Hi everyone, welcome to potluck food talks.
Today we're going to talk about ramen.
Ramen, the heart blood of any hipster neighborhood.
Food that's become so incredibly popular around the world in the last, I don't know how many years.
Did we mention ramen in the cultural appropriation episode?
I don't think we did, no.
Because ramen is an example of a positive, I would say, cultural appropriation.
Because this is like a Chinese soup made Japanese with its own identity.
To the point that nobody sees it as a Chinese thing because it's not anymore.
Yeah, totally.
I also feel like ramen is very open to development and to experimentation inside of the boundaries of what ramen is.
I feel like there are very fixed parameters that if you fall inside of them and you don't bastardize them completely,
that you could still call it ramen and very confidently sell it as ramen.
And nobody's really going to question the authenticity of it.
No, I agree.
There are also, I think, things that are not ramen, sold as ramen.
When I think about ramen, I think about the specific type of broth or a family of broths and a family of noodles.
At least in my prejudice.
I don't know if you get to see ramen soups with some strange noodles that you wouldn't see usually in ramen places.
But for me, that's a noodle soup with Asian ingredients.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, imagine a ramen with like flat rice noodles.
It's impossible.
Exactly.
Well, I remember the first time I went to a ramen place, it was really magical.
Because it was the first time in a long time that I tried something that had a completely different flavor profile.
I remember it was a shio ramen, which is basically a chicken stock with dashi, right?
With like finished with katsuobushi.
And that on one side, like the taste of the stock.
And on the other side, the qualities of the noodles.
These noodles that looks like spaghetti, but it's chewy and elastic.
And I was completely amazed also that you could play around your soup
and find new things that were hidden.
I mean, it's like it's one of my favorite things in the world for sure.
Yeah, for sure.
And yeah, you know, it's like I also remember it's like ramen has this infinite quality to it, you know?
It's so like simple and pure, but there's so much nuance to it, you know?
Like you were mentioning the sort of like what people call the double soup approach, you know?
Like where you make two soups and then combine them together.
For example, you know, in a lot of places that make shio ramen.
So, I mean, first, before we go into detail, you know, shio ramen is shoyu ramen.
Shio ramen is seasoned with salt, shio salt.
And shoyu is seasoned with soy sauce.
And they're both fairly similar, just that before serving for shoyu ramen,
you put something called tare in the base, which is a sauce made from soy sauce
and mirin and kombu and stuff like that.
But yeah, there's like double soup approaches.
Like often you make a very clear, intense chicken stock and then you make a very,
you know, traditional dashi, which is the Japanese broth made with,
you know, katsuobushi dried bonito flakes and often also niboshi,
which are the small anchovies, the dried anchovies.
And then you strain both of those broths and combine them together,
which makes a really, really complex and very intense soup.
And it's, yeah, it's a very unique flavor.
It's a very, very Japanese flavor that's like, is, you can't really find,
we can definitely not find anywhere around the world.
It's very, very unique.
Yeah.
Also, another thing that I have experienced eating ramen,
because this place, the first place I went was the old place of Kokoro Ramen in Berlin.
This place was so magical because it was so little,
like just like a floor where they built like a bar inside and you would eat direct to the bar
and everybody was like, it was really crowded.
You had to wait in line to get in and they would cook just in front of you,
just like ramen places in Japan.
And I remember this place, they probably saw their food costs at some point and started,
I don't know, but Japanese friends of mine, they said they really liked it at the beginning.
And with time, not so much, I guess like this effort of over-reducing the stock to make it
more powerful is something that Japanese see or understand better than other kinds of clients.
So like in general, the ramen I've tried in Europe, they're all watery.
They could be stronger, the stock, at least in my experience.
Yeah, it's so crucial.
And like really, like when you go to Japan and you kind of spend a little bit of time
in like traditional Japanese cooking, you understand this like approach and this understanding of broth.
It's like, I think what kind of separates Japanese cooking from other cuisines is that
it's primarily water-based, you know?
And one of the strongest identities in dishes in Japanese cooking is dashi.
