Road to Ramen - Tonkotsu Style Ramen with Chāsū Pork

Finally, after all the preparation of the Chāsū Pork and the Tonkotsu style broth, it is time for plating!

If you have a day job, it probably took you 3 days to make the broth in parts, or if you had some time on your hands to be near your stove, 2 days. The Chāsū Pork also needed to have been made the previous day and then put in the fridge the settle, this will ensure that the slices do not come apart once sliced.

I had two rolls of Chāsū and proved that theory!

The first roll we ate with ramen the day I made it and it came apart slightly. The second roll was another meal the next day and the roll held nicely.

The Broth - Creamy rich goodness!

The Chāsū Pork - Tender and tasty!

Now you need to prepare the rest of the toppings that will go into your Ramen.

I had some seaweed to cut into strips. This is done easily with the kitchen scissors. On my first plating, I included Spring Onion, sliced thinly.

In future platings, I learned to come up with all sorts of toppings to add to the broth and noodles.

One of the main, traditional toppings to add to your toppings is the marinaded soft-boiled egg. Included in my plating are my first attempts ever to actually do soft boiling and I am happy to say that I have gotten much better at it!

Let's check out the process!

Marinaded Soft Boil Egg

Armed with the knowledge of several youtube tutorials, a pot and a timer, I set out to make soft boiled eggs.

First we get the water to a boil.
Try to gently get all the eggs into the pot and start your timer for 6minutes.
This was the tricky part! The mistake here is dropping them in, one of the eggs broke and it sprayed out white cooked egg all over the place!

Later on, in future efforts, I bought myself some nylon-tipped tongs and this process became a lot easier. I could then lower the eggs into the boiling water gently without any breaks occurring.

Prepare a large bowl of ice water. So I used cold running water and put a bunch of ice cubes in. With 6 minutes off the clock, you take the eggs out and directly into the ice water!

After a few seconds, the eggs are easy to be handled. You make little cracks on the surface of the eggs and submerge them again. By the time you have done this to the last egg, you can pick the first one up and break off a bit of shell.

The rest of the shell and egg easily separates now and you are left with a first, yet squishy eggwhite. The yolk is still runny inside, but you only see with much later.

The next step is to marinate the eggs. In a Ramen restaurant, the marinade is done for 5 minutes but for best results you can do this 30mins or more.

In my case I just got the marinade done and then started cooking the noodles. Once the noodles were done, the egg had sat in the marinade long enough.

The marinade is soy sauce, a squirt of brown vinegar, and a tablespoon of brown sugar.

Pro-tip: Cover the eggs in a paper towel and let that paper towel absorb the marinade. No matter what size container you use, the eggs are going to float in the soy sauce. So the paper towel ensures that the top of the egg also gets covered in marinade. Otherwise, your eggs will come out spotty or have one side browner than the other side.

Final Product

I had a variety of noodles to try out. I had bought some at the Asian supermarket and needed to try them all out.

For my first plating, I used what we call in South Africa Maggie 2 minute Noodles. All Ramen noodle is just wheat noodle. I wanted to taste-test these noodles and compare them with my next day's plating of a thicker noodle brand.

When plating you dish your noodles, then the broth till you can see it through the stack of noodles. Not too much though and with these two staples in, you need to remember to leave room for the toppings!

Pro-tip: Ramen bowls are huge.

I did not have Ramen bowls! So this is a fairly overcrowded cereal bowl... the proper bowls came later!

It is also important to note that you cannot put all this together and make it stand. The noodles get too soggy and begin to break down. So it is plate and eat soon after!

So on top of the noodles came the egg, the Chāsū Pork, and the spring onion. There is a massive amount and variety of toppings to put on. With my little bowls, there was no need to include more toppings.

And here is the final result!

The broth was rich and creamy and I could really appreciate the reason why it took me 3 day to make it. It was just such.... quality!

Soft boiled eggs and Chāsū Pork were both really tasty. There is no need for condiments or salt to be added. There is so much flavour in the broth and the various soy sauce based marinades used on the other things that what was left without spices soon absorbed the flavour.

The Road to Ramen is not done yet!

This is but the first completed Ramen bowl. My first attempt.

From here forward, I still had the actual Birthday celebration to cater for. We also visited a Ramen Restaurant in Seapoint, Cape Town to taste what the professionals make!

See you next time for more Ramen!
Cheers
@zakludick