cook: store bought is fine when it comes to homecooked ramen

After not eating out at my favorite ramen parlor, Santa Ramen, I finally went in after two years of this pandemic and ordered a bowl. I shelled out $18.50 for the most expensive item on the menu: fried soft shell crab and pork belly. OMFG. The proteins tasted so so so yummy and the ramen was so satisfyingly al dente. Of course, I ate that bowl in 10 minutes and felt overfull immediately. I was too full to consume everything in the bowl and brought home the leftover tonkotsu stock and pork belly to which to add more ramen and vegetables and protein. I had in my freezer a package of soup base and noodles from Nijiya to which I was going to add the leftover tonkotsu, even more pork, an egg, bok choi, bamboo shoots, and spinach.   

 

I hard boiled an egg and browned the pork (I used carnitas which is basically pork shoulder submerged and cooked in lard and substitutes well)and the salty sauce packet that came with the frozen noodles, which I added to the reheating and simmering Tonkotsu.  

When I added the noodles to the boiling pot of water, the boil went away. The frozen noodles had brought the temperature down that much. It took 6 minutes to bring it back to boil and cook those thick ramen noodles.

 

Finally the noodles were done and drained. My favorite Japanese soup bowl was in the dishwasher, and so I put the noodles and egg in a Pyrex bowl.

 

Then ladled the broth, pork, and vegetables to submerge those noodles. I also added fresh spinach leaves to wilt in that boiling hot broth. T'was a beautiful bowl of soup to behold.

 

I couldn't help but remember how much I love a bowl of ramen, not made by pouring a cup of hot water into and reconstituting dried noodles in a Styrofoam cup, but cooked by boiling pork bones for hours before loading with soy and miso and much later meat, noodles and vegetables.

But that wooden spoon wasn't working for me. Not enough broth to fit along with the noodles into the bowl of the spoon.

I brought out a larger stainless steel spoon, and still you couldn't fit all the content of the soup onto your serving utensil. And so it was a chomp of noodles and meat followed by a sip of the salty and fatty broth. And then a slurp of hard boiled egg and spinach.

The good thing about the thickness of the noodles was that the ramen didn't get mushy by soaking up all the broth and losing its chew before upsetting the balance of flavors in all the bowl. Yeah I ate those noodles fast and stained my t-shirt with broth from all my wild slurping. And I still have a cup of that stock into which I'm going to again add pork, bok choi, spinach and corn and this time, green noodles or moroheiya for yet another bowl of ramen for leftovers for dinner tonight.                     

Delicious.