but they have a lot of cool stuff. No affiliation, of course.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fantes

This post was edited by johnliu on Mon, Nov 18, 13 at 16:29