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(characters speaking Japanese)
- [Alvin] Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of "Anime with Alvin."
Today I'm gonna be making probably one
of the most iconic anime recipes of all time,
the Ichiraku Ramen from "Naruto."
The ramen from the show seems to be a miso tonkatsu ramen,
so I have three kinds of different miso here.
But before we get to that,
we have some other things that we need to attend to.
A bowl of good ramen usually has quite the number
of components that make it delicious.
And the first thing that we're gonna get started
on is the char siu.
What I got here is a whole slab of pork belly.
This one has skin on, but in making char siu,
it is usually recommended to actually take the skin
off for easier cooking and handling purposes.
In the show, Naruto does like quite the amount
of char siu in his ramen, so we are making a lot today.
Before I roll the pork up
to make those signature circular patterns,
I do need to trim off a lot of the fat
and a lot of the excess meat that comes with it.
This stuff is great to marinate, chop up,
and cook in a stir fry, so I'll be saving these for later.
And I do want to mention
that I have not made ramen from scratch before.
And so in order to make this video,
we reached out to Ryan from Way of Ramen,
who runs a magnificent YouTube channel
focused on all things ramen.
He also happened to make the Ichiraku Ramen
from "Naruto," as well,
and we are going to be taking a lot
of our recipe based off of his techniques and videos.
So thank you, Ryan. I hope I make you proud.
So after putting this little pork belly through a diet plan,
we are now ready to roll.
To begin, I'm laying down four pieces
of equally cut string or butchers twine on a cutting board.
It's really important to keep things tight
'cause if you don't, everything's just gonna kind
of go everywhere and it's not very fun
so might as well keep it rolled tight.
But once the pork belly has been turned
into a long and very tight tube,
I'm placing it seam side down onto the string.
That's also really important
so that things don't start flopping around again.
And one by one, I'm tying up the string
in a pretty simple knot,
making sure that it is relatively tight to keep the pork
in its nice tubular shape.
One final step, just give the pork a little bit of a slap.
This is for quality assurance purposes.
Just like how this phone call might
be recorded or monitored.
I would like to introduce you to the Holy Trinity
of a lot of Asian cooking,
ginger, garlic, and scallion.
After chopping these up,
these are gonna be the perfect accompaniments
to go make friends with our pork.
But first I do wanna get a head start on the pork's flavor.
So in a large Dutch oven, over high heat,
I'm searing off the surface of the rolled pork burrito
until the edges are nice and golden brown.
I don't believe this step is necessary,
but, hey, might as well get some free flavor in there.
Now I get to add the aromatics.
So the ginger, the garlic, and the scallion go in,
and now time for the liquids.
I'm pouring in shoyu, sake, water, and sugar.
This is going to be the braising liquid
for the pork to get nice and tender
and also absorb a lot of those flavors as it cooks.
It's kind of like a big flavor hot tub,
and honestly a little jealous of the pork right now.
And once the pork is relaxing
in its nice little bubble bath,
I'm gonna use a tool called a otoshibuta.
Essentially, it's a drop lid that goes directly
on top of the simmering liquid
and the food inside the pan to prevent a lot of evaporation
and to evenly distribute the cooking liquid along the food.
There's a lot of ways you can actually make this
out of parchment paper.
I think it's a pretty cool trick, so look into it.
As far as timing goes, I'm gonna let this go
for about two to three hours until it's nice and tender.
Now, in the show,
it's mentioned that Naruto's favorite ramen
is a miso tonkatsu ramen.
So we need to make a miso tare that'll help season
and flavor the soup.
For our miso tare,
I'm gonna combine red miso, white miso, mugi miso
into a small saucepan over medium heat.
Then I'm gonna add ginger and garlic,
both of which have been grated and minced,
followed by shoyu, sake, mirin, togarashi, and sesame seeds.
If you're thinking to yourself,
"Man, that sounds like a lot of stuff,
and it probably is a lot of flavor,"
you'd be right.
It is a lot of stuff, and it is a ton of flavor.
After cooking this for a few minutes to release the rawness
of a lot of the ingredients we threw in
and the consistency has thickened,
this is ready to be set aside for later use.
This is niboshi.
It's a kind of dried fish used to make things, like dashi,
and I'm gonna remove the heads
off of it because they can be quite bitter
and have some unpleasant tastes.
