My two homeschooled teenagers take turns preparing one interesting meal and one dessert from scratch every other week (because well, payday/grocery day is every other week). They've both been fascinated with Asian culture since well before their anime nerd stage set in. They've also grown up on Chinese take-out, hibachi, and Mongolian grill, developing a taste for such cuisine at an early age but always aware they were eating the Americanized version. So they've each made it a point to throw together a few
authentic Asian meals since we started homeschooling last year. My son and I had recently discussed making
real ramen, so for this week's "interesting meal" he found a recipe for
tonkotsu ramen, detailed here at
http://www.bob-an.com/recipe/dailyjc/basic/ramen/ramen.html He and I spent a good part of our past Monday on it, and I documented our experiment with photos for, what else, a blog post!
I will say, this is the first time in my life that I've purchased or made use of "pork neck bone"...
Add the pork neck bone, several cloves of garlic, and one whole onion to 2 liters of water and boil the heck out of it for three hours. Why yes, this smelled quite strong, though not unpleasantly so.
Strain the broth and end up with
tonkotsu, i.e. heavy, rich pork stock:
Take some more pork -- this time, boneless ribs -- and boil it
in the tonkotsu for an hour. Now, you'll note this recipe does
not call for salt, and this next step is why. Transfer the rib meat to the mixture pictured below of soy sauce, mirin, and fresh ginger slices, where the meat is cooked another 20 minutes to imbue it with a very salty flavor, rendering it
yakibuta:
Note: Mirin is sweet rice wine used in cooking. After looking unsuccessfully for mirin at two grocery stores, I thankfully found a bottle at my local health food store, saving me a trip across town to the Asian food market. If you can't find mirin and/or get to an Asian or health food store, you can substitute with 3 tbsps. of dry sherry or white wine mixed with one tbsp. of granulated sugar (which gives you an idea of how sweet mirin is!).
The yakibuta is then to be sliced into thin pieces, but our pork came out so tender, it sort of shredded itself as I went to cut it. Here you see my son and I also chopped up some green onion, as well as preparing the bean sprouts, which are boiled or steamed for just one minute, making them softer but still crunchy.
The recipe calls for "Chinese noodles"...so we went with basic Japanese flour noodles since that's all ramen really is. Though I will say that despite how thin they are, these noodles cook up with a much heartier texture and flavor than the instant Maruchen cardboard variety.
Now it's time to prepare a bowl of not-so-instant tonkotsu ramen as demonstrated by my son. Start by spooning about 2 tbsps. of the leftover yakibuta sauce in the bottom of your bowl. No tin foil packets of dry seasoning here!
Next, fill your bowl with cold-rinsed cooked noodles:
Fill the bowl over halfway with the tonkotsu:
Garnish with bean sprouts, green onion, and a few bites of yakibuta. Voila, not-so-instant ramen! (My otaku Japanophile daughter, who has also inherited my dry sense of snark, speculates the kanji on the chopsticks translates to
"You Naruto mofo's, stop stealing our culture!")
The teenagers and I thought the ramen was very tasty.
Very rich, what with all the pork infusion and the salty yukibata, yet the bean sprouts and green onions lent the dish a fresher, lighter contrast. This stuff is
very filling, definitely a far cry from the quickly-metabolized, starch-laden instant variety, and after just one bowl each, we were done for. When I heated some up the next day, the tonkotsu was totally congealed, so I watered down the broth a bit and found it easier and lighter on the stomach. We may try beef ramen next time, and
cheat cut down on prep time by using canned broth. I might also try a vegan version with vegetable broth and tofu, and one can always use low-sodium soy sauce to cut down on the salt content.
All in all, a fun experience in the kitchen, with a satisfying dish to show for our effort!