If you go to any sort of high-end Japanese kaiseki restaurant, most of the time around
the year, you'll find a dashi dish that's fully based on the broth, you know?
And they call it ichiban dashi, you know, the first flush of the dashi,
the first infusion of the ingredients.
And it's a really impactful experience, kind of like what you described the first time
when you had ramen for the first time, because the broth is so concentrated
without being over-seasoned or anything.
It's just so fully packed of like its essence.
And it's piping hot, which is also super, super crucial.
And you sip it, you eat it, and it just kind of fills you out.
And this is like such a straw for me.
It was like one of the most fundamental things,
like one of the most important things that I discovered about Japanese cooking
when I was there.
And that is a little bit difficult to understand for people from the West.
And when you then eat ramen outside of Japan, that often, like you say,
it doesn't have the same intensity and often also doesn't have the same temperature,
which I think is super, super crucial because there's nothing like...
In Japan, when you get a bowl of soup, it's so piping hot
that you can barely take the first sip.
Like it's just off the boil.
But if it was anything but that, people would send it back, you know,
because there's nothing compared to this feeling of sipping this broth
and having this like wave of comfort like flood over you.
And you just don't get that when the broth is like 80 degrees.
Do you know this dish?
I don't remember the name, but it's like a traditional Japanese dish
where you get baby eels that are alive and they're swimming in the dashi.
And at the center of the dish, there is like this silken tofu.
And so they turn the fire on and the eels, because it gets so hot,
they swim into the tofu in front of the guest who is watching and says,
oh, and all the eels go into the tofu.
And that's one of the most intense dishes I've ever seen.
Yeah, it's like a really fucked up kind of instant gouda cheese.
Yeah, I've definitely seen that.
I've not actually eaten it myself and I never saw a restaurant like that
serve that dish.
It must be like a really special, maybe like probably like very seasonal thing.
You know, I mean, like baby eels, they don't come around so often as we know.
You know, I mean, baby eels are very popular in Spain too.
So what kinds of ramen do we have?
We mentioned shoyu shio, tonkotsu is also a classic one.
And for me, tonkotsu has to be the nearest thing to be in the world.
Has to be the nearest thing to drink pork juice because it's like so intense.
Something like you would really want to eat in winter.
And it usually comes with pork belly, right?
Yeah, so tonkotsu is really interesting because like you say, it's a pork broth
and it's very fatty in a way.
But it's really, really interesting because it's made from pork bones, only pork bones.
You boil them one time and you pour all the water off so you get rid of all the impurities.
And then you let it boil, you fill it back up with water and you let it boil for a really,
really, really long time to get all the like collagen and stuff out of it.
But then what you do is like afterwards, when you strain it, you cook it down on a hard boil.
So often when you cook down broth, you want to do it on a low temperature
so that all the aromatics don't combust into the steam, right?
But there you boil it down on a hard temperature so that all the fat and this collagen emulsifies
into the water. And if you don't do that, you could don't get this like thick, creamy texture
of the broth. So that's really like, that's also a really interesting thing that I've never,
ever seen in any other sort of like cooking approach around the world.
And yeah, like you say, you know, the toppings, you know, they're very usually it's like,
yeah, char siu, which is a Chinese term for roast pork.
But in Japan, it's usually like shoulder or that's rolled up and you basically make like a
like a roast, you know, like it's tied up into a roll into a roulade.
Yeah, no, I remember it's not pork belly. It's just like, yeah, the slices of roast.
Yeah, I mean, you definitely find pork belly also, but I think that's more of like a modern
and also like a little bit more of a Western thing. But like usually it's just these like rolls of
pork belly, it can be neck or anything. And they poach it and then cool it down and then
slice it thinly. Sometimes even they char grill the slices also. And yeah, what else?
Pickled bamboo shoots, very, very crucial garnish. And for tonkotsu also very important is the black
garlic oil, which is a very interesting condiment. Again, something that I've never seen anywhere
else is where you burn crushed or chopped garlic on a controlled heat until it turns black and it
flavors the oil and you strain it off. I've tried to make it several times and I've always failed.
