The secret of perfect ramen

Ramen: the least delicate and the most intense of soups. Greasy, salty, creamy, deep, explosive, full of umami and calories, ramen is a healing soup, but hardcore. It’s perfect for those delightful moments when nothing matters and we simply treat ourselves. Eating it is easy: take the noodles with chopsticks, bring them close with a spoon, and slurp them; then sip the boiling broth, bite the pork, break the egg and let the yolk soften everything. Pause for a few seconds to appreciate the layers of flavor and textures that form that precious gestalt (as they say in Tampopo). There’s ocean flavor, chicken, pork, vegetables, earthiness, umami, maybe something fermented and alive. Slurp, inhale, drink, chew, all quickly before it cools down. Finally, hold the bowl with both hands and don’t let go until the last drop has entered your body. In just a few minutes, the belly, mouth, throat, and even the soul —if it exists— feel warm and satisfied. Lips sticky from the fat and collagen of the meaty broth, chin wet from the spilled drops, belly swollen, and mind relaxed. Maybe even a burp fits in here.When eaten, ramen is comfortable, easy, accessible, and comforting; but when cooked, ramen is chaotic, complex, elusive, and alienating.Cooking it is harder than it seems: you must achieve a transparent and pure broth, soft but substantial noodles, and a powerful and flavorful tare. Hold on, first you need to understand the basic structure of ramen: the tare, the broth, the noodles, and the toppings. The tare (or kaeshi) is a salty reduction served before the broth that determines the flavor of the ramen: soy (shôyu), salt (shio), miso (miso), or pork (tonkotsu). The broth is generally a mix of pork, chicken, fish bones, and vegetables, although everyone has their own recipe. With the noodles, you need to pay attention to the type of water (its mineral content), the flours, kneading, resting time, and cooking at the moment. And with the toppings, make sure that the pork is sliced thinly (about 3 mm), the egg is soft, the bamboo shoots are crunchy, and above all, that each element adds to the ramen's umaminess.The umaminess, that is: the quality of umami, the taste found in the most savory foods in the world, has been explored and understood in Japanese cuisine for over a century, but Westerners can barely describe it. Umami is that deep intensity that invades from the throat and creates a sensation of covering the mouth, of fullness, satisfaction, and satiety. It’s that deliciousness that who knows where it comes from. Umami is almost an emotional flavor and is the very essence of ramen.The challenge is to find umami in all its layers. The problem is that it’s a subtle and slippery flavor. The easy way is to use monosodium glutamate powder, but the fun part is looking for ingredients that provide that flavor naturally. It’s found in mushrooms, tomatoes, meat, and seaweed, for example. Ivan Orkin, a pioneer of ramen shops in the United States, became famous in Tokyo and New York for achieving a fusion of his New York Jewish roots with traditional Japanese recipes. He invested 20 years in Japan to create that ramen that is uniquely his. It contains roasted tomatoes, and the whole internet claims it’s delicious.Making good ramen like Orkin’s, with depth of flavor and a personal story, requires mastery and, therefore, needs the full dedication of the cook. Kazuo Yamagishi, who invented ramen in the 50s, dedicated more than half his life to it. He trained hundreds of cooks (yes, the vast majority were men), who inherited his techniques but built their own recipes. This is how the vocation for ramen began. Tampopo (1985) explains it this way: to achieve the most splendid bowl of ramen, the cook must first master themselves and fill themselves with life and courage. It’s not some kind of magical thinking, but to have the emotional strength to never settle and focus on a single mission: to perfect their craft and their dish. To dedicate themselves, like Picasso to his cubist genius or Mozart to his requiem.The beauty is that ramen is not categorical, so there’s plenty of room for creativity. Contrary to the nature of Japanese cuisine, ramen is free and stretches as far as human ingenuity can reach.In Mexico, where there are even more options, we have curry and charred eggplant ramen from Koku, spicy ramen with kimchi and American cheese from Send Ramen, birriamen from Caldos Ánimo, and even shrimp mexican ramen from Gori Gori. Some may doubt that these last two are ramen and not Mexican broths with noodles, but to that, I say that perhaps ramen is like a taco: it’s no longer a dish; it’s a way of eating. Moreover, ramen is not of pure Japanese blood, so we cannot demand that it be confined to a single country. The noodles (la mein) are Chinese. Japan built its own narrative with them, so anyone can do the same with ramen, as its canon —like all canons— is vulnerable to change.The title of this text promises a secret, and here it is: to achieve perfect ramen, it’s necessary to understand its structure and master the techniques, but it’s imperative to pour attention and intention into the process and, above all, to narrate oneself in it, as ramen is personal.Get ready, buy a bunch of pork bones (especially trotters), chicken, vegetables, dashi, mirin, sake, miso, ginger, garlic, nori, and whatever you crave from the Japanese supermarket and Mexican market. Explore without fear. If it serves as inspiration, here is my recipe (which is far from perfect):Tare: shio, a reduction of mushroom broth (of various types, whatever is available, in the rainy season the selection gets good) and a sauté of onion, garlic, and ginger with plenty of butter and pork fat. When serving, I add a bit of dashi.Broth: pork broth (with bones, shank, head, and various vegetables).Noodles: I’ve never made them, but I buy fresh ones from Mikasa.Toppings: many seasoned mushrooms, thin slices of pork belly, fresh spinach, sesame, scallions, and a few drops of garlic and red chili oil.Pairing: mezcal or sake while cooking and a dry rosé wine to eat.To cook it, you need to plan and block at least a whole day from your schedule, so for now, for whatever you want, create a moment to drop everything and go get ramen now.