Ramen Attempt 1

I never thought I would make ramen at home, then my gf got me the comic/cookbook "Let's make Ramen!". I'm mostly gonna use this space to journal and share how things progress. Feel free to comment or give advice as you like. I'll leave what recipes/methods I use at the end of the post.

Reflection: I think it was decent first attempt. I like the presentation, I just wish it tasted as good as it looked. I there were two main issues I ran into. One being that, aside from the egg and the chashu, nothing tasted very seasoned. When I put the tare and the broth together, it tasted pretty flavorful, but I guess I massively underestimated just how much heavy lifting the tare had to do. Now I'm wondering if I didn't add enough tare to the broth, or if it just wasn't as salty as it should have been. Pretty sure I followed the recipe near exactly though.

The second issue was that the bowl didn't stay hot for very long. I microwaved the bowls but when I was heating up the broth, I guess I didn't let it get hot enough. It was nice and warm for the first couple of minutes but it cooled down really quick. It kind of just left me with a bowl of noodles that soaked up some lightly flavored veggie broth. I still enjoyed getting to put the bowl together, My eggs and chashu also were tasty so at least theres that. I believe another component I was missing was perhaps having more fat in the bowl. I put a tiny bit of sesame oil but that was only like a couple table spoons.

I have a bunch of leftover veggie stock and some of that tare still. Wondering if I should throw some msg in the tare, or maybe just use more of it for my next bowl. Will also add more fat to the next bowl and will make sure the broth is really hot before serving. Do you guys throw the tare in the pot with the broth before you serve? I've usually seen it just added to the bowl straight, and then the broth. Is there a reason for that?

Recipe Details below

Veggie Stock (From Let's Make Ramen book)

-5 cups dried shitake

-1lb cremini mushroom

-1 brown onion

-2 carrot

-1 bunch negi

-2 fuji apples

-1/2lb ginger slice

-2 garlic cloves

– 6ish quarts of water, i dont recall

Boiled and strained after an hour

Dashi (Excluded to keep the broth vegan for gf's sake)

Tare (Shoyu recipe from book)

-8oz soy sauce (tamari because its what I had)

-2oz dark soy sauce

-4oz mirin

-2oz rice wine vinegar

-1/2ozssame oil

-2oz water

Noodles (store bought, idk what brand but they were alkaline and correct texture. Will try Sun Noodle next)

Chashu (Recipe from book, but Ramen lord method of braise+oven roast)

-2tbs fat (used vegetable oil)

-3lb pork belly (Used 1lb because thats all I could find across three different stores)

-6 garlic cloves

-2inch piece of ginger, sliced

-1 arbol chili

-1 bunch green onion/scallion greens only

-1 c mirin

-1/4 c rice wine vinegar

-3/4 c soy sauce (also added about a half cup of dark soy sauce because I was concerned about the lack of liquid. Recipe didn't call for water or anything else aside from the sake)

-1/4 c packed brown sugar

-1 c sake

Ajitama (Used the leftover chashu liquid)

Poked a hole in the bottom with something sharp.(How deep in are we suppose to go? Unclear.) Boiled for six and a half minutes, stirring in the pot for 30 seconds. Shocked in an ice bath. Peeled after cooling, rested in the liquid overnight.