Is it possible to make truly great ramen at home? Yes, and you don’t need to quit your job to do it.
If you walk into any Japanese supermarket, you will most likely see a massive uriba (section) dedicated entirely to pre-made ramen.
But as I mentioned in my Golden Path post, there is a trap here. Just making it straight from the package is a bit meh. On the other hand, applying the Golden Path means you don’t have to stand over a stove boiling pork bones for 24 hours to make tonkotsu from scratch (though I actually did that once!).
For me—because I really love meat—the main trick is adding proper protein. The packets usually give you a nano-slice of chashu (pork), and that’s just not enough.
Instead, you can buy a whole block of pork (which costs less than a single bowl of ramen at a restaurant), marinate it in soy sauce overnight, bake it, and slice it up. Add that to your store-bought ramen, sprinkle some greens on top, and it easily beats almost anything you can get in a restaurant, unless you’re spending crazy money. And beyond just pure goodness, going custom gives you so much more variety! You can make something completely unique and exotic, like ramen topped with freshly roasted chicken.
And to go even simpler than baking chashu in the oven for an hour—good old ground meat takes just minutes to roast up. This goes especially well with tantanmen (spicy sesame ramen)… which, to be fair, is exactly how tantanmen was supposed to be in the first place!
Below are some photos of how this can work in practice. One of them is actually udon with stir-fried meat slices and an onsen tamago—hiding here between the ramens, because all noodles are friends!
