Tonkotsu Ramen

Have you ever tried “real” ramen before? No, not that Styrofoam stuff in a cup called “noodles”. My first time having real ramen was in New York City at Menchanko-tei on 131 E 45^th St. The bowl of shoyu ramen was heavenly and ever since having that first beautiful bowl of soup, I’ve been hooked. I’ve never been able to eat that horrible cup of noodles since and I hope with this post you’ll see that there are better, and tastier, ways of making ramen even if it is not from scratch.

You can find several brands of prepackaged ramen imported from Japan at some of your local oriental markets or some supermakets. Instant ramen noodles have been around for as long as I can remember having them back in high school. When you go your local oriental market or some supermarkets, there are many choices from traditional ones, weird flavors, and some with pretty packaging. Myojo brand ramen are my favorite. They’re the closest thing to “good” ramen without the 12-18 hour hassle of making it from scratch. But if you have nothing better to do but wait around 12-18 hours here’s my home made tonkotsu ramen story.

So I have a really bad habit of staying awake until the wee hours of the night on the weekends. Earlier in the week I got the bright idea to attempt making tonkotsu ramen from scratch. It’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m pulling out piggy trotters, piggy tails and ham hocks all which are part of a good base for the broth. There’s something about creating things from scratch that makes you realize what actually goes into most of the things you eat. You can find the website I used to make the broth in the recipe below. I also did a bunch of research from multiple websites but found this one to be to my liking.

The one problem I came across when handling the piggy parts was that I couldn’t fully clean them because I didn’t have a sharp enough knife to cut them into smaller sections. The website I referenced said to ask your butcher to cut them for you. I purchased mine from the supermarket and the piggy trotters were already pre sliced lengthwise and once I blanched all the parts I couldn’t clean all the bones out properly. So in the end my broth wasn’t as light colored looking as you would see in a proper ramen. However, the flavors were pretty darn close to what you get in a ramen shop, I think with a few more tweaks I could have it down. Plus, it gives me an excuse to make ramen! The broth also saves well, mine only lasted a day because it made such a good lunch. When you save the broth it does form into a slight gel, which is pretty neat!

This whole process took about 12-18 hours just for the broth. So make sure you have plenty of time that day and start early! Since I started around 2 in the morning I put it on a low setting so the water wasn’t boiling but was simmering. By the time I woke up I was able to put it on a higher setting to get it to that rolling boil. 

Here are my additional posts on the toppings including Ramen Eggs, and Chashu Pork, please go visit!