Miso ramen I made over the weekend (and learnings)

Made everything myself except the noodles. By far the best miso ramen I’ve ever made. Here are some of my biggest learnings this time around:

1. Trust the experts. I used to freestyle my own miso tare and it usually turned out mediocre. This time I followed Ramen Lord’s tare recipe from his book (with minimal variations) and it was incredible.

2. Soup to tare ratio is very important. I was using too much soup before (500mL) and a couple scoops of tare. Flavor was inconsistent bowl to bowl and toppings drowned in the soup. Now I measure out 350mL of soup in a measuring cup and about 80g of tare using a kitchen scale and the end product is consistent.

3. Pork belly chashu doesn’t have to be roasted, torched, or sliced thick to be good. I rolled and braised my pork belly following J Kenji Lopez-Alt’s recipe and, after resting overnight, sliced the chashu thinly. Not only was it easier to eat, but the slices almost melted into the bowl giving it more richness.

4. Soup doesn’t have to be complicated to be good. I made Sho Spaeth’s roasted chicken stock, which was very good, but eventually ran out. Made another stock from a week old Costco rotisserie chicken and various aromatics and it ended up being really good.

5. Assembling your bowl of ramen doesn’t have to be complicated either. Before, I would stress over timing and fuss over presentation. This time around I basically just put everything into the bowl and poured the boiling soup over it. Turned out great and still looks pretty nice.

6. Nori is awesome as a topping. It’s cheap, lasts forever, and contributes some really nice seaweed flavor that was missing from my previous ramens. I sliced it into strips so that I could get a little bit of it in every spoonful or noodle pull.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and hope this helps you.