Once the heads and bodies of these fish have been divorced,
they're gonna go into a container with some water.
This is the first of many steps that it takes
to make our soup today.
One of my favorite things about a good bowl of ramen
is the jammy egg that kind of lays on top.
As you can see, I'm trying to use a needle to poke a hole
in these eggs, but it is not working.
I'm now using a knife to poke holes in these eggs.
It sounds kind of cool to say,
but it's probably not the safest thing to do.
Slow, don't break the egg.
Oh, oh. It's c- (gasps)
Yes! Let's go, baby. Woo!
For a nice soft boil,
I'm putting these into boiling water
for about six and a half m-
Oh, okay.
This guy seemed to come out a little bit early.
It's all right. Happens to the best of us.
Back in the carton you go.
These eggs get dropped in for about six
and a half minutes on the dot for that perfect soft boil.
One of my good friends Keizo Shimamoto is a ramen chef.
He taught me that if you swirl the eggs
in the water like a Whirlpool,
this will cause the yolks to sort of center
and stabilize in the middle,
giving you a beautiful perfect cross section
for the customer.
I was never a good student in school,
but this makes sense to me.
And after exactly 390 seconds,
I'm taking the eggs out and putting them straight
into an ice bath.
This will shock the egg, prevent it from cooking further,
and hopefully make them easier to peel.
Let's get a little sneak peek, shall we?
Ho ho ho. Now that's what I'm talking about. Yes! Woo!
Please excuse us while Kendall
and I make a little snack in the back.
Approved. Our pork has been
in its hot tub for about three hours now,
so it's pretty much ready.
I'm gonna take off the otoshibuta
and transfer the pork onto a tray to be chilled.
But all this marinade left in the pot,
that's the good stuff.
I do like to take the fat off of the top
with a paper towel trick taught
to me by none other than my dad.
He does this a lot at home when he tries to take
off the fat that floats on top of his soups.
And he thinks by doing this, he is gonna lose weight.
I've seen his belly.
I don't think it's working too well.
But for the purpose of this marinade,
it makes sense to take as much fat off as we can.
Once it gets strained out and transferred
to another container,
this amazing braising liquid with all the flavors
of the soy, the sake, the sugar,
and the pork belly get poured
on top of our beautiful soft boiled eggs.
Time for another trick.
We're gonna use a paper towel to sort of soak and press
on top of the eggs.
This will make sure that any parts of the eggs
that dare to poke out above the marinade will get submerged
and colored right back in.
In order for these eggs to get a nice tan,
I'm putting them in the fridge for at least a day.
The ramen from the show is a tonkatsu style ramen,
which mean it starts with a lot of bones.
I have here pre-blanched pork femur bones,
chicken carcass bones, and chicken feet.
These are all gonna add a lot of flavor
and a lot of body to the soup as we simmer it for hours.
In addition, I'm also adding in pork fat back.
The idea is as the soup and broth continuously comes
to a boil and reduces,
the fat should emulsify into the broth itself,
which is pretty cool.
I'm boiling this until the meat kind of starts
to fall off the bone and become a little tender.
That's when I get to say hi to you guys. Hello.
And after the meat is nice and loosened up,
I'm gonna start adding the vegetables,
which are gonna be the aromatics for the broth.
This includes some chopped cabbage,
a chopped onion, a chopped carrot,
half of a whole head of garlic, chopped scallions,
some ginger, half of an apple, and one potato.
We're gonna let everybody in here become friends
for about two hours or so.
Peace out, little dudes. I'll see you soon.
And while that big pot of broth goes on the back burner,
I'm gonna finish off our dashi.
So remember those little fishies we put
in the water earlier?
Well, that's going into a smaller pot,
along with some kombu and the dried shiitake mushroom.
After giving these guys about 10 to 15 minutes or so
to return to their formerly hydrated selves,
following a little bit of gentle heat,
I'm adding in katsuobushi, or dried bonito flakes,
to the mixture and letting that slowly simmer
just until the heat has permeated.
The studio has now taken on a scent of the sea.
So we are going to strain this entire pot
and end up with a beautiful dashi for our ramen.
It is now three hours into the future,
To my delight, our ramen broth has thickened
and reduced nicely, taking on a milky color
and becoming very, very intense in flavor.
