- Yes, I went to culinary school.
I also could have bought a Mercedes-Benz,
but instead I learned to cut scallions.
Never compare your education to buying a car, edumacation.
I'm a food stylist.
Consider me a makeup artist for food.
I take boring, everyday average food
and make it look amazing.
I'm gonna show you guys how I style
my version of a traditional bowl of ramen.
(upbeat music)
We all grew up eating the packaged ramen
with the little packet of powdered chicken flavor,
which probably led to the reason why
true, traditional ramen is so popular these days,
because we had this little sentimental
place in our heart for it,
and then we grew up and realized
it was actually, like, pretty legit.
So we're gonna start prepping our veggies
for our ramen bowl.
First thing we're gonna do is just prep
this really cute baby bok choys.
So we're just actually gonna cut these in half lengthwise.
These are beautiful, they call 'em Fresno chilies,
or a red jalapeno, and we're just gonna do
thin slices on that.
The next thing I wanna work on are my carrots.
I just really love the addition
of a matchstick carrot or a julienne carrot.
It's gonna add length and texture,
but it's also a really beautiful, precise cut.
I'm gonna trim the tops off,
and then cut them in about
two to two and a half inch pieces,
which is basically in half.
Then I'm gonna take a mandolin.
We're slicing the carrot into a plank
without slicing my fingerprint off,
and then we're going to julienne the carrot,
and that just basically means at an angle
I'm slicing it lengthwise into thin strips.
I'm just going to take a paper towel or a cloth,
dampen it, and just rest it over the carrots
to keep them looking fresh.
The next thing I'm gonna do
is work with my shiitake mushrooms.
I'm actually, the only thing I'm gonna do
with these guys right now is take the stem off.
Yeah, so most of the time it just pops right off,
just like that, and you're left
with this really nice little mushroom cap.
Okay, so I think the last veggie
we have to prep is the green onions, or the scallions.
Something that you might be familiar with,
something you possibly have seen before is,
it's like a Japanese cut on a scallion,
which is a very, very strong bias
or diagonal slice onto a scallion.
I feel like every time I've seen a bowl of ramen
with scallions on it, it's just like a pile
or a mountain of scallions,
so I definitely want to make sure I have enough.
Sometime on a green onion you'll find
this really cute little sprig
that hasn't quite matured as much as
the other, larger pieces.
Actually, that is a really fun addition sometimes to have.
I think that most herbs,
like the petite, the better.
You don't want them to overwhelm
whatever it is that you're making.
So we have prepped our veggies.
We're gonna get set up to blanch veggies
and cook our noodles for our ramen bowls.
So, the first thing we're gonna do
is blanch the bok choy.
If you watched my episode on making a holiday dinner,
I did talk a lot about blanching green vegetables.
It keeps them crispy, but makes them tender.
It retains their color without overcooking.
It's just a really great thing, you should try it.
Okay, so we're putting our bok choy in the pot,
and then putting them directly into the ice bath.
So, a bright green vegetable really lets you know
that it's fresh, it's well-cooked,
it's gonna be tender, but it's still gonna be crispy.
It's almost like seeing the color allows you
to feel the texture in your mouth.
Now I'm gonna take my bok choy
and lay it out on a paper towel,
just kinda let it dry.
Laying it out like this also helps me
see which pieces I probably want to use,
like which ones are the prettiest.
Like the inside of it has a really nice shape
and it looks full, whereas this one, it's not as full.
It doesn't have the same look to it.
So this is the winner, and this is dinner.
And now we're basically gonna do the same thing
with the shiitake mushrooms.
The mushrooms look a little cooked
but not really overcooked.
So now I'm just gonna put them in my little bowl
and set them to the side.
They are still hot.
They will continue cooking 'cause I am not blanching them,
because I want them to continue to cook down
just a little bit, get a little bit softer.
The one thing that I really want to be able to see
in my ramen bowl when I make it,
are this beautiful inside of the mushroom
where the scales are.
That is really iconic to a shiitake mushroom,
and so that's what I wanna see.
Scales, gills?
I retract what I've said about scales,
the gills inside of the mushroom is what I want to see.
Whatever.
Now we're gonna cook our ramen noodles.
So, I just have a couple versions
of noodles to show you.
These ramen noodles are a little bit more like
the ones that you just get at the grocery store
in a three for a dollar kinda thing.
And then I also have these,
which are the product that I'm gonna use today.
I've worked with this product before,
and I think they're very beautiful
and they're very elegant.
It's also a fresh noodle product.
