Defining "Ramen Noodles"

[Margaret Pilgrim]

1 hour ago, liuzhou said:

 

They are not noodles used to make ramen, although one could. They are using the English spelling to describe hand pulled noodles which will be used to make many different dishes, of which Japanese style ramen will be very few.

 

The same brand has 'udon noodles',  and 'buckwheat noodles' in similar packs. They arent for making 'udon' or  'buckwheat'.

 

People here will and do say the equivalent of 'get some ramen'. Never 'noodles to make ramen'.

 

1 hour ago, Duvel said:

In Japan, the noodles used to make Ramen are not hand pulled, but rolled out, flattened and cut. 

 

1 hour ago, liuzhou said:

 

but the name comes from 拉面 which does mean 'pulled noodles'.

 

I got lost somewhere between what is and what was and if what was is now what you call ramen.   But as long as each of us is able to source what he has in mind, it matters little.    As the master said, "What's in a name?"

[JoNorvelleWalker]

1 hour ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

 

 

I got lost somewhere between what is and what was and if what was is now what you call ramen.   But as long as each of us is able to source what he has in mind, it matters little.    As the master said, "What's in a name?"

 

Names matter.

 

As I'm sure I've related previously, a Chinese friend introduced me to instant ramen in the 1960's.  I wanted to buy some instant ramen for myself.  He wrote out the name for me.  I took the train to Philadelphia and went to the shop in Chinatown.  The young Chinese woman behind the counter said:  "I'm sorry I don't read Chinese."  To this day I can't recall if I eventually got the stuff or not.

 

[lvn]

Sorry for necro'ing. One thing that I'd like to point out is that contrary to popular belief, ramen is actually not defined by the presence of alkalinity or kansui. Recently this kind of perceived boundary has explicitly been challenged by the shop Nara-seimen in Shinjuku, but historically there have also been existence of shops like Ginmentei which also do not use kansui, that have been considered to be top ramen shops in their time. There is a category of noodle called "chuka-men" (中華麺) that ramen has historically been associated with, but you can think of it basically as just one type of noodles that ramen can use.

 

(Also to be a little bit more pedantic, ramen as in "rāmen" or ラーメン is not lamian, and has no historical continuity beyond the name. The theory that I like the most is that it's almost directly descended from or a sibling to noodle soups in Guangdong and Hong Kong, like wonton noodles.)