Hey guys. This week we're taking a departure from basic technique and
heading into some more advanced territory. Homemade tonkotsu ramen... less
an essential skill, and more a right of passage for the modern home-cook. Sure, it
takes to some odd days to make and sure you could burn your hands on the
alkaline salt and sure, getting every elements just right is a constant
barrage of challenges. But, with that first steamy slurp comes a superlative
sense of accomplishment. Not to mention a truly delicious dinner. Let's get down to basics....
'Basics with Babish' and the all-new basicswithbabish.com are brought to
you by SquareSpace. Head there now to checkout recipes from the show, kitchen
equipment lists, my personal blog posts, and more get 10% off your first
Squarespace order with offer code: babish.. Whether you need a domain website or
online store make your next move with Squarespace. Alright folks so far in
previous episodes we've covered how to make tonkotsu ramen broth from scratch
by boiling pork bones and aromatics for 12 hours and we've covered how to make
chashu pork belly in our sous vide or at least we've gotten it started. You can
find links to these techniques in this video's description let's get that stuff
out of the way we can soldier on to our remaining soup supplements. Starting with
some marinated soft-boiled eggs I have here some soft-boiled eggs which we have
soft-boiled shocked in an ice bath and peeled and now we're gonna make a super
simple marinade of equal parts soy sauce and mirin which is a super flavorful
Japanese cooking wine.Then for each part soy sauce and mirin we're going to add
about four parts water then we're look for a rubber spatula or spoon and
realize that we had the best mixing tool in our hand the whole time gently add
the eggs and they're gonna float but just make sure that there's enough
liquid in the bowl to theoretically cover them I'm going to add a little bit
of extra soy sauce and mirin to make sure that they're well covered and then
we're gonna put them in the fridge agitating them after about two hours
refrigerating them for a minimum of four and up to 24. Then, it's on to the
business of making tare an ultra flavorful umami packed soup-base. We're
starting by heating a good squirt of vegetable oil over medium-high heat and
adding a smattering of dried anchovies and letting these guys really soak up
the heat for three or four minutes we want to get them good and seared and we
want a good layer of fond on the bottom of the pot. This means letting them sit
and stick so take a thematically inappropriate sip from a martini and let
them sit on the bottom of the pot until some nice brown stuff forms once it does
it's time to deglaze using some soy sauce. We're gonna add maybe half a cup
to it you can now see was a spitting hot pan where I let that chill the hell
out before we add a little bit more soy sauce because we don't feel like we
added enough, and then an equal part of mirin give
that a stir get it nice and hot before adding some bonito dried fish flake I
know this mixture sounding pretty fishy but really it's just an umami bomb
that's gonna help set off our tonkatsu broth. You can see that I've taken it off
the heat because I want that bonito to sort of steep like a fish tea, and then I'm
gonna add a couple tablespoons of saké, put that back on the heat let the
alcohol boil off, strain, and there we go we've made tare. You can refrigerate this
until ready to use because now it's time for the most perilous part of the
process: making homemade ramen noodles. The first step here is to make some
alkaline salt which we're going to make by baking baking soda- yes that's what
I meant to say- at 250 degrees Fahrenheit for one hour.
This changes the pH balance of our baking soda and turns it into a mild
skin irritant, so make sure not to touch it, we're combining 2 teaspoons of our
baked soda with four ounces plus two tablespoons of water making sure to
dissolve completely. Then into a large bowl we are depositing 240 grams of
all-purpose flour to which we are adding our alkaline water mixture and combining
with a wooden, or other, spoon we want a shaggy but cohesive ball of dough and as
you can see this is a little bit too dry so I'm gonna add a little bit of extra
water think pasta dough in terms of consistency. Once it comes together into
a cohesive but not sticky ball of dough we're going to Pat it into a disk, dust
it with bread flour, and cover letting rest for one half of one hour kind of
just like pasta dough take this time to go clean up your apron because you've
made a mess of yourself and then once half an hour has elapsed extract the
dough from the bowl and then it's time to start rolling out we're gonna start
by performing a single rudimentary lamination that is lightly dusted with
flour rolling out and folding into thirds like a letter, then into thirds
again.. so not quite like a letter but hey, I'm not gonna judge you for how you fold
your letters. We're rolling this out just a little bit wrapping in plastic wrap
and letting rest again for another half hour. We're just letting the gluten relax
before we break out the big guns, that's right. It's time to bust out your shiny
new stand mixer pasta roller, you know that when you got for Christmas. I think
that's the only way you can actually get one of these as a Christmas or wedding
gift. Anyway, we're gonna give this guy one final lamination before rolling
and cutting them up so let's give it one pass on our roller widest setting.
Folding into thirds like a you-know-what rotating 90 degrees and beginning to
roll out even thinner until we're at about a two or three on our pasta press
if the edges are too ragged and it's coming apart just go ahead and laminate
it a few more times. This is getting a little bit too long for individual
noodles so I'm gonna give this a simple chopp in half as you can see we're
also giving this an extra dusting of bread flour before the most satisfying
part of our day running this through the noodle cutter. Dust with even more bread
flour and twist into little ramen nests on a bread flour dusted rimmed baking
sheet. At this point these can be refrigerated or frozen I'm just gonna
cover mine with plastic wrap and refrigerate because it's almost ramen
time. Picking up from where we left off in the sous-vide episode are chashu pork
belly is coming out the water bath and onto a rack and a rimmed baking sheet
that we are then going to place round side facing the sky under a broiler
until it emerges deeply browned and crisp excuse me while I stare at this in
awe for a moment, and then we're gonna snip up the string and slice this guy
into slices. Now ideally you want to chill this overnight so you can get it
nice and firm, and cut super thin slices. But, I'm really hungry so into some
boiling water go the ramen noodles we're not letting those cook for more than
three minutes and I'm gonna test for doneness after about 90 seconds into the
bottom of a warmed noodle bowl goes a few tablespoons of our tar a followed by
a few ladlefuls of steaming hot broth followed by our freshly cooked and
rigorously shook noodles. Dump those guys into the broth, there we go.
and now it's time to get all dressed up with nowhere to go into the back of the
bowl goes one to two slices of our chashu pork on the side goes a single
sheet of nori or, dried seaweed. Then we're slicing in half one of our
beautifully soft-boiled marinated eggs placing that on to the other side,
handful of scallions optionally and I like a few pieces of spicy Menma or
fermented bamboo shoots and there you have it after two days of what I think
you will agree was completely worth it effort, a steaming bowl of perfection.
You've come a long way from that 39 cents a packaged crapy you steeped in
college that I admittedly still eat from time to time. So grab some
chopsticks, dig in, and prepare to have your mind
blow and don't forget to loudly proudly slurp your noodles to not do so is rude
to the chef which is you... and really isn't loving yourself the most important
technique that I could teach you? So I just want to talk a little bit about
designing my new website with Squarespace they have this really
intuitive easy to use platform that made it super easy even for somebody like me
who's never done web design ever. They have templates, they do domains, they have
really good customer service. Its really an all-in-one one-stop shop for building
a really slick website and I was really happy with the way mine came out if you
want to try it for yourself you can start your free trial today at
squarespace.com and enter offer code 'babish' to get 10% off your first purchase.