Weeknight Miso Ramen
A properly savoury miso broth in half an hour, built on fried aromatics and stock rather than a twelve-hour bone simmer.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 780
- Calories
- 44g
- Protein
- 34g
- Fat
- 74g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 2 portions fresh ramen noodles
- 1 litre chicken stock
- 3 tbsp red or awase miso paste
- 1 tbsp tahini or Japanese sesame paste
- 200 g minced pork
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 thumb ginger
- 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
- 1 tbsp neutral oil
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 eggs
- 150 g beansprouts
- 2 spring onions
- 1 sheet nori
- Chilli oil, to serve
Instructions
- 1Bring a small pan of water to the boil, lower in the eggs and cook for exactly 6 minutes 30 seconds, then move them straight into iced water. Peel once cold and halve just before serving.
- 2Mince the garlic and ginger. Slice the spring onions thinly and cut the nori into wide strips.
- 3Heat the neutral oil in a saucepan over medium-high. Add the minced pork and cook for 4 minutes, breaking it up, until browned and some fat has rendered.
- 4Add the garlic and ginger and fry for 1 minute, until fragrant. Frying the aromatics in the pork fat rather than adding them to the broth later is what gives a quick ramen its depth.
- 5Add the soy sauce and sugar and stir for 30 seconds so they catch on the base of the pan.
- 6Pour in the stock and bring to a simmer. Cook for 10 minutes.
- 7Put the miso and tahini in a small bowl. Ladle in a little of the hot broth and whisk to a smooth paste, then stir this back into the pan. Adding miso in a lump leaves gritty clumps that never dissolve.
- 8Take the pan off the boil and keep it at a bare simmer from now on. Boiling miso drives off its aroma and leaves it flat and salty.
- 9Blanch the beansprouts in the broth for 60 seconds and lift them out. Cook the noodles in a separate pan of boiling water per the packet, then drain well — cooking them in the broth makes it cloudy and starchy.
- 10Stir the sesame oil into the broth. Divide the noodles between two deep bowls, ladle the broth over, and top with the pork, beansprouts, halved eggs, spring onion and nori. Finish with chilli oil.
Real ramen shops simmer bones for twelve hours or more, and nothing in a home kitchen replicates that. What a weeknight version can do is borrow the other things that make ramen taste like ramen: fat, fried aromatics and a strong seasoning base.
Build flavour before the liquid
The most common mistake is treating this as soup — stock in a pan, miso stirred in, done. That gives you salty broth.
Browning the pork first, then frying garlic and ginger in the fat it rendered, then letting soy sauce and sugar catch on the pan base, builds three separate layers before any liquid arrives. It takes six minutes and it is most of the difference.
Miso goes in last, and never boils
Miso is a living fermented paste, and its aroma comes from volatile compounds that boil away fast. Add it early and simmer it and you lose everything except the salt.
Slake it first — whisk it with a ladle of hot broth into a smooth slurry — then stir that back in off the boil. Lumps of miso dropped into a pan of liquid tend to stay lumps.
Red miso is fermented longer and is deeper and saltier; white is sweeter and gentler; awase is a blend and the easiest to use. Adjust the quantity to the type, and taste before adding more.
The tahini is not a substitute for anything
A spoonful of sesame paste is standard in many miso ramen shops. It emulsifies with the fat in the broth to give it body, and adds a nutty roundness that keeps the miso from tasting sharp. Japanese neri goma is the traditional choice, but Middle Eastern tahini does the same job.
Cook the noodles separately
Ramen noodles are alkaline and shed a lot of starch. Boil them in the broth and it turns cloudy and gluey within minutes.
Use a separate pan, drain them properly, and put them in the bowl before the broth so they do not sit and absorb it into mush.
The egg
Six and a half minutes from a rolling boil, straight into iced water, gives a set white and a jammy centre. The ice bath matters twice: it stops the cooking at the right point and it makes the shell come away cleanly.
Nutrition
A bowl is around 780 calories with 44 grams of protein — a full meal rather than a starter. Miso brings sodium in quantity, so if you are watching that, use low-salt stock and reduce the soy sauce rather than the miso, which is where the flavour lives.
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