Tonkotsu Ramen

STEP 1:

We’ll start with the most important thing: time. This stew, like any stew, will taste much better if you start making it a day before you’re going to feast on it, so let’s begin with the broth.

Just like Tim Burton himself, cut all the vegetables into large pieces and sauté the garlic first.

STEP 2:

When it starts to turn golden brown, add the onions, leek, and carrot. Cook all the vegetables until they’re very colorful. If it sticks a little to the bottom of the pot, don’t worry, it will only add more flavour to your broth.

STEP 3:

Finally, add a tablespoon of red miso to this mixture. Let it cook for a couple of minutes and then add the bacon to the vegetables.

STEP 4:

Cover it with water and let it simmer for about 2 hours.

While the broth is simmering, we’ll continue with the tare, which is the heart of any ramen.

In a small pot, combine the soy sauce, sake, kombu seaweed, mirin, and shiitake mushrooms. Boil it, then turn off the heat and let it rest.

Now we have the broth and the tare ready.

Back to the broth:

STEP 5:

In this case, we’ll take out the pork belly and immediately put it in the tare, covering it completely, and leave it in the fridge overnight.

STEP 6:

For the broth, you have two options: strain it and discard the vegetables, or if you prefer a thicker broth, like me, I recommend blending the broth with the vegetables and then straining it to get a super thick broth. We’ll keep this in the fridge until the next day.

Hang in there, we’re almost ready to enjoy our ramen!

The next day:

STEP 1:

The first thing we’ll do is to boil some water in a small pot.

Once it starts boiling, we’ll add two eggs, or a dozen, depending on your preference. We’ll cook them for 6 minutes, and then immediately place them in glacial water from Iceland, or simply cold water will also work.

We peel them and submerge them in the tare to give them an impressive black color.

STEP 2:

Once you’ve uncovered the tare, remove the pork belly and cut it into strips.

We’ll put these marinated pieces of pork belly in a hot pan and start to brown them until they’re golden. Once they’re golden, we leave them in the same pan to keep them warm.

STEP 3:

We take two pots: one to heat the broth, and another where we’ll put water, a little salt, and boil the noodles.

Once the noodles are cooked, be careful not to overcook them, then drain them. I like to cool them with cold water to make sure they don’t get mushy.

Now we have everything we need to start assembling our ramen.

At the bottom of a bowl, we’ll put some tare, the ramen noodles, and mix them together. We’ll add the boiling broth until they’re covered. On one side, we’ll place the seared pork belly and the egg, which we’ve previously cut in half.

Finally, we’ll slice a spring garlic clove and place it on top.

And now we can enjoy this amazing dish!

Best regards,

Andrés