No matter how many YouTube tutorials I watch, I can't get it right. Because burnt garlic is
horrible. It's absolutely disgusting. It's like inedible. It's super bitter and it has this really
horrible taste like there's nothing pleasant about it. But if you do it just the right way,
then you get this really roasty, toasters, caramelized black garlic oil. But me personally,
I can't figure out how to make it. I personally going back to the bone broth, you were saying
the times I've done like good ramen with good results at home, I found in this Asian supermarket
here in San Sebastian that they were selling this. It looked like the joint of a bone, like the
elbow of a serrano ham. So it wasn't like a ham that was cured, but like a cut that doesn't
have any value for anything. So I made like a broth with that, kind of like a dashi at the end,
because I would add kombu at the beginning and katsuobushi at the end. So this was like a really
quick way to make like a strong porky broth with katsuobushi. So it kind of had like, it is its
own thing. I don't think it would be classified in any of the classical ramen categories, but I
think it pulled the trigger. If you could taste it and have like a home ramen experience. I think
the most difficult thing for making ramen at home is to get good noodles. I remember this place,
Kokoro Ramen. If you would go there on prep time hours, you would see this Japanese lady making
noodles with machines that looked exactly like Italian pasta machines, but with the Japanese
letters on it. So you know, these were like Japanese machines. And yeah, and the key thing
about this type of noodles, what gives it its chewiness is that they're usually made with a
specific type of salt, like alkaline salt. It gives them not only the color, but also the elasticity.
And that's again something I haven't seen nowhere else. I think that's only Japanese as far as I
know. Yeah, I mean, it comes from China also. They have the same sort of thing where they use
ashes and stuff to alkaline their noodles. But yeah, I mean, that's definitely, I don't think you can
call it ramen if it doesn't have those alkaline noodles. Sometimes they're more yellow, sometimes
they're less yellow. And a lot of times people think it's because there's egg in them, but
actually it's not the case. It's completely eggless. It's just the result of the oxidization of the
alkaline salt in contact with the flour. And yeah, most importantly, it's like you said and described,
it gives it that very satisfying and very distinctive chewiness and bounciness. You know,
like the noodles really, like you can even stretch them, they bounce back. I think that's super,
super key. Because there are other like iconic or representative Japanese noodles, like udon
noodles that are thick as earthworms or soba, which are like with a specific type of flour.
Yeah, buckwheat. Buckwheat, right. So these ones, and this is again, stuff that I see that it's
called ramen and like cheap sushi places. They use this kind of noodles and they sell it as ramen,
which has nothing to do with it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, you know, it's like
udon noodle and udon like is a completely separate culture with its own thing, like in its own rules
and all variations and you know, udon restaurants and places, they tie much more into like tempura
and stuff like that. Also, I would say like udon has a little bit more of like a traditional vibe,
just as soba. Soba has like a very sort of aesthetic, like minimalist sort of like thing to it
and ramen is really sort of like more, a little bit more modern and more popular, you know,
because it's more like you can play around with it more, you know, there's not a lot of...
Like with udon, you have very clear broths, you know, like kake udon or you have it with,
you know, Japanese curry, those sorts of things. But you know, with and soba is very, very traditional,
you know, you either have it in soup or you have it cold on the side with the big sauces. But ramen,
you know, the cool thing about ramen is that the culture is so vibrant, like there's so many people,
especially in Japan, but like also in the States and in Europe that really take a certain style
and then like develop it further, you know, like, I mean, now the last couple of years, there's like
a style in Japan that's sort of emerged where people were sort of like, oh, you know, like they
liked the tonkotsu style, but they started making tonkotsu ramen with chicken, right? So only chicken
and they were doing the same amount and same thing, making the super milky broth with pure chicken
and just cooking it down and emulsifying it in the same way, getting this like creamy emulsified
broth. And they, that's why I was saying earlier that like they went to keep it to parameters,
you know, it's like you saying, oh, you made a dashi with a bone from jamon, you know, like,
I don't know, in my head, it makes perfect sense. You know, it's like dried, cured umami. I mean,
jamon is basically pork katsu bushi in a way. Yeah, exactly. And I feel like if you're keeping
those parameters, you know, you are just kind of contributing to the culture rather than like
bastardizing something. Yeah, also to put it like in perspective, I read once that ramen is something
that evolved after World War II from Japanese soldiers that came back from Japan and they saw
this noodle places in China and they replicated them. So it's something that is just a half a
century old and it makes sense that it's so free and there aren't ramen Nazis, there probably are,
there probably are ramen Nazis for sure. Yeah, they definitely are. But like, I feel like also
it's one of the most exciting things about like food culture in Japan, like foodies in Japan,
you know, they go, they seek out new style ramens, you know, and it's not like, oh, it's this
out of the box. It's sort of like, no, it kind of like keeps evolving and keeps moving forward. And
it's not like foreigners coming in and saying, I'm going to make a pork biryani ramen, you know,
like, which, you know, it doesn't sound too bad actually. With barbecue sauce and chili con carne.
