- We actually were roommates when we first
opened the business.
I don't think either of us would recommend
that you start a business with a person you're living with
because there's no (bleep) escaping each other.
- It's really terrible.
- Being a whole animal butcher shop,
we end up with a lot of bones.
About 40 to 45 percent of every animal is bones.
- People buy chicken bones, people buy beef bones,
but they don't really buy pork bones,
which sucks because that means
we got to throw 'em away,
and we want to be as zero waste as humanly possible.
So the chef from one of our favorite ramen places,
Suzume in Williamsburg, came in and said
what are you doing with your bones.
I want to buy 'em all.
So we're finally going to go check out the process,
and see what he does.
- Let's go to Suzume.
- So Josh, we're here with you,
we're here with Nelson and you guys run this place.
- We're a whole animal butcher shop,
so we have a (bleep) ton of pork bones every week.
It makes perfect sense to partner with
somebody that makes ramen
and makes really fantastic ramen.
- By you guys holding your pork bones
with that dry aged beef,
you're able to get a lot of that funk
and blue cheesy-ness that you would get out of
dry aged beef, but with pork.
- It's kind of interesting,
I've never heard anyone talk about actually wanting
some dry aged funk like that kind of
bacteria-rich environment,
to actually become a part of the final product
you're serving.
Especially out of a ramen shop,
it's usually very clean bones,
but you're actually looking for a
more complex flavor profile.
- Yes, so even like in normal stock making,
you'd usually blanch bones or roast them off
or whatever, to kind of draw out
some of those impurities,
but I want all that.
All that slime,
slime might not be the most appealing word,
but that slime that forms from that blue-cheesy-ness,
and gets stuck it in the fat,
I want all that.
- Looking at the raw products is kind of crazy.
You have the knuckle of the femur,
with a little bit of meat still attached to it,
you then have marrow, but you're also gonna
marry into this broth.
- You even have a tail, similar to the foot,
has more bones, has more collagen,
you really are getting the whole pig.
- Yeah, totally.
- Just through the bone.
- What better application is there?
- Yeah, there really isn't one.
- This is the yao broth that's cooled down.
This is one that we made yesterday.
You can see how gelatinous it is,
and lot of that's coming from the pig's feet.
- Pure collagen.
- So you take water and this and create that.
- Right.
- Can we eat some of that?
- Absolutely.
- I don't think I've ever had anything
quite like this before.
- Katsu broth?
- Cold pork jelly?
- Oh man.
- Wow, that really has an amazing texture.
It just melts right away.
- You know when you make a turkey sandwich
the day after Thanksgiving,
and there's all the leftover gravy?
- Yeah.
- We're gonna throw in the pork bones
and the pig's feet first.
We'll get those going.
- So you're not searing them,
which a lot of stocks call for.
- Our ramen broth is white.
We're not roasting the bones.
I'm not going to blanch either,
but I want all that funk that we get
from your dry aging room, in the pot.
- Four trotters, split in half,
so we're literally getting that full pig effect.
All we gotta do is top this off with water
and get this going.
You don't want excess water,
you want just enough to cover it.
'cause you want it to be as concentrated as possible.
So at this point, we're just gonna blast the heat.
- The aromatics kit is just gonna be these onions,
which we're gonna broule, ginger, carrots,
bay leaf, coriander and black pepper.
There's nothing crazy here
and there's nothing that's gonna overpower the pork.
So as these bubbles start to come to the surface,
we're starting to see some of the protein
come up as well.
- Okay.
- Some of that's blood, some of that's
just bone muck.
So the next 35, 45 minutes somebody
is basically sitting here skimming this
the entire time.
- Sounds super fun.
- [Ben] I'll deal the this (bleep) job.
- Over here we got one that's been going for about
an hour and a half, two hours.
It's already kind of been skimmed
of a lot of the impurities.
This is gonna roll for six, seven hours.
We're gonna throw in the dry aromatics and the herbs.
So the aromatics have already gone in,
we're good on adding these carrots,
the onions and this bacon for the last hour.
We're nearing the end.
We're gonna drop and cool the stock.
- Guys, can I stop now?
- No.
- There's so much muck Josh.
- This goes for about eight hours in total.
- So you got a deck of cards or something?
- I was gonna make some lamb stuff for you
in the meantime.
- Oh, okay. Cool.
- Pulled you over.
- This is awesome, I've never had a
lamb neck bao before.
The neck is another perfect cut to braise,
that people really don't know what to do with.
- Those muscles that get used the most
are the ones that are gonna have a lot of flavor.
You rarely see it in a butcher shop,
much less, I don't think I ever see it
on a menu anywhere, ever.
- It's got all of that great collagen
like we got out of the pig feet.
