Tonkotsu Failure

Tonkotsu has reached critical mass in the US. It's a default broth that virtually everyone slightly interested in ramen is attempting to emulate, be it chefs or even home cooks.

I've been in the process of fleshing out my tonkotsu method a bit. Digging into the available information more has revealed some interesting tidbits of knowledge.

In the past, I've had moderate to poor success with tonkotsu, and frankly, I wasn't sure why. It seems straightforward enough. Virtually every method I have ever seen uses the same process:

1. Blanch a bunch of pork femur bones, to remove the funk/blood.
2. Replace with fresh water. Scrub the black stuff away. Scrub all the things.  
3. Cook at rolling boil until unctuous and creamy. About 10-12 hours minimum. 

There are , of course, variations on this technique, notably the addition of other ingredients, such as aromatics or chicken parts. Usually these are thrown in at the start of the second boil. Some folks in Hakata use pig skulls in addition to femurs. Apparently the brain adds some flavor? (they call the brain "脳みそ" or "brain miso" lol)

But I've found that the less I add to the broth, the whiter it turns out. Allow me to present an example:

Look at that glorious pig water

This boil had nothing but pork leg bones and feet. Aromatics were added at the last hour. It's a gorgeous, slightly beige, cream colored broth. (It was way too rich... but that's a story for a different time). 

Sadly, in my last attempt, things didn't go so smoothly. 

For Memorial Day, I attempted to do some serious Hakata tonkotsu (separate blurb on the noodles is incoming, but the TL;DR is that they're impossible to do at home). Started with soaking the bones overnight, followed by a good ol blanch. The blanch goes through a few stages.

Stage 1: Brown water. Yuck.

If you don't blanch, you'll never get rid of that horrid brown color. 

Stage 2: Scrum rising.

Oh sweet jesus what is happening?

Stage 3: Gunk lightening, foam appaears.

Ok... I see where this is going.

Stage 4: Little to no foam left. 

At this stage, you'll want to dump the water, scrub the pot if reusing it, and scrub the bones of any leftover black gunk. This includes red marrow, which may be hiding in there. 

So far, things were par for the course. 

Then we moved onto the main part of cooking this bad boy. And this is where things started to turn for the worse. I started to deviate!

I was feeling bold, so as per the instructions of a few recipes I've found online (such as oisiso, a great Japanese guide), I threw an apple, a whole onion, some garlic cloves, and a knob of ginger, into the boil. 

I've found in the past that non-white items, like carrot, green onion, leek, etc, can actually impart color to the broth, so I avoided those. But they're not a bad idea if you like those flavors. 

Additionally, I added fatback. Chopped up by my local butcher, ready for the cookin'.

I had added most of it to the boil before this picture...

Fatback was suggested to amp up the richness of the broth in several of the sources I came across. Makes sense; the amount of fat present in the bones isn't enough (bones are pretty fat free apart from the marrow) so we add more to improve the consistency. Fatback is essentially collagen and fat, so it's the obvious choice. 

But then things started cooking.

Ok... so far so good... let's get rockin.

About two hours later:

Sweet. Starting to look opaque!

 At around 5-7 hours in is where I began to notice that the color was off...

And at 5:30 or so, the jig was up. I had brown tonkotsu.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Additionally, this version was insanely meaty. In perhaps an off putting way. Not really how I wanted the tonkotsu to turn out, to be frank.

So what are the learnings from this process?

Doing some investigating has lead me to three conclusions that may help improve the broth:

1. The use of fatback or any meat products should be used sparingly. 
• While fatback is awesome, it DOES have a slight meaty flavor to it, which eventually transitions to the broth. Making sure that the bones are cleaned of extra meat, and that the fatback is used just enough to provide richness (about 1/10th the weight of the bones total) is the way to go.
2. Keeping the pot covered results in an easier boil, yes, but it also creates pressure which can push the particulate suspended in the liquid downward, which may cause the broth to effectively to caramelize on the bottom of the pot. Uncovered or largely vented is the way to go here, and it's why most tonkotsu shops cook with an open lid.
3. Apples are the devil. The skins have way too much color and they oxidize during the boil into a brown mess. Most tonkotsu shops avoid aromatics. I was a fool to try and add them.

I was able to salvage this hakata attempt with some solid miso tare, but that's sort of a cop out. Any broth you make should be delicious; using a tare to mask flavors is a crutch.

It did look pretty though

Ultra rich and meaty... too much so.

"Hakata" style noodles. Not usually done in miso, but the pairing was nice.

Live and learn I suppose. Onto the next round of ramen.

A Brief History of my First Ramen Attempts

While currently, I've made some, frankly, awesome bowls of noodles, it wasn't always that way.

