Hey guys, salut Alex here, so super excited today, because we are making homemade ramen noodles from scratch at home.
DIY how to do it. This episode is part of my instant ramen addiction series. I have this
love/hate relationship with ramen noodles. I mean I love them, but they hate me.
I mean they're not that good for me, so I'm on a quest to build my own instant ramen noodle soup.
Before we can make loads of you know instant noodles, we need first to nail a proper
homemade noodle recipe. Which by the way are not pasta.
Does that make sense? Never, pasta is pasta right?
Wrong! They are made from the same main ingredients: like wheat and water.
**sippy on the coffee**
If you ever had both of them,
you know, you know, deep inside that they taste so much different. Ramen noodles have this
distinctive taste, like slightly bitter and a bit astringent, but most importantly that very specific texture, like they are more
chewy, they are more springy, they are more shiny, and also they're quite slippery.
I can't waste them, so what's the secret?
Well real noodle makers use, what is called an alkali or basic solution. Nyah it's not a Japanese well just...
Okay?
Super quick. Liquids can be qualified with the pH scale, so between zero and seven, liquids would be
acidic: lemon juice, chloric acid; seven would be neutral, and between seven and 14,
liquids would be qualified as alkaline or basic: lye, bleach that way.
Yummy, so food wise it does sound very wrong, but trust me there are loads of food out there
which makes good use of alkaline solutions like: tortilla, bagels, cured olive, and so to make those ramen noodles the
traditional method calls for Kan-Sui, so-called, lye water. The pH value of that stuff is around
11 to 12, the only problem is that it's really hard to find. So instead we are going to use a very common thing:
baking soda also known as sodium
bicarbonate, super available, not too strong and in fact many people out there already use it to make ramen noodles.
In a bowl, I am adding about a 100 grams of water, and then I'm gonna dilute that bicarbonate of soda,
I mean,
I'm basically looking to saturate the solution, meaning
to make it as powerful as possible just to see how far we can go.
I want to know the pH value from that stuff. Well luckily for us and has a good gig
I have something to figure it out. So it's called pH paper and it changes color according to the
pH value. Fun story, I remember the day I bought that stuff
I thought it would be completely useless, like I would never use that in a million years. Well here we are.
It's not a seven. It's not a nine. Yeah, probably an eight, so I would say good news
we have a basic solution, but quite a bad news cause this stands quite far away from
what we need to get, like that least 11 in terms of pH, so
that's not gonna work.
Let's just find something else and if I need to use bleach, then I'm gonna use bleach. No, I'm just kidding
I mean it depends would it work? There must be a way, there is obviously a way to do it.
Oh, okay, I found that article in The New York Times
which claims that if you bake, baking soda. You will just turn it into a more powerful alkali, so...
So I say we give it a test.
So I've got 300 grams of baking soda of
sodium bicarbonate. Bake those in the oven at about
150C (302F) for around an hour.
So basically by baking, the baking soda of sodium bicarbonate,
we are turning it into sodium carbonate plus water and carbon dioxide.
My baking soda is a bit whiter now. I have lost about a third of its weight. Keep this into an airtight container
so that it doesn't absorb any moisture anymore. Warning when using that stuff please wear eye protection and gloves.
Yeah, safety first.
Oh! Oui! Much better, I would say stands between a 10 and probably an 11, so if you ask me
that is some decent Kan-Sui knock off right here.
Dancing with it is probably not the best idea.
Okay flour, at the end the noodles will have to be resistant in order not to turn into mush. And when it comes to
those
resistance usually is brought by gluten. You know that inner mesh structure.
I'm thinking of two solutions. The first one would be to use my go-to bread flour it's a high protein strong flour.
There is a slight difference here. If you need a crash course on flours
I made a dedicated episode within my sourdough series. And the second option would be to use like
all-purpose flour with the addition of a bit of gluten. So in a clean bowl,
you want to add about
250 grams of flour.
100 grams of warm water. Three grams of salt. Two grams of sodium carbonate and
you just add this mixture to the flour.
Oho!
Yellow (-ish).
Western dried pasta are yellow because of the type of wheat, durum wheat. On the other hand, ramen noodles are made with
common wheat, which flour is white, but turns yellowed when it comes into contact with an alkaline solution. However
it's never gonna be like a punchy in-your-face
golden hue. Nyah, it's more likely to be a pale, but you know natural tint of yellow.
I mean do not worry, the dough looks a bit rough. All the kneading process is gonna take place during the next step.
Well...
A pasta machine.
Well, I mean what's left of my pasta machine. So basically you want to start on the thickest setting and then we will make it thinner.
So no panic attack. At first it looks like nothing, but as time goes by you will get something.
The dough is really smooth and soft. I am aiming at the thickness of two millimeters. And next you want to turn those into beautiful
noodles.
On the bowl a bit of rice flour, you just want to lightly dust them. La-lalala-lalalala-lalalalalalaal.
Look at this beauty I'm not gonna pretend to be modest, I'm so proud of myself.
And now it's time for a well-deserved
tasting session. Of course that still is a long way to go if we want to turn those beautiful noodles into instant ramen noodles.
But I'm gonna keep that for the next episode and also I'm gonna give you the perfect excuse to subscribe to my channel.
Oh là là [?] splendeur absolu
Slightly chewy,
dense,
but quite soft, you can immediately feel this is good stuff. This is not, you know, harsh for the body. It's just
soothing for the soul.
Yeah a quick word from the future. This is me like
30 minutes later having another bowl of ramen. This time with all-purpose flour, it's not being greedy, it's just being you know, thorough.
I don't know exactly what make those a bit more ramen-y than the one I made with bread flour which were super good
but this is just like a bit more addictive.
Mm-hmm. I love this! love this!
The addiction is kicking [?]
But guys that's it,
I hope you enjoyed this episode, so as I told you the next episode is going to be on how to turn those beautiful fresh noodles
into dry and precooked instant noodles.
I will also make further episodes about the broth, the toppings, the different
versions of ramen. You know what? You can use the comment section down below and just let me know exactly what you want to see
in this homemade ramen series. As always a big
thank you to all of you out there for your support and your love and a special
thanks to all my friends over on Patreon. Take care guys. Bye. Bye. Salut.