Uncommon Food for the Common Man

Pizole is a spicy, warm treat.

Winter has hit with full force and some warming comfort food hits the spot.

That means it is soup time.

Lately soup and some warm crusty bread has been the simple makings of a meal. I’ve cracked open my soup book and browsed the pages looking to see what I could make with what I have on hand. The other day it was curried parsnip soup.

Recipes for soup are pretty forgiving. You can substitute for many ingredients and use what you have on hand. But the one thing you truly need to have for each soup is a good stock.

A stock can be made with what most people just throw away. Chicken stock can be made with a carcass or just the bones from pieces of chicken. Ends of carrots, celery and outer layers of onion can flavor that stock.

As I prepare vegetables for other dishes I cut off the less desirable bits and pop them into a plastic bag   for stock I keep in the freezer. I’m also a big keeper of bones from meals such as steak, chuck roasts, etc. I often buy chicken thighs with bones in them and keep them too. Whole chickens make excellent stock and you can even cut and save the breasts and other parts of the chicken before making stock and just use the carcass and whatever bits stuffed in it – except the liver, which I think gives it a funky taste – to make stock. It is a bit of extra work, but you save money and stretch a chicken into many different meals.

Once you have made stock, freeze it and you have the beginnings of a quick soup.

Chicken Stock

Ingredients

1 whole chicken
1 carrot
1 medium onion
1 stalk of celery

Pull out neck and giblets. Rinse chicken inside and out. (Alternatively, strip the carcass and freeze the meat or use it for another recipe.)

Put it in soup pot and cover with water. Cut vegetables into quarters. Stick in pot, bring to a boil. Turn heat down to a simmer, cover and cook for 45 minutes to an hour.

Carefully take chicken out or wait until it cools. After chicken cools, strip meat and save for other use.

Remove vegetables and return chicken carcass to pot. Add water if needed. Bring back to a boil, cover and turn down heat to avoid boil over. Let it cook for at least another hour, two would be better, three best. Keep an eye on it and add water as needed. Some small bones will all but disintegrate. Let it cool and strain into containers to freeze or use for recipe.

When refrigerated, the stock will be gelatinous. This means it is good!

There is not salt in this recipe, so it will be needed when you use the stock in a recipe.

Vegetable stock is a similar process. But vegetables are a bit more fragile, so less time simmering is needed. Add roughly chopped onions, celery, carrots, perhaps other root vegetables, crushed garlic cloves, salt and spices (parsley, bay leaf and other bland spices would be good) and simmer for 45 minutes. Strain and use or freeze.
TIP: The more surface area, the quicker the flavor of the vegetables will be released. So cut into smaller pieces and the simmering time will go down.

For vegetable stock just add whatever you might have on hand or something that would blend well with the final destination for the stock. A tomato, basil, etc. if Italian. Let your imagination go wild. Add the skins from 2 or 3 yellow onions to give your stock a nice golden color. (They may need more time simmering. Remove the rest of veggies and return onion skins to pot and simmer longer.)

Once you’ve got some stock making some nice soup is easy peezy. Look for some soup recipes coming soon.

In the never-ending pursuit of great ramen, my latest batch of Tonkotsu went pretty well.

Total time spent on this batch was about 30 hours.

Pork bones were simmered for about 26 hours to make the base. The bones were disintegrating as I tried to pull them out, so a little straining in cheesecloth helped out. Then it sat in the freezer until the weather turned cold. (Note: The bones were mostly the bones from pork shoulder, some ribs and the most important part, some pork hocks, unsmoked of course.)

So today I pulled it out, plopped it in a medium pot, added some onions and garlic and went to walk the dog. Came back, cleaned up the kitchen, did a few things and waited to make the chashu.

Chashu is simple. Take a hunk of fatty pork (let’s say half a pound for about four servings – the thicker part of country style ribs is good) and put it in the broth for about an hour. After it has tendered up, put about 3/4 cup of shoyu (soy sauce), 1/4 cup or mirin and two to three slices of ginger, cut in thin strips into a small sauce pan or pot. Add the pork. Bring to a boil and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. You may have to cut the pork so it will be able to absorb a bit of the sauce. I just turn mine over after ten minutes.

The idea with the chashu is you want a bigger piece of meat you can slice to add to the ramen. The pork has a nice darker outer ring on each slice. Chilling the chashu will enable you to cut it nicely.

Then after the chashu is ready, cook your noodles. Use the best you can, and make them a little al dente. The thin, yellowish Chinese style noodles are OK, but try and get ramen-style noodles.

Put noodles in bowl, add slices of chashu (about four per serving), some bean sprouts, a little pickled ginger, maybe half a boiled egg. Add the steaming broth, and slurp away.

And remember, like all good soups, tonkotsu ramen is better the second day.

Next time I will try to add charred onions and garlic to the party, as the guy at No Recipes recommends. In fact, I may precook some of the bones in the oven first for an experiment.

