Almost like in Japan! Secrets of cooking delicious ramen

Ramen is a hearty dish originally from Asia, which has recently been popular with us. You can try delicious noodle soup in a cafe or restaurant where there is Japanese, Chinese or Korean cuisine. But we suggest cooking it yourself. Moreover, it is not so difficult to do it! The main thing is to know a few secrets.

The word "ramen" itself comes from two Chinese characters, which literally mean "pulling noodles". Actually, noodles are the main ingredient of the dish. In addition to it, it includes various additives: vegetables, meat, herbs, mushrooms, plant sprouts. The ingredients and technology of cooking ramen depend on the choice of the cook, the only constant link in this chain is the broth.

There are several options for making broth for ramen — from fish or meat. There is also a variant of fish concentrate and dried algae, but we will consider the closest to our realities, namely: pork (fish is excluded, since it is prepared mainly from shark fins).

The broth is prepared elementary: the meat is washed, cleaned, placed in a saucepan and filled with water. Then you need to bring it to a boil and cook for about 40-60 minutes more.

Depending on how the broth was prepared and what additives you used, there are 4 main types of ramen:

After you decide on the broth (of course, it will be easiest to cook it on the basis of pork), you can proceed to the next stage.

Traditionally, wheat flour noodles are used for ramen. Ideally, if you cook it yourself, but you can buy it ready-made. Buckwheat, egg and rice noodles are also suitable, but the taste in this case will differ from the classic ramen.

If you still decide to cook noodles yourself, use wheat flour, salt and plain water as ingredients. In Japan, kansui water is also added to the dough — this is a special liquid that slows down the process of spoiling the finished noodles and gives it a characteristic yellow color. But you can do without it.

When cooking noodles by hand, the dough is kneaded and divided into strips. Each strip is then stretched into a thin thread and folded in half, the halves are stretched again, and so on. The result is a lot of thin threads. Noodles — homemade or purchased — need to be boiled until ready, after which you can start assembling the dish.

The finished noodles are laid out in a bowl and filled with broth. Recall that it can be of at least four types, and the taste of the final dish depends on the selected broth. The next stage is supplements. They can be different: pork, kamaboko ("tortillas" from surimi), bamboo shoots, pickled mushrooms, pickles, various vegetables, eggs and nori. Here, as they say, everything depends on imagination and taste preferences.

They eat ready-made ramen with chopsticks, and drink the broth with a special porcelain spoon. But you and I are simple people, we will eat ordinary ones. And we'll do without any kamoboko and nori, too. For example, here is an excellent recipe for chicken ramen, which uses the most available ingredients, but therefore no less delicious!

We will need:

First you need to cook the broth. To do this, put the chicken drumsticks in a saucepan, add coarsely chopped carrots and onions, pour about 1.5-2 liters of water and cook for about an hour. The finished broth should be filtered.

Add soy sauce, crushed ginger, pepper and garlic to the strained broth. Put the pan back on the fire, bring the broth to a boil and cook for about 7 minutes more.

Next, you need to cook the noodles as indicated on the package. If it's homemade noodles, cook it for about 7-10 minutes.

While the noodles are cooking, prepare the additives. Chicken fillet cut into pieces and fry in a frying pan, hard-boiled eggs. The last stage is the assembly of the dish: put the noodles in bowls, pour the broth, and put the additives on top. Decorate the finished ramen with spinach, green onions and sesame seeds. Enjoy your meal!