– Can we just take a moment to appreciate how freakin' beautiful it is? It is perfectly tender, skin is so glossy.
(upbeat music) Hi guys, welcome back to My Home Kitchen and today we are making somehomemade Ramen from scratch.
We're not making the noodles, but we're making everythingelse from scratch.
The dashi which is a verygentle seafoody based broth, very light.
Tare which is called the soul of ramen because it's basically avery flavored soy sauce.
We're gonna be marinating and slow cooking some pork belly into that tare, so that it's extra, extra flavorful and a little bit fatty for that richness.
We're gonna be making somemarinated eggs, nitamago and it's gonna be so, so perfectly boiled.
It's like that midway pointbetween a soft boiled egg and a medium boiled egg, where the egg is just luscious.
We're gonna be marinatingthat soft boiled, medium boiled egg in that tare sauce and it's gonna beflavor, on top of flavor, on top of flavor, and as ifthat weren't enough flavor for you, we're gonna bemaking a spicy chili oil that's totally optional, but if you like spice, it's not optional becauseit's one of the easiest homemade chili oils youcan possibly ever make.
Perfect condiment to theperfect bowl of ramen.
Okay so let's talk ingredients for a sec.
For the dashi, very simplyyou're gonna be needing some chicken broth, some bonito flakes, dry shiitake mushrooms, and kombu.
These are all very traditionallyJapanese ingredients to put into ramen.
If you don't have any specificingredient in this bunch, don't worry about it right now.
Just carry forth with what you have.
For the dashi, super simple, you're going to bebringing the chicken broth up to a simmer in a pot.
Once it's up to a simmer, you're going to take it off the heat, let it cool for two minutes, and then you're gonnaslide in the mushrooms and the kombu.
Once the kombu and the mushrooms are in for about five minutes, we're going to slide in the bonito flakes.
Steep for five additional minutes.
We're staggering the flavors in this way so that all of these verypungent, aromatic ingredients don't leach too muchflavor into the broth.
We still want to keep ita very clean tasting broth even though it's flavorful, we just don't want it to be overly flavorful.
There is such a thing as overly flavorful.
Strain everything out andreserve all the solids so that we can use itin our later components for the ramen later.
(water pouring) Okay so now we've made our dashi and we're just gonna set itaside and let it cool down.
We're gonna set this aside.
This is all of our strained out mushrooms, and bonito flakes, and kombu.
And we're gonna move onto making our tare and our pork belly.
My favorite part.
No, actually I lied, myfavorite part is the eggs.
Stay tuned for the eggs.
Tare has a lot of components in it because it's a very wellseasoned soy sauce base.
So we're gonna be using soysauce, sake, kind of rice wine, mirin, which is kind of likea byproduct of sake making.
It's more sugary, not as alcoholic, still packs a very fragrant flavor.
That fragrance that comesfrom mirin and sake, you really can't beat.
If you don't have those two things, you can definitely use sherry or any kind of fragrantalcohol, or just leave it out.
You don't need it, justadd a little bit more water to tone down the soysauce's sodium content and substitute in a little bit more sugar.
Go with a little more brown sugar, so that you get a moremolassesy flavor or honey.
Honey could be good too.
We're going to blancheour pork belly right now.
This recipe calls forone pound of pork belly, which is about thisamount, but I brought more because I was greedy and I was like, “If I'm making ramen, I mightas well make more anyway.
” So I'm just gonna go ahead and blanche all two pounds of pork belly that I have.
So very quickly going to put the pork into the pot, and justfill it up with water.
About six cups depending on your pot, depending on how muchmeat you're putting in.
Just enough to cover, and thenwe're going to bring it up to a simmer and drainthe water immediately.
The point of this process isnot to really cook the meat.
We're not trying to cook the meat at all.
We're just getting rid ofsome of the not so fresh, not so great tasting parts.
I think we're ready totake this off the heat, drain it and give themeat a quick little rinse.
I can see that all parts ofthe meat is visibly opaque.
That's a good sign.
No more redness, that means that it's been successfully blanched at least on the outside.
