Tonkotsu Ramen Base
15 hours.
In that time, you can catch up on much-needed sleep, clock in nearly two days’ worth of office hours, or fly from New York to London – and back.
Or you can slave over a boiling pot of tonkotsu ramen broth.
OK, so the fire was really the one flexing its muscles for 15 hours, while I cleared emails and pottered around the house. But many good hours of my life was certainly spent gazing into that magic pot, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the soup evolution.
I fell in love with tonkotsu ramen several years ago after my maiden encounter with its creamy broth in the winter cold, the perfect setting for piping hot soup. And since the first frost of the season has dawned upon us, it was time to try creating some of that collagen-y goodness.
I haven’t perfected the recipe for tonkotsu soup yet, but let me share some semblance of a solid base. Special shout-outs to Shizuoka Gourmet and No Recipes for inspiring this method.
Scroll down for pictures that chronicle the soupy evolution!
Ingredients
1 kg pork knuckles (or chunky leg bones), broken
500g chicken bones
1 bulb onion
1 bulb garlic
1 cup dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked
1 large carrot, sliced
4 sprigs scallions
Salt to taste
Method
1. Bring pot of water to a boil, then add pork knuckles. Boil till much scum comes out from the bones.
2. After 15 minutes, dump the gunky water. Scrub remaining scum off all the bones and rinse thoroughly.
3. Resume boiling pork knuckles with fresh batch of water, till scum no longer floats to surface.
4. At 3 Hours, add chicken bones, carrots, shiitake mushrooms.
Fry garlic and ginger till fragrant, and add to pot.
Fry onions till caramelised, and add to pot.
5. At 6 Hours, add scallions.
6. At 9 hours, watch the broth start to turn creamy!
7. At 12 hours, sigh in wonderment at the thickness of the broth.
8. At 15 hours, add salt to taste, and turn off the fire! Scoop out oil from the surface.
9. The tonkotsu base is ready! Now add your extra secret ingredients (I’m still figuring mine out) to complete the tonkotsu soup.
10. Serve with ramen noodles, beautifully molten-yolked eggs (recipe to come!), corn and char siew. The meat should have been Japanese cha siu, but I copped out and used some Chinese-style char siew I’d made earlier that week.
Presenting, the Grand Finale…
いただきます! (Itadakimasu!)
Looks so good! My favorite part is the egg. Luckily we have a place a block away that makes this, so I’ll save all those hours… Mmmm!
And electricity/gas!
yumyumyum!!! tho i’m still more of an udon person rather than ramen.
always thot pork is spelt tonkAtsu tho??? :ppp
Haha I’m such a ramen person as you know. Tonkotsu = pork bone soup, tonkatsu = deep fried pork cutlet!
omg yum! I love ramen! i can’t believe it took that long to make ramen broth…wow!!
Hi kat and welcome to the blog. I can’t believe it too!
And I think the pros boil it for 30 hours!
Yum! Oooh aaaahhh! Shiok!
Slurp!
You are FANTASTIC!!!!!!
TOTALLY VIRTUOUS!!!! =D
i wanna slurp this ALL UP!!! =D
Haha let’s have some next year! At a restaurant!
Oh man, your hubs must be thinking he’s SO lucky to have such a good cook around the house!!! =) Looks awesome! Can’t believe it takes so long to boil the broth!!!
Haha thanks Cher! I’ll show him this comment later
U’re awesome man! I’ve only tasted your cooking once! When’s the next? I demand a session when u’re back!
OK cookout next year!
I didn’t finish reading first. I scrolled through the pictures and it looked so good. Scrolled back up to read and now I’m thinking of going to get some of that pork bone myself! *yuuuuuuuuuuums!
Hi twinklingcloud! Thanks for dropping by the blog. Yes do try it and share how it goes!
This looks awesome!
Thanks!
Ohh, Genki desu! I can hear the Irasshiamasse! beckoning already… Yum.
To me ramen is always oishidesune!
looks great! And I waiting in anticipation for the egg recipe!
looks really delicious : )
Unreal… that looks phenomenal! I can’t say I’ve ever thought about making soup for 15 hours, but this looks like it’d be worth it!
- p.