We'll just finish this loveage yogurt.
- What's up with yogurt going on a bao?
It's not something I think I've seen before.
- So the yogurt obviously works well with lamb.
The loveage is in place of the herbal,
herbaciousness that you would want
with something heavy and gamey like lamb.
And then the butternut kind of adds sweetness.
I don't think about a bao as a bao,
it's more of a vehicle for whatever we want to do.
- I think the most fun part of this
is to look at everybody on the crew,
and be like oh my god it's the best
(bleep) thing I've ever had in my entire life.
- Oh my god that's good.
- God damn.
Obviously with the neck and that dense muscle,
it's not gamey,
it's just really really meaty.
A really really great clear lamb flavor.
- What's great though is how for a lamb neck
that's brushed with a beef fat,
how light it is.
I feel like I could eat 10 more of these.
- So where are you from originally?
- I'm from Florida.
- Yeah? - yeah.
- What part of Florida?
- Tampa.
- So okay, I feel like obvious questions,
how does a white kid from Florida
end up being the chef making all the ramen?
- I ask myself that question every day.
- Is is just something you fell in love with?
Like the dish itself?
- First job I ever had was at a
Roy's Hawaiian Fusion,
so it was like Pan-Asian kind of stuff,
and I was doing sushi there.
So that was kind of the lineage that brought me here,
being that this place is kind of like
Hawaiian mall food is the theme,
and then we have the sushi bar,
so I was kind of uniquely qualified for that.
Other than that, this place
just offers a lot of freedom.
As Hawaiian as it is, as much of a ramen place
and a sushi place as it is,
we're able to do all kinds of (bleep).
- The first time I came here,
I came here with my wife,
and we sat down at the bar and we're like
great, we're gonna get some ramen
and then (bleep) fish tacos are on the menu?
Okay, yes we're getting fish tacos,
this is gonna be fantastic.
- I'm kind of lucky where I work for an owner
that actually wants to make good foods,
so at the end of the day,
as long as you're making good food,
it doesn't really matter.
So if I'm doing a duck cassoulet,
which we're running this week,
I can just do a duck cassoulet.
It doesn't have to really be anything.
We're towards the end of the process now,
I have some soup ready so we can eat it,
so the last thing we gonna do before we do that,
is just puff off some chicharone that we make here
to top the soup.
It kind of reinforces all the porkiness.
Basically this pork skin is just boiled
for a long time,
and then we scrape the excess fat off of it,
and we dehydrate it overnight.
We smoked this pork belly for like four hours,
then we cook it in a bath at 74 degrees overnight,
and then we'll grill it over this charcoal
to again reinforce that smokiness.
- So how long about does it take from
the time you get an order in,
for a bowl of ramen to be hitting the window
and go out to the customer?
- Ideally like a minute and a half.
- [Ben] Minute and a half?
- [Josh] It only takes 50 seconds for the noodles to cook,
and then everything else is pre-done pretty much.
- [Brent] So eight hours of prep into a one minute pickup.
That's pretty impressive.
- Yeah, I mean that's the goal.
This is braised pork shoulder that we braise
in like a mother braise,
so we continually reuse the same braise.
The bok choy is just sauteed with some sake,
and then we're just gonna throw this pork belly in there,
and then these gargantuan chicharones,
and there you have it.
- Oh my god.
That's a (bleep)load of meat.
So gorgeous.
- That's why you sell a lot more in the winter
than you do in the summer.
That looks fantastic.
I don't know which part to attack first.
- [Josh] So I kind of like just shove everything in,
and then you can hear the chicharone
really crackle and pop.
- Oh my god.
- You get that smokiness from the trotters,
and there is a thickness,
it's not coating my mouth with all that gelatin,
but you do get that thickness in the broth.
- To me what makes this different and exceptional,
is that typical ramen is more about the accoutrements,
that other stuff that you're putting into it,
what stands out to me is just how round and full
that broth is.
I could drink this every single day.
- We've had our business for almost 10 years now,
it's very rare to find a new appreciation
for something that we're looking at
all day every day.
We're looking at pig's feet and just like
what the (bleep) are we gonna do with these things again
And now I have a much better understanding
and also a lot more respect for
everything you can get out of that.
These things that most people would just
don't even want to look at,
and you're doing something really really
really cool with it.
- I actually have one more thing before we go.
I like to bake pies.
(laughing)
you guys will especially like this pie
because your beef lard
is the main factor in the crust.
- Awesome.
- There's more meat.
Good thing Brent's got such a sweet tooth.
He's gonna go buck wild.
Oh man!
Just like shovel method?
(laughing)
That's a legit really good pie.
- It's delicious.
Well thank you.
- Absolutely.
Wow.