Yeah, exactly. But there is a ramen like with with minced beef, right, that you get the beef like,
like a couple of spoons of like something that looks like chili con carne. You know what that is?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's, it's, it's minced cooked down, I think it's pork, I'm not sure. But
basically it's kind of spitted off and then afterwards it's mixed together with miso to make
this like very thick minced miso paste and you get it, they say as a spoonful in your soup and you
kind of mix it into the broth. Yeah, there's definitely a condiment that exists. And then
I've heard of people saying something that I think that it's wrong and I've never seen, but I don't
know what you think is about adding miso to your pork broth or these kind of things. I think there
is like a miso soup itself and but adding miso like to a ramen broth, it's something I wouldn't do at
least. Yeah, you know, I don't agree, actually, because I've seen, I've seen it done and it
definitely works. I can think of a very specific example. There's a very traditional dish from
Japanese cooking called puta miso, which basically just needs pork miso and it's a sort of soup
stew. It's made with sliced pork, burdock, like root vegetables, and then it all gets sweated
off in sesame oil and then you add stock and in the end you add miso. And I've seen that being
served on udon noodles, which was super delicious, you know, like, yeah, super nice, like thin slices
of, there's more like a rustic style, but super, super delicious. And there's definitely, there's
definitely miso ramen, yeah, for sure. Yeah, but I mean, I was talking about the miso pork combination,
but okay, cool. I didn't knew that one. I think especially, especially in Hokkaido, you know,
it's like also you have to think of the variation of regions, of climates. Yeah, of climates, you
know, like the butter ramen in Hokkaido where they put like sweet corn in it and stuff and a
slob of butter on at the end, you know, that are much thicker and much richer because of the cold
climate. I mean, yeah, that's the cool thing about it. It's so varied. So, which would you say
was your favorite that you've ever had? I would say the one I said the first shio ramen I had,
because it was the most impressive one, was like, what is this? I've never had something like this.
And I actually brought a lot of people to have that same dish. And it was on and on the same
reaction. Like, what is this? Yeah, I think it was the first one that I've had also at Kokoro in
Berlin back then in Akasha, Mark, right? Yeah, exactly. This super small place. Yeah, I remember,
I think one of my like very favorite ones is from a chain in Japan called Afuri. And they specialize
in shio ramen and they have one with yuzu, where their broth is flavored with yuzu. So they have a
yuzu shio ramen. And again, it's just like super pungent, like crystal clear broth with just like
fresh yuzu flavor. And very, very simple. They put like a little bit of like fresh risu on top and
like greens and stuff. And I remember that really stand out was also their soy marinated egg, which
we didn't talk about, which is also really, really important for ramen soups. Oh, yeah, this
halved egg that you always get with the ramen. Yeah. And then like, it's again, something so
simple as a soft boiled egg that you marinate in a mixture of, you know, soy and kombu and whatever,
you know, depending on your recipe. But the way like this was just like, like the texture of the
yolk after a while becomes just like so waxy and creamy. And the flavor is just like so
wamy packed that yeah, it's it really made that ramen stand out. It's definitely in my,
it's my top ramen for sure. Sounds amazing.
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