Tonkotsu Ramen
It’s easier than you think! It just takes time and a bit of planning... And bones. Lots of bones.
The complete process is quite long but you can split it up over two days if you don’t want to do it all in one go, e.g. you can make broth on day one and the pork + eggs on day two. It does mean the eggs won’t marinate over night but they’ll still be tasty. Or you can spread it over 3 days if you’re feeling patient. With that out of the way...
Tonkotsu Broth
Time: 10-12 hours, up to 24 hours.
Ingredients
2kg pork bones (cleaned trotters cut in half if you can get them are good)
1 large onion, cut in half (don’t bother peeling completely, just take whatever is loose off)
Whole bulb of garlic, cut in half (same as onion, no need to peel)
Large piece of ginger, roughly sliced
5-6 dried shiitake mushrooms
Salt to taste
Optional
2 carrots cut into large chunks
¼ bulb fennel
Process
Place bones in a large pot, cover with water and boil for 20 minutes or so.
Drain into a colander and rinse bones thoroughly. This is to get rid of blood, impurities etc. Clean the pot.
Put bones back into pot with 4L of water (or more to cover the bones) and bring to a rolling boil. Not a hard boil since that will make the broth cloudy. Skim any scum off the surface and top up with water regularly.
While the bones are boiling, heat a frying pan on medium heat and place onion and garlic with cut side down, leave until caramelised.
Option 1: leave bones on a rolling boil for 8-10 hours, add vegetables etc and boil for the final 2-3 hours. Option 2: add veg once they’re caramelized and leave to boil for 10-12 hours. Personally, I add them towards the end to get maximum pork flavour with a light extra flavouring. If you add them earlier, you obviously get a different flavour profile.
Reduce until you have about 1.5-2L of broth
Strain into a clean pot, discard bones etc.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you can leave the bones to simmer over night for maximum flavour (plus ultra), just make sure you have enough water in the pot before going to bed (or get up during the night and top it up).
Once cooled, pour into an airtight container and store in the fridge, or if you’re like me and finish this around 11pm at night, leave it to cool on the hob with the lid on and put it away the next morning.
Good video: https://youtu.be/nscTA7QxryM
Chashu Pork
Time: 2.5 - 3 hours
This is an easy dish that takes about 2.5h to make and will hopefully result in melt-in-your-mouth tender pork belly with a lovely flavour that isn’t too salty. Personally I prefer rolled up pork belly because it just looks so pretty, and I think it’s a little bit more moist compared to flat pork belly (not that flat pork belly is dry!). One thing to remember: do not discard the liquid once your pork is done. This is very important, you will need it later!
A few recipes I’ve tried (both books linked here are good btw):
https://www.justonecookbook.com/homemade-chashu/
http://adamliaw.com/recipe/ramen-school-002-three-styles-of-chashu/
Nanban – Tim Anderson https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19186358-nanban
Japanese Soul Cooking – Tadashi Ono & Harris Salat https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17262625-japanese-soul-cooking
The combination of which is below
Ingredients
600-750g pork belly (I prefer pork belly, other cuts would be pork neck, pork loin although loin is not fatty enough imo,). This is enough for 4 portions, use bigger piece if you need more portions
1 piece Kombu
6 Shiitake mushrooms
150ml Japanese soy sauce (or just use 250ml soy sauce instead of dark soy)
100ml Dark soy sauce (saltier than Japanese soy, also adds colour)
125ml Mirin
125ml Sake
Optional (I use these)
2-3 Spring onions
1 inch Ginger
1 Star anise
Process
Roll up pork belly and tie it up with butchers’ twine.
Boil for about 20 minutes
Remove pork from water, rinse under running water, rinse pot
Return pork to pot with kombu and mushrooms, cover with water and bring to boil
Once water is steaming, remove kombu since it will turn bitter and unpleasant if boiled
Simmer uncovered for 1 hour then add everything; soy sauce, mirin, sake, spring onion, ginger.
