I gotchu fam Read more

Do you have access to local, high quality chicken? If so, the shoyu recipe I’ve included in this article will work great for you. Apart from some good quality soy sauce (which you can find on Amazon easily), pretty much everything in that dish can be found at an American supermarket. Read more

I’m totally ok with that. Making ramen is not at all an easy thing, and I do not expect most people to try to make it. It takes practice and time. But at the very least, I hope y’all will understand just how challenging ramen is to make correctly. And maybe... and I can guess this will be controversial, I hope folks… Read more

There are a handful of producers, but it’s nothing like Japan. Sun Noodle is still the largest, with 3 manufacturing facilities in the US, and a 4th on the way. The other two top brands in my mind are Myojo, a Japanese import, and Yamachan, a local manufacturer in the Bay Area. To be honest, the differences exist, but… Read more

You can definitely make noodles at home. The dough is just really difficult to work with, and you might end up ruining a pasta machine in the process if your machine is lower quality or uses a manual crank. I still make noodles regularly, but I try to avoid any recipes where the percentage of water to flour is less… Read more

So, I probably should have clarified on this point, I didn’t want to spend a huge amount of time on this. Or feed trolls, but here we are. Read more

You can DEFINITELY do the above recipe in an instant pot. Takes around 45 min cook time, plus natural pressure release. Read more

I have occasionally whispered “Atto de ne” to the chashu before, yes.  Read more

Super fun article. I’ve actually struggled a lot with making an Abura soba at home. Without the soup component, you have to strongly consider how the remaining ingredients will flavor the noodles, and one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced was getting the saucey tare and fat to cling to the noodle. You can try… Read more

Interesting point. I’m not really suggesting the noodles won’t stick to each other... so I’m not sure if this is really comparable. What I’m describing is an action where, when the noodles are dragged from the soup (which is polar) to the oil (which is not polar) the oil spreads into a thin film over the noodles, some… Read more

Oh like this one I made a few weeks ago?

Depends on the nucleotide. I didn’t get too deep into the weeds on this, but there are a bunch of them you can use in cooking. The two most common ones are “inosinate” and “guanylate.” Often these two are combined in a powdered form and added to processed foods, labeled as “I&G.” Inosinate is found in fish and meat,… Read more

It’s hard to diagnose why a bowl of ramen feels flat, but usually my guess is it has to do with the tare, because tare is often an afterthought in the US, and is secretive enough that recipes are hard to come by. Either it has incorrect seasoning levels, was stored at an incorrect temperature for too long, or just… Read more

Mother broth technique. Old soup is added to new bones, boiled over and over and over again each day. A lot of shops do this in Fukuoka, but they’re rarely open as long as this shop. Some info on this sort of thing here: http://www.strangertalk.co/taiho-ramen-kurume/ Read more

The hard boil is also, interestingly, a move common in ragu, to emulsify the rendered fat from the meat back into the sauce. So you make an interesting point, this is not necessarily a technique limited to ramen. But that proves the point of this technique’s efficacy, when even other cultures and recipes have similar… Read more

I mean.... I’m not gonna pretend like I don’t love Sapporo more than any other city in Japan I’ve been to. I loved living there, it’s beautiful, much more spacious, and calmer somehow. Read more

I’m honestly surprised to hear that! Maybe I’m in a bubble, does instant ramen still really get conflated with the dish these days? I kinda joke about it in the article but I mostly assume ramen has become prolific as a food item in the US; it’s been well over 10 years since it’s blown up.  Read more

I don’t even mean to bash tonkotsu at ALL in this article. But, as I’m sure you know, there is definitely an American fixation on the style, perhaps more-so than in Japan, though this is contingent on region for sure. Part of it is the chase for something unique I think; those classic clean bowls just don’t feel as… Read more

It’s only a rut if you don’t like salsa. Read more