To me, ramen has always been those crinkly dried noodles that come wrapped in plastic with a flavour sachet. I used to eat ramen by the bucket loads it as a child, the Maggi kind, in an artificially flavoured chicken or oriental broth.
I spent a small amount of time in Japan and while wondering the streets of Tokyo I discovered a small noodle house down a few side streets where I had my first taste of real ramen. Wheat noodles swimming in a rich meat broth with spring onions, seaweed, and slices of pork.
There is a whole world of ramen out there with different varieties and styles of cooking.
Shio ("salt") ramen is probably the oldest of the four and is
a pale, clear, yellowish broth made with plenty of salt and any combination of
chicken, vegetables, fish, and seaweed. Occasionally pork bones are also used,
but they are not boiled as long as they are for tonkotsu ramen, so the soup remains light and clear.
Tonkotsu ramen usually has a cloudy white colored broth. It has a thick
broth made from boiling pork bones, fat, and collagen over high heat for many
hours, which suffuses the broth with a hearty pork flavor and a creamy consistency
that rivals milk or melted butter or gravy (depending on the shop).
Shōyu ("soy sauce") ramen
typically has a brown and clear color broth, based on a chicken and vegetable
(or sometimes fish or beef) stock with plenty of soy sauce added resulting in a
soup that’s tangy, salty, and savory yet still fairly light on the palate.
Miso This uniquely Japanese ramen,
which was developed in Hokkiado,
features a broth that combines copious amounts of miso and is blended with oily chicken
or fish broth – and sometimes with tonkotsu or lard – to create a thick,
nutty, slightly sweet and very hearty soup. Miso ramen broth tends to have a
robust, tangy flavor, so it stands up to a variety of flavorful toppings.
We are now on the discovery to find the best ramen in Sydney.
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