We're super stoked to finally be able to share our tonkotsu ramen recipe with y'all after about a month of testing out this bad boy. Perfect for a rainy or cold fall day, this Japanese noodle soup is a staple dish that can be eaten for breakfast, lunch & dinner. You can use any meat & vegetable toppings, but we tried to keep it simple. Itadakimasu!
Serves: ~ 3-4
Prep Time: 30 min
Cook Time: 12-16 hours
Ingredients
5 lb pork neck bones, soaked, washed, 1 inch cubes if the butcher will allow
1 lb pork fatback
2 lb chicken backs, thawed, soaked, washed
2 large yellow onions, charred
2 (3’ inch) pieces of ginger, charred
8-10 garlic cloves, peeled & crushed
1 bunch green onions, white part for the broth, greens to garnish
16 oz mushrooms (shiitake, or common)
Ramen noodles of your choice
Additional Toppings:
Char Siu (BBQ pork) slices, as protein
Green onions, to garnish
Soft boiled eggs, to garnish
Bean sprouts, to garnish
Bamboo shoots, to garnish
Nori, cut into thin pieces to garnish
Chili oil, homemade, or store bought for garnish
Process for the Chili Oil
Peel and chop up: 1/3 cup of garlic, 1/3 cup of ginger. Place into a medium ceramic bowl.
Add 1/3 cup of red chili flakes.
In a small pot over medium high heat, heat up about 1-1.5 cups of oil. You can test the heat by throwing in a tiny piece of garlic, or ginger. If it sizzles, has significant bubbles around it and floats back to the top, it should be ready.
When the oil is hot enough, slowly pour the oil over the ingredients in the bowl. Watch it sizzles, and take in the amazing aromas. If you are able to, set the bowl aside or in the refrigerator to help cool it down. When it's cold enough, you can transfer it to a mason jar for later use.
Use as much as you like when plating, the more the merrier!
Process for the Broth
In your largest pot, we used a 9 quart pot, soak the pork necks, and thawed out chicken backs for at least 2 hours, if not overnight.
Strain the bones, and wash each piece of meat under cold water, looking to remove the bloody parts, and to keep the broth as clear as possible.
Place the meat and fatback back into the pot.
Peel & crush the garlic cloves, peel the ginger & onions, slice the green onion (green part only), save the white ends of the green onion, and cut the mushrooms in half (keep the stems).
On a grill, or on a non stick pan, char the ginger pieces & onions. This char will add a ton of flavor to the broth.
Throw in all the ingredients except the green onion parts for garnish, and cover with water.
Bring the pot to high heat, and once it boils, immediately put it back down to low/medium or until it simmers. Let it simmer for 30 minutes, and remove skum from the top of the pot. If you need to remove from the heat during this step, that is fine.
Place on low, and cover with lid. Checking continuously and cooking for 12 hours. You can cook it longer but it may require an additional day, and adding more extra water. Check on the flavor every couple hours.
Once the broth has been cooking for about 10 hours, you may add 1-2 cups of water.
Finish cooking in the next two hours. Taste for salt levels. Add a couple generous sprinkle of salt (as needed), and a teaspoon of soy sauce.
Strain all the contents of the pot. The broth is now ready to serve. Prep your bowl by cooking your noodles of choice as the packet describes, adding your protein and any other additional toppings as listed above.
Enjoy your ramen & don't fret as we will be publishing our recipe for ramen noodles shortly!
Notes:
When we first tested the recipe, we added extra water, although 1 cup didn't make a huge difference. The broth was a little thicker than anticipated. We also only let the bones soak for 2 hours.
The second time we tested the recipe, we doubled the recipe, and added four cups of extra water since we were cooking it in two pots (2 cups water in each pot). We also soaked the bones overnight. This produced the BEST results.
Since the process took a while the second time testing it, we did it over the process of four days.
The first day we got the soup started and cooked it for 11 hours. Then we let it sit overnight in the fridge (I had to sleep during the night and then I was at work).
Since we had to refrigerate the broth after cooking it again, it was a perfect time to remove the majority of the fat which will sit at the top of the pot and appear to resemble a mashed potato consistency. This step is best done when cold. I later came home to cook it for an additional hour and 30 min (day two). Then we put it back into the fridge overnight to let the flavors really incorporate together.
On the third day we drained all contents in the pot as just to leave the broth ready to serve. Since we had an extra day, we let it sit overnight again as soups always taste better the day after etc, and when we were ready for dinner, we put it on high heat to bring to serving temperature.