When done, remove the pork and leave to cool. Once cool, place in fridge over night to firm up. Don’t discard the liquid!
Strain the braising liquid into an airtight container, this will be the marinade for the eggs and can also be used to braise meat and veg for other meals.
Ajitamago
Time: 6 minutes 30 seconds for boiling, anywhere from 1 to 48 hours of marinating
Ajitamago are an essential part of ramen in my opinion. Lovely soft boiled eggs with a savoury salty sweet exterior is always a lovely accompaniment and very easy to make. You can either make a marinade ahead of time or you can use the braising liquid from the pork belly. A simple marinade recipe is below, but if you’re using the braising liquid just skip to the egg part. Using the braising liquid has the advantage of more complex flavour, plus there’s quite a lot of it so you can marinate more eggs which is always a good thing.
Simple marinade
Ingredients
225m Water
225ml Soy sauce
125ml Sake
2 cloves of Garlic
25g Ginger
1 Star anise
Process
Put all the ingredients in a pot, bring to a boil then immediately take it off the heat.
Leave to cool, transfer to airtight container.
It will last a few weeks, up to a month, in the fridge
Ajitamago ingredients
4-6 eggs
Ice bath (or just very cold water bath)
As much marinade as needed to cover the eggs
Process
Carefully pierce the bottom of the eggs (rounded part) with a pin/needle.
Bring enough water to completely cover the eggs to boil
Set a timer for 6 minutes and 30 seconds
Gently place the eggs in the water and start the timer.
Use a pair of chopsticks to gently spin the eggs for about two minutes.
Once the time is up, transfer eggs to the ice/cold water bath.
When the eggs are cool, peel under cold running water.
Place eggs in a bowl, add marinade until eggs float then place a paper towel on top to weigh the eggs down alternatively you could place them in a zip loc bag.
Leave to marinate anywhere from a couple of hours to 24 hours. If marinating for a long time, rotate them regularly.
Personally, I feel that any longer will make them too strong but it’s possible to marinate them for 48 hours.
The book Nanban has an interesting alternative which involves Lapsang Souchong for a smokier flavour.
Tare
Tare is a concentrated sauce that adds additional flavour to the broth. It can be soy based (as in shoyu ramen), miso, salt (shio ramen) and almost anything else. I tend to try different things every time I make ramen and most recently, we tried two different things:
Version 1
1tsp Nduja - spicy Italian (Calabria) spreadable salami. The idea was to use something that has a lot of flavour and spice, and doesn’t take away from the pork flavour of the broth (we spent 10+ hours getting that flavour, why would you want to dilute it?).
Version 2
0.5 - 1 tbsp Miso
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp chicken powder
Technically the tare is supposed to be a separate thing you put into the bowl first then add broth but it’s up to you how you want to do this. There are plenty of recipes online and in the books I’ve linked that will show you how to do it “properly” 😊
Toppings
Apart from pork belly and eggs, other toppings can be
Pickled ginger (Gari)
Pickled bamboo shoots (Menma)
Spring onion
Toasted sesame seeds
Seaweed (Nori)
La-Yu (chili-sesame oil)
There’s an almost unlimited number of combinations for toppings, the above is just what I used this time.
Assembly
Start by bringing a big pot of water to the boil and heat up the broth. While that is heating up, thinly slice the pork and any other toppings that need slicing, e.g. spring onion, seaweed etc.
Depending on how fancy you want to be, you can either heat up the pork slices in the broth or you can use a grill/frying pan/blow torch. I used a frying pan since it was easiest and you get a nice light browning on the slices.
Once the water is boiling, add noodles and cook until they are done to your liking. I prefer a little bit of a bite to them which is about 3 minutes but this varies depending on what kind of noodles you use and your preference.
Heat the bowls by adding a ladle or two of broth then pour it back into the pot.
Put a bit of tare at the bottom of the bowl, top up with broth, then noodles and finally toppings. Hopefully you now have a lovely looking bowl of tonkotsu ramen!