I had a serious hankering for Hakata ramen for quite a while now. So yesterday went out to get a few pounds of pork neck bones and some chicken legs for some additional sweetness. First, they were parboiled ...
Then scrubbed clean, immersed in cold water and brought to a vigorous boil for the next 10h ...
In the meantime, the tare was prepared. It’s good if all the toys get to be used at least once per year, so I made freshly shaved katsuobushi, which together with dried ceps and kombu built the backbone of the tare ...
Steeped at 178 F (as per Ivan Orkin), then augmented with mirin, sake, shoyu and anchovies (in lieu for the dried sardines I was not able to source).
By now, the collagen within the bones had broken down and emulsified the fat.
After the soup was finished, about 1.5 L were separated and boiled in the pressure cooker with some aromatics and additional chicken skin for 45 min, before being pureed to add a bit more body to the soup.
Finally, the bowls were assembled with chashu, tamago (both prepared already on Friday and stored in the braising liquid), spring onion, wood ear mushroom, beni shoga and nori. And a bit of spicy red miso directly added at the table.
It was very good 🤗
And as a little reward I have about 5 L of basic broth for the freezer and some 500 mL of tare, too ...