So quickly turn thatheat off, let's drain it.
(upbeat music) Okay guys, we're gonna makeour tare and chashu now.
(stove clicking) Heat on medium, we're gonnago in with our soy sauce.
I'm using low sodium soy sauce here because we have a lot of sodium going in.
We got our cup and a quarter of mirin.
Sake, or just more mirinif you don't have it.
Then we have our water.
Granulated sugar.
Brown sugar, break it up a little bit.
We got our ginger slices.
We got our crushed garlic, and we got our nice green onions.
And we're just gonna wait forthat to come up to a simmer.
Smells pretty potent.
All right, once we have this simmer going, we're just gonna turn our heat to low, and we're gonna plop in our pork, and we're going to coverthe pan or the pot, and we're going to let it go for about an hour and 20 minutes until the pork is completely tender.
We're going to cook thismeat as slowly and gently as possible so that the meat is going to stay tender and truly, truly, truly melt in your mouth good.
Buttery, buttery pork belly goodness.
Really a perfect a fit.
So once the meat starts cooking, it will start shrinking a little bit.
We'll just check backoccasionally on its progress and we'll give them a little turn.
Make sure that it's all cooking evenly.
And yes, I don't have a huge kitchen so I store all of mypots and lids in my oven.
That's where they live.
Just make sure that thisis the kind of simmering that you're getting, very low gentle simmer, nothing too viciously bubblyor anything like that.
(lid clanging) All right, we are just atthe halfway point here, actually it's maybe been about 35 minutes.
I'm gonna check up on it.
It smells so good right now, just filled with thatdelicious porky flavor.
It looks so nice and tender right now.
That skin is nice and glossy right now and it's just, I can already taste it.
Just giving them a flip.
You can see that one sidehas captured more sauce and it's a little bit darker in color than the other.
We're just gonna go aheadand give them all a flip.
Folks, the moment has arrived.
It's been an hour and 25minutes, I can smell it, I can feel it, I think weare ready for the unveiling of this, (snare rolling) chashu.
(upbeat music) Can we just take a moment to appreciate how freakin' beautiful it is? It is perfectly tender, skin is so glossy.
I just want to test the tenderness of it.
I'm pretty sure it is super tender, but I have a cake tester, which word to the wise isnot actually that great for testing cakes because you stick it in and because of this sleek metal tester, no crumbs actually ever really cling to it unless it's super, super underdone batter.
But cake testers, fantastic for testing meat.
We're just gonna stickit into our pork belly and see how tender it is, so.
Oh man that slid in withno resistance whatsoever.
Even the piece that's superlean and with bone attached, is sliding in like it's just pure butter.
So I think we're ready to pull.
We're going to removethe pork from the liquid when it's a little bit easier to handle, when it's not so hot.
And then we're gonna reserve the liquid for our eggs and our ramen.
And we're gonna reserve thepork and let it cool completely before we slice into it.
And in the meantime, we'regonna make our nitamago which is basically aseasoned soft boiled egg.
I like mine somewhere betweensoft and medium boiled, where it's like a littlebit runny in the middle and the outside of theyolk is just barely set into this almost gel like texture.
And we're rolling.
Rolling at a boil.
Gentle.
We're gonna set that timer for 6 1/2.
Just boiling some eggs, real exciting stuff here.
Timer's going off, it's time.
We turn off the heat, weshuffle on over to the sink.
Now just let them sit inthere for about five minutes before I start tappingthem against each other to crack 'em.
(water pouring) What I like to do is take two eggs and I just knock them against each other and the weaker one will break.
This one.
Well this egg is a true champion, but I'm still gonna break it anyway.
And then once they're thoroughly cracked, I just cover them with cold water again and let 'em chill forabout five to 10 minutes and then I'll peel them.
Okay guys, so we areready to do our final step for day one with peelingour eggs and taking our meat out of the tare solutionand marinating our eggs in the tare solution, so first things first we're gonna peel the eggs.
We're gonna drain the water and hopefully these willpeel really, really well.