Yet another try at the king of ramen

It got cold of late so it seemed like a good time to try to make tonkotsu ramen.

Tonkotsu is a pork-based broth ramen popular in the island of Kyushu, Japan. It seems recipes are secretive, as each ramen restaurant has their own tweaks. Most of the time it is just the garnishes added to it. The Chow Times blog had a video interview with the owner of Kintaro’s Tonkotsu Ramen in Vancouver, B.C. He says he uses 36! ingredients in his recipe. He used konbu (kelp) from Hokkaido. I meant to use some in this attempt, but forgot. You should never boil konbu, as it would slime up the broth. So you could probably add it in the beginning and pull it out before it boils. It would add a nice umami taste. (I wonder if the taste imparted by the konbu would survive a long boil? Perhaps add it at the end? I will test on some leftover broth I have.) UPDATE: I reheated some broth with konbu. It tasted a little ‘fuller.’

Print

Tonkotsu ramen

Rating: 41

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 6 hours

Yield: 4 normal servings, 2 hungry people servings.

Fat per serving: Yup!

Ingredients

1 lb meaty/fatty pork bones

4 cloves of garlic

1/2 large onion

water

salt

1/2 pound fatty pork

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup water

small piece of ginger

3 Tablespoons mirin

1/2 cup bean sprouts

2 green onions, chopped

pickled ginger

Ramen style noodles

Instructions

1. The broth is kind of basic, as it is meaty pork bones, an onion and some garlic. This is boiled for as long as you have patience for. A Youtube video of a Japanese TV show at one ramen place says it takes 60 hours to make!
2. I used some pork bones from pork belly slices I used to make rafute and some from pork chops and pork shoulder. I rinsed the bones, making sure no blood remained on them. It made for less foam and stuff floating on the broth and probably helped the taste. Some of the bones were just small pieces of cartilage and I think this was quite helpful. Neck bones, unsmoked, or shanks/feet would be good. The broth is unabashingly fatty.
3. The bones filled a little more than half of my 4 quart pot. Add water to cover plus an inch or two, one half a large peeled onion and about 4 crushed garlic cloves. Boil for about 4 hours. Add water as needed and skim the foam of the top. About two hours in, I added half an apple just because I heard some places do add one. I left that in there for about an hour, as I did not want it to break down and sweeten it up too much. Also about half way through I took the bones out, stripped the meat for a tasty treat for the dog and returned the bones to the broth.
4. If you are doing it right, the broth will be almost white, as the bones break down a bit, adding collagen to the fat and pork base. It should be almost creamy, at least in appearance. You should have about 2 quarts. (The glass lid on my pot was covered with a sheen of fat! I've never seen that before.) Salt to taste.
5. After about 4 hours, when your broth is near the desired consistency remove the bones. Time for more meat - chashu. Any fatty pork will do. I used about four 3-inch pieces of boneless country style ribs, which of course is basically sliced pork shoulder. I used the thicker parts of the 'ribs.' Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook the fatty pork until tender. (About an hour for me.) Skim as needed.
6. In a smaller pot, add 1/2 cup of soy sauce (shoyu), 1/2 cup of broth from bones or water, 3 tablespoon of mirin and about six slices of ginger. Add the pork pieces and gently simmer for about 20-30 minutes, occasionally turning to allow the sauce to seep into the pork. Remove and slice thinly.
7. While waiting for the chashu pork to simmer, strain the broth. I just used a fine-screen strainer to remove the gritty particles and the occasional onion and garlic bit. You can strain through cheesecloth or paper towel, but it will clog with the fat and take a while. If you don't want the fat clogging your arteries, go ahead and use a cloth to strain it. But the broth should be fatty and if you are on a low-fat diet you probably stopped reading by this time anyway ...
8. Cook ramen or thin chinese style noodles according to directions until just al dente. Do no overcook. In a pinch, just use instant ramen noodles. Use the best you can find. (Don't use Top Ramen. You spent all this time making this, don't ruin it with subpar noodles.)
9. Add a tablespoon or two of the soy-ginger sauce you seeped the chasu in to a bowl. This is optional. But it adds a nice salty, gingery base to the soup. Add large portion of noodle to bowl, some chasu pork slices, a mound of bean sprouts, some pickled ginger and sliced green onions. Add the broth to about an inch or so over the noodles. The noodles will absorb some broth. Salt and pepper to taste.

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http://www.gregglenet.net/UFftCMblog/2009/09/30/tonkotsu-ramen/

Other garnish options are half a boiled egg, toasted sesame seeds or nori.

The verdict: Oishii. Keiko came in from work and looked at the broth and seemed pleased that it was almost white in color. We sat down to eat and all I heard was slurping. Keiko finished well before I did, and near the end exclaimed ‘oishii!’ (Delicious) I must be getting closer to making a good bowl of tonkotsu ramen.

Learn more about ramen at rameniac.