Okay, so I'm going to par-cook the noodles,
pretty much like you would regular pasta noodles.
I would like them to be a little al dente,
so they are not too soft.
They're a little easier to work with in this case.
They come in these really nice little bunches.
A bunch, would you call that a bunch?
Bundle, bundle, that's the word.
It's a bundle! (laughs)
Just give that a little stir so they break apart.
All right, so the noodles cooked for about a minute.
They're very starchy.
Oh, like I literally got
every single noodle out at one time.
That's awesome.
I'm gonna turn my water off, 'cause I'm done with that,
and I'm gonna give the noodles a quick rinse
in cold water, so that they stop cooking,
and then we'll get ready to finish our ramen bowls.
So now we have everything we need to build our ramen bowls.
So the first thing's first, is adding our noodles.
So we're going to wrap and twist our noodles.
We're layering them, and wrapping them, and twirling them,
and supporting them with love and kindness.
The ramen noodles are creating a base
for everything else that's going to be
put on the top of the bowl.
I'm wetting my noodles.
These ramen noodles, in particular, are very, very, starchy,
so they get more sticky the drier they get,
and in order to create this really lovely twirled
nest of noodle, they have to be damp.
But it's really lovely.
It's a tight little nest.
It's very appealing to the eye.
It doesn't seem chaotic.
I mean, you can see the shape is so well-defined,
the noodles just kinda like flow throughout the bowl,
different movements catch your eye in different ways.
So even once I do have toppings on them,
you're still gonna be able to see those noodles
and the way they move through the broth,
and it's just gonna be really lovely.
Now I'm gonna work with just slicing this pork belly.
This is a precooked pork belly from Trader Joe's.
What we did for this, for our ramen bowl,
is I marinated the pork belly in a soy sauce mixture,
and then we just seared it off
so it has a really nice browning on it.
So now we're just gonna get
some really nice slices out of it.
And I'm doing thin slices.
They're probably 1/4 of an inch thick.
So now I'm gonna start adding our toppings.
There are gonna be like natural divots
where the noodles are placed in the bowl,
so I'm just kinda using that as a place
to put my bok choy.
So these mushrooms are actually a little large.
I don't want them to take up too much space in the bowl,
so I'm gonna slice them in half.
You can still see those beautiful gills inside the mushroom.
A nice little pile of carrots.
So I also have store-bought ramen broth,
which is a thing now, thank goodness,
and I am going with a matsutake ramen broth,
which is a mushroom broth.
Since we're playing with our shiitake mushrooms today,
I thought it would be really nice,
and this just is a really clear, beautiful broth.
So now we're gonna add our pork.
One last really wonderful traditional thing
to put in a bowl of ramen is a soft-boiled egg.
And so what we have done is soft-boiled eggs
for six to seven minutes.
Once the eggs are finished cooking,
then you go immediately into an ice bath.
Once the eggs are cool, you peel them,
and then we marinated our eggs
in soy sauce, and sugar, and a couple other ingredients.
They have a little spot on them
from where they float in the liquid, of course,
because eggs float, but you're not gonna see that.
So when we cut into it, this'll be the side
of the egg that's in the broth, in the soup bowl,
so you actually won't be able to see it.
All right, guys, we have done as much as we can
here in the kitchen, so now we are going to take
our beautiful photo-ready prop bowls of ramen
over to our photo set, do a couple finishing garnishes,
and show you what a beautiful setup we have going on.
You guys, this ramen set is so beautiful.
All of the colors, both from the props and the food
play off of each other so well,
and it's bright, and fresh, and it just looks great.
I have our photographer back here
who has done an amazing job of capturing
this beautiful set, this ramen dinner for two.
I'm gonna do just a couple of additional food changes
now that I have the food on set.
I'm increasing the level of the broth in the ramen bowls
so that it really looks like it's full and brothy
like ramen is supposed to be.
Even tucking a couple of the food items
into the broth, so that it really looks like
they're truly incorporated.
Now I'm gonna add my scallions.
I'm gonna do just a little pile kinda right in the middle.
A couple of our sliced red chilies,
and then a couple of sesame seeds
on each bowl for garnish,
and I have both white and black sesame seeds.
And so now I'll do a little chili oil finish
on each bowl.
Guys, this ramen set turned out so beautiful.
It's delicious, it smells great,
and everything we did today is completely edible and real.
Why don't you let us know what you thought about this
in the comments below.
While you're at it, make sure to subscribe
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Share with me everything that you're doing,
if you pick up any tips from watching the show,
and please let me know what you want
to see me food style next.
(gentle instrumental music)