As you can see, I'm also using a whisk to break up any
of the remaining bones or vegetables
that might be lying around,
just to release that extra amount of flavor into the broth.
The coolest part is that I don't really see fat floating
on the top.
It all seems to be actually emulsified
within the liquid itself, which is pretty cool.
And it is at this stage in the cooking
that I'm adding in the dashi.
I've heard adding it too early can cause the flavors
of the dashi to get muted.
And as you can see here,
I am attempting to strain this entire pot
of broth into a small container.
We have a beautiful tonkatsu broth.
I salute you, Way of Ramen.
You really know what you're doing, man.
Now that one of the hardest parts about the ramen is done,
I'm moving on to the toppings.
Our roll of char siu has set up quite nicely.
So now it's time to take off the strings
and slice these into nice little beautiful rounds for later.
Look at these little dudes.
Just like Naruto, I also enjoy quite a lot
of meat on my ramen.
I'm also slicing up some scallions,
as well as the signature topping that Naruto is named after.
This is a fish cake called narutomaki,
a very fitting topping for a boy who loves ramen.
And finally, the ajitama, which have gotten nice
and dark from their little rest in their flavor bath.
It's important to get your toppings
in order before cooking the ramen
because I was taught that time is one
of the most important ingredients when you're making ramen.
A minute too late, your soup gets cold.
A minute too early, your noodles aren't ready.
Everything needs to be cooked, plated, served, and eaten
in a very, very small window of time
for the maximum enjoyment.
Remember the marinade we put the eggs in?
Well, you can actually brush that
on top of the char siu and blowtorch it
to get a really nice caramelized, smoky exterior.
This is something that I remember Keizo doing a lot
in his shop, so I'm gonna do the same.
Also kind of an excuse for me to play
with a little bit of fire.
I love fire. It's amazing.
It smells so good.
The fat is rendering and crisping up.
It's getting a little smoky.
The sugars are caramelizing.
This is why I'm the kind of guy that'll order extra char siu
in his ramen whenever possible.
Let's talk ramen noodles.
You can go and spend a lot
of time and effort making these from scratch,
but I decided that it was a little too much work
for a ramen amateur like me.
So I went out and I got some high quality ramen noodles
from a local noodle maker.
Another trick I learned from Keizo is that you can squeeze
and almost compress the ramen noodles together a couple
of times before boiling.
I think this helps wake up
and excite the gluten inside the noodles
to get them a little bit more springy after cooking.
The second the noodles touch the water,
things get pretty intense.
We now have exactly one minute to make sure
that this bowl is ready with the soup
and the tare before the noodles,
so that means putting a spoonful of the miso tare
in the bottom of the bowl
and ladling in a healthy portion of soup.
Usually these things are weighed out to the gram
and to the milliliter,
but I'm being a little bit rough here
because it's my first time.
The moment the noodles touch the soup, the clock is ticking.
Every single second they sit in there
is another second that they're gonna get soggier.
So working quickly and putting on the char siu,
trying my best to make sure that these slices don't sink
and fan out in a beautiful pattern
and making sure it is loaded up,
'cause that is what Naruto wants.
And after about seven thick
and beautiful slices of char siu,
I'm splitting open are ajitama.
Ooh, hold up. That looks nice.
Look at that jammy centered yolk.
Followed by our thinly sliced scallions and narutomaki,
the menma, which is a bamboo topping I got also
from the store, and finally, the nori sheets.
And I would like to present to you our version
of the Ichiraku Ramen from "Naruto,"
heavily inspired by the recipe that Way of Ramen used
in his video.
And now for the moment I have been waiting for.
The char siu is delicious, it's smoky, it's so good.
Let's see how the broth and the noodles are.
The seasoning could be a little bit better.
I think my ratios were a little bit off,
and if I adjusted the ratio of the tare to the broth,
it could have been a little bit stronger.
But this is rich.
It is thick. It is milky.
It coats your tongue. It coats the noodles.
Everything just tastes really intense.
And I love that.
There's just so many flavors going on
from all the kinds of miso to the garlic to the ginger
to the pork and the chicken and the...
It kind of all just combines into this one explosion.
It's also really fun to eat
'cause there's, like, 7,000 toppings on here.
This is a lot of food.
So if you'll excuse me,
I am going to have some alone time with my ramen.
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