Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Easy Pork Ramen Recipe, Because Everybody's Into Ramen


This idea came to me after my mom and dad gave me some ideas on what to cook my husband for dinner. I told them that Nick isn't a fan of repeating dishes (except for Subway!) but that I didn't want to slave away every night in our kitchen. So they said the best way for variety is to boil pork shoulder.

They gave me a variety of recipes - slice the pork shoulder after and serve it with a dipping sauce or serve it with fried tofu. My mom said to store the broth in mason jars and use it as my base for sinigang (a sour broth soup favorite among Filipinos). But for someone who's watched countless cooking shows featuring ramen (in fact this week we just watched an episode of Chef's Table on Netflix which featured a Jewish chef whose ramen is quite famous even in Japan), I knew the base of any ramen is either pork or chicken broth. So I could easily make ramen from this.

After boiling the pork shoulder with onion, bay leaf, salt and black peppercorn and simmering for a little over three hours, I stored it for next day's dinner. I knew the broth would be light though as there weren't any bones so I improvised and added a chicken cube (I couldn't find pork cubes!) to give it more flavor. I actually made the mistake of adding two (too much, I know!) so of course, it turned out too salty and I had to add more water to balance it out. So yes, don't make that mistake!

To complete any ramen, add in protein, noodles, toppings, half-boiled egg, and nori. I used the pork shoulder slices, egg noodles (which Nick said wasn't the right noodles so make sure to use ramen noodles), topped it with sliced green onion and roasted garlic, and cut up half a nori sheet. To make sure the eggs are half boiled, boil water and when it starts to boil, put the egg and cook for six minutes. Take it out and put in ice cold water to stop the cooking process, peel and slice it lengthwise and put on your ramen!

Easy to make right? The next time I cook this, I'll be sure to add pork bones for more flavor, and use the right noodles! This is just the very basic recipe, and from here on, we can all experiment with what to put in the broth to get different flavors and try flavoring the meat slices too. There are many ways to satisfying our palate, so explore along and find the flavor that suits you best!

Happy eating!

No comments:

Post a Comment