Why make regular chicken noodle soup when you can be really ambitious and a little crazy and decide at 2 in the afternoon to make "ramen." Taryn, why is ramen in quotes? Thanks for asking Internet! There are so many different versions of ramen, Shio ramen, Miso ramen.... all made with fresh hand tossed noodles swimming in laborious oily, flavorful, salty soup. At the heart of it all its soup and noodles; and thats what I made. So this is how I made my...uh... "ramen"....
As mentioned above, I decided to make ramen
Thank you world for Pressure Cookers!
Step 1: Gather 4 cups of water + 2 pounds of pork bones (I would even pump it up to 3 pounds) and set aside
Step 2: Dice about 2 inches of ginger and 6-7 rehydrated mushrooms and set aside
Step 3: Using the browning feature on your pressure cooker, brown those beautiful bones. Then add your water, ginger and mushrooms. Follow your pressure cooker settings to make the 'Perfect Stock' (because I bet theres' a recipe in the manual called "The Perfect Stock"). *I think I eventually added too much water (try like 8-9 cups), I would say maybe 6 cups will do the trick*
Noodle time! Who doesn't like fresh noodles?
Step 4: Gather 1 cup of All Purpose Flour, 1 egg, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of water
Step 5: Mix those thaangs together!
The dough should be smooth, slightly sticky but not too sticky that it won't pull away from the bowl or your hand.
Step 6: Let dough sit in a damp tea cloth for an hour so the dough has time to chill out!
Step 7: After your dough has chilled out, lightly flour your surface and roll, roll, roll out your dough. Because of my limited space I cut my dough ball in half and worked in two parts. Roll your dough as thhhiiinnnn as you possibly can. Heres the tricky part! Fold the dough into thirds (almost like bringing the flappy wings in). While your folding the dough in, flour each layer so you don't end up with a ball of sticky!
Step 8: After you have 3 layers of dough, cut in a straight even motion down as thinly as possible
Look at those cutie pies! You can toss some flour in there until you're ready to boil them.
Step 9: To boil noodles, fill up your biggest pot! Just kidding, eye ball it. Small pot, medium pot...I trust you to make good decisions. Once your water begins to boil, add your raw noodles, and wait until the noodles begin to rise to the top. Depending on how thick your noodles are, I would leave them in for an extra 2 minutes while stirring them around.
*Helpful hint, Sometimes when I make noodles, I like re'adding cold water because I read somewhere that thats how you make dumplings. And you know what they say "Whats good for the dumplings are good for the noodles!" (<-- That was dumb Taryn, no one has ever said that before *face palm*)
Yummy Digression!
Miso Butter Corn! 2 cups of corn + 1 tablespoon of butter + 1 tablespoon of miso paste.
Mix and heat over medium heat until the corn is well heated. Enjoy, over everything and anything, you're welcome.
Garlic Spinach! Par-boil any kind of greens, drain, toss with powdered garlic! Done! You're welcome, again.
While the noodles and then soup were cookin', my lovely kitchen assistant (aka my mom) made soft boiled eggs
Cold water-> Fresh Eggs-> 6.5 minutes of boiling-> 10 minutes of hanging out--> Eggs!
Oh! I forgot to mention, while I was pretending to be confident in Chinatown I also picked up some roasted pork and BBQ pork for ya' know, authenticity! *Scoff*
Oh! I forgot to mention, while I was pretending to be confident in Chinatown I also picked up some roasted pork and BBQ pork for ya' know, authenticity! *Scoff*
Its' almost ready! Add your noodles, a dollop of miso paste, all your fixins' and a garnish of seaweed to a beautiful bowl and there you have it-my take on Miso Ramen with Buttered Miso Corn!
Step 10: Eat as fast as you can!
Step 10: Eat as fast as you can!
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One day, I will really really follow an actual recipe for Ramen soup and let you know how it goes. This time my soup definitely did not have that gritty saucy flavor most Ramen soup does which I was actually happy with. The broth was simple, clear and very refreshing, a nice frame for the dollop of miso I plunked in there. As for the noodles, I couldn't find my good rolling pin, so this time,they were a little bit too chewy. Womp. I will get better at making noodles!
Weewh! That was tiring! So until next time...
Stay tuned! Stay hungry!
-Taryn Julia
P.S To pump up the authenticity even more, add some diced green onions to the top of your soup. Its' sure to make everyone go..."Wow, you must really know what you're doing."