Pretty smooth.
Next up, we're just goingto take out all the pork from the broth.
Just be real gentle with your tongs because it is very, verytender meat right now.
I'll probably put it inthe fridge over night so that it gets completely cool for a completely clean slice.
We're just gonna strain theliquid from all the solids.
(liquid pouring) So we have the eggs in abowl, we have our cooled tare, we are going to coverthe eggs with the tare about two to 2 1/2 cups worth of it.
And then we're going to take our kombu.
This is from our dashi process earlier and we're just gonna use it as a cover to weigh down the eggs, like this.
And then we're just gonnalet this sit in the fridge of about four to 12 hoursuntil they're marinated and they take on a soysaucy color on the outside.
And then we're just gonna puteverything else in the fridge and check back tomorrow tofinish the entire bowl of ramen.
(upbeat music) Hi guys, welcome back to day two of making our homemade ramen.
I am so ready to eat this bowl of ramen.
There is only one lastcomponent for us to make before we can assemble ourbowl and that's the chili oil, the la-yu.
It is basically a garlic confit, red pepper flake oilconcoction that is going to be pretty divine, especially for those of you who like your spicy condiments, this is the ultimate spicycondiment you can make at home.
Let's make some spicy chili oil.
Grab a tiny pot, set it to low heat.
We're gonna pour in our oilwith our mountain of garlic.
Just going to swish thegarlic around with the oil to make sure that everythingis nicely coated together.
It's starting to simmer and once you see that kind of simmering action happening, we wanna just keep a close eye on it.
We wanna keep the heat as low as possible.
It's a very zen process.
There's some golden bitscoming into play now.
(timer beeping) There you go.
Oh yeah.
I just took it off the heat, no flames.
It's still gonna cook.
Swirl it and let it sit for two minutes until the oil is nice and red.
We want it completely saturated with both that flavor and that color.
The carry over heat level is going to help all the aromas and thespiciness of the chili flakes release into the oil.
All right, two minutes have passed and you can see that the oil is very red.
That nice orangy golden color.
We're ready for our sesame seeds to go in.
And we're just gonnalet it cool on its own until it's ready to be used.
Once it's completely cool, you can store this in ajar for up to two weeks.
Final stretch guys, final stretch.
So we have the tare whichis now fully up to boil.
I will turn that off.
We have the dashi whichis our broth foundation.
We're gonna have our noodles.
We have our fantastic chilioil, look at that color.
My goodness.
And we have our marinatedeggs, marinated eggs, let me try not to spill.
And we have our fantastic, fatty pieces of pork belly that we're gonna slice up.
Maybe char it a little bit, I don't know.
You feel up to it? I feel up to it.
Any day with a fire isa great day in my book, so (hands rubbing) time to eat.
Okie doke, my noodles are in, we're just gonna let them go for about a minute anda half to two minutes, until they feel nicelybuoyant and al dente.
Okay it's been about two minutes, I'm about to fish the noodles out.
I'm setting up a strainer situation here so that we can sling all thenoodles out from the water so that they don't get water logged.
There we go.
And then I'm just gonna lift the colander and slam it back downwith the noodles inside and get all the water out.
This is fun (giggling).
Okay let's assemble our noodles.
(torch blasting) We have our ramen.
It took two days, but it is beautiful.
I hope you agree that this is delicious.
If you've made it, let me know down below how you liked it.
I'm really hungry, Ihaven't eaten all day, so I'm excited to dig into this.
I think it's gonna be freakin' delicious.
I know it's gonna be freakin' delicious.
Look at that fatty pork, nicely charred.
Look at this nicely soft medium boiled egg with that jelly center of a yolk.
Nice springy noodles with some nice fragrant shiitake mushrooms for extra chew and extra meatiness, andour spicy, spicy chili oil with that delicious garlicaroma all infused inside it.
And our dashi broth.
(liquid slurping) Oh my god.
Mm.
(liquid slurping) I'm just gonna eat my dinner, my lunner, my lunch dinner here.
(liquid slurping) (upbeat music).
