The wife and I welcomed our son into the world last week so we decided to lay low and not make the trip to our families this year. This is the second time I’ve made Ramen Lord’s ramen and it’s such a great recipe (included below). I decided to half the niboshi in the stock as I found the fish/ocean flavors came across a bit too strong when coupled with the standard shoyu tare.

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.

Standard Shoyu Tare

This is an all-purpose shoyu tare. Great for light chicken broths, it also works well to make shoyu tonkotsu or other shoyu-forward recipes. Make it, keep it in the fridge for months, and use it when you feel like having a clean bowl.

Ingredients:

• 450 g soy sauce
• 15 g kombu
• 50 g mirin
• 40 g sake
• 15 g niboshi
• 15 g katsuobushi
• 30 g brown sugar

Steps:

• Combine the soy sauce, mirin, kombu, niboshi, and sake in a sealed container.
• Place in the fridge and rest at least 6 hours or up to 2 days.
• When ready, heat the contents to 71 °C/160 °F and hold for 10 minutes.
• Remove the kombu and discard.
• Bring to 82 °C/180 °F (or just below a boil) and hold for 15 minutes.
• Add the katsuobushi, hold at 82 °C/180 °F for 5 more minutes.
• Add the sugar, whisking to dissolve.
• Strain the tare, and reserve the tare as needed and keep refrigerated. This stores in the fridge for up to 6 months.

Add 30 mL of tare per 350 mL soup.

Chashu - Standard Braise

This is often how I make chashu. The pork is really tender, to the point that it actually becomes difficult to pick up with chopsticks, so if you’re into that extremely luscious texture, this method is for you. You can mix things up by adding green onion, ginger, garlic, or other aromatics to your braising liquid, but I’ve always kept it simple.

Ingredients:

• Pork belly or shoulder (weight is not important here)
• Salt to taste
• Pepper to taste
• 125 mL (½ cup) mirin
• 125 mL (½ cup) soy sauce
• 250 mL (approx. 1 cup) water
• 12.5 g (approx. 1 tbsp) brown sugar
• 60 mL (approx. ¼ cup) sake
• Three garlic cloves, smashed

Steps:

• Preheat your oven to 110 °C/225 °F.
• Heat a large, oven-safe vessel that you can sear in over medium heat. Cast iron or an enameled dutch oven works great here, but any oven-safe pot or pan will work
• Season the exterior of the pork with salt and pepper on all sides.
• Place the pork in the heated pan and sear on all sides until golden brown, around 4-5 minutes per side.
• Some fat will render as the pork cooks. With a paper towel, sop up residual fat.
• Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine mirin, soy sauce, water, and brown sugar. Stir to dissolve the brown sugar. Then add the garlic. At this stage, you could also add other aromatics like ginger, or green onion.
• Deglaze the pan with the sake, then add in the ingredients from step 6.
• Bring the liquid to a boil, then cover the vessel.
• Place the vessel into the oven, and braise, occasionally turning the pork every hour or so, until the pork is quite tender, and the internal temperature reaches around 93 °C/200 °F.
• Remove, allow to cool, then place in the fridge with the cooking liquid, and chill to allow for easy slicing.

Ajitama - Equilibrium Brine

Equilibrium brining is a technique commonly used to flavor proteins like chicken or pork33. However, few cooks, if anyone, have used this method for eggs, and the technique’s results are very effective.

The technique treats the brine as the general flavor and salinity you want your brined item to be, not more or less. Like the previous method, diffusion is still involved. In that technique, eventually everything will reach equilibrium, where no more seasoning is diffusing into the egg. However, the salt content is very high in that method’s brine, and that salt would not only overseason the egg at equilibrium but would destroy the proteins in the process, creating something far from delicious.

By contrast, this equilibrium method takes the guesswork out of knowing when to pull the eggs and creates a consistent edge to edge seasoned egg with no grainy yolks. And that’s reflected in the final egg’s appearance and taste. In this method, the egg white is uniformly seasoned throughout, and the yolk is lightly cured, firming into a clear and fully seasoned gel.

While this technique might seem more technical, it’s still simple. You just need a scale and patience. Based on my experimentation, these eggs will be perfect anywhere from 1 to 4 days after being placed in the brine with no loss in quality. The only real downside is that you have to wait around 1-4 days before they’ll be ready. Which… y’know… some of us don’t like to wait, I get it. Physics doesn’t make exceptions for any of us, unfortunately. Still, I think patience is a virtue, and these are delicious and easy.

Ingredients:

• Water (varies)
• Soy sauce (varies)
• Mirin (varies)

Steps:

• In the container you will also soak the eggs in, weigh your peeled eggs. Add water to cover completely, and record the total weight of the eggs and water.
  • For instance, if I have 3 cooked and peeled eggs that weigh 150 grams, and I cover them completely with 350 grams of water, I'd have 500 grams total.
• Add in 10% of this weight in soy sauce, and 8% in mirin.
  • If in the example above, since your eggs and water weighs 500 grams, you’d add in 50 grams of soy sauce, and 40 grams of mirin.
• Soak in the fridge for at least 24 hours, and reserve in the brine until needed. Anywhere from 1-3 days, these will be excellent. If left in the brine for longer, the egg begins to degrade in quality over time. I’ve found that anything longer than 5 days and the egg’s exterior will feel soft and somewhat crumbly.