No no, the first few ramen bowls I made were insanely terrible. Awful.

Like a slap in the face to what "ramen" is.

So, being the smart man I am, I figure it'd be cool to start the blog off by discussing those dishes in detail. I'll essentially gloss over:

• Why they sucked.
• What I did wrong.
• What I learned from those experiences.

Ugh... here we go.

The first bowl I ever made was a "Tonkotsu" broth with homemade noodles. 

At the time of its inception, I didn't even understand why Tonkotsu worked, or what it necessarily meant, or what ingredients were required to make the dish. I just knew it was white, had pig bones, and was delicious. 

At first, I thought I was on the right track. I had done some initial research and discovered that tonkotsu required a high heat boil to get creamy white. I threw some pig trotters into water with chicken, carrots, onions, and let them cook at rapid boil. 

So when this showed up after 8 hours of simmering, I thought I was golden:

I mean, it was opaque, and whiteish. That worked for me! It was a little orange, but I hardly knew better. 

I also made noodles... they looked cool but... oh dear the shame. 

Without the right protein and gluten content, and with far too much water in the dough, these noodles were soggy, and horrible tasting. 

But hey! In my euphoria of first attempts, who cared?! This was ramen made at home. That was pretty sweet.

In my haste and utter lack of knowledge, I threw on a bit of seared chicken, some far-too-thickly cut green onions, and canned bamboo shoots. No seasoning beyond salt in the broth. Here it is... my first homemade bowl of ramen:

Later on in the week, I made another bowl using the same tonkotsu base, but topped it with pork, onions, and an egregiously overcooked egg.

Now, some of you might think that these bowls of noodles look pretty good! And, honestly, they're not too bad! But they paled in comparison to what I had experienced in Japan. The bowl above was ultra heavy, insanely rich, not nearly complex enough, with very little depth. I knew if I were to satisfy any sort of craving, I'd have to do better. 

As I continued my research, things started to improve. I began looking back to what I had learned in my experiences in Sapporo, like how they used aromatic lard infused with ginger and garlic, and how they used miso and sesame to add richness and complexity. I also decided to start focusing my efforts on Miso ramen, my favorite style.

But... even then, it was kinda sad:

I didn't even use matching chopsticks.... gahhhh.

Noodles continued to haunt me too, as I was unaware of the affects of things like alkalinity, flour ash, water content, dough fermentation, and cooking times. They just never turned out right. They were like pasta...

I gave up on making noodles for a while, opting to buy noodles from Sun Noodle instead. They make a killer product, but there's something alluring about making everything at home. But things were starting to look up!

The truth is, it took several years before I felt like I had any clue what I was doing. Ramen is far more complex than it leads on to be. I like to imagine that these days, my bowls have improved dramatically from my humble origins, but there is always room for improvement. Here are a few recent creations, for comparison's sake: 

Old School Tokyo Shoyu, with chashu pork, spinach, egg, nori, and menma 

Chicken/Dashi Shio Ramen, with menma, egg, nori, green onion, and chicken chashu

 Sapporo Miso, my love.

But things continue to improve, and I continue to learn. That's what this blog is for! To share my growth as a lover of ramen, a lover of cooking, with you. 

The quest continues. 

An Introduction

Hi Everyone! Welcome to my ramen journal.

So... why does this blog exist?

I'm ridiculously obsessed with ramen. After living in Sapporo for a year, I found myself attempting to recreate the dish at home back in the US. Without places to readily buy ramen, it was really my only option. My first attempts were... incredibly embarrassing. Horrible pork concoctions. Gross noodles. Sad toppings. Compounded by the lack of information readily available, it took a while to get to a point where I felt confident in my skills as a ramen cook. But there's always more to learn.

In the past, I've posted under the username "Ramen_Lord" on the /r/ramen subreddit. I like to think that my posts there are well received. But I've quickly realized that posting there may not be the right approach for all of the information I want to share, or for the poorly executed experiments I come up with. Creating a journal of sorts to log my successes, and failures, seems appropriate.

This website serves as a log for my homemade ramen experiments and findings. New techniques, new results, new research, will be recorded here. I hope, in this process, that viewers may learn about ramen, as more than just noodles in soup from Japan. Perhaps it will give people the courage to try making it at home.

I also hope to tackle the astounding amount of misinformation in the US regarding this dish. There still seems to be an lack of quality information online in English, and so much of my research has been through scholarly articles and Japanese websites (thankfully my Japanese skill is passable!). Some posts may be dedicated to these types of topics.

But it will all be ramen. So please join me on my never ending quest for ramen glory.

Welcome to the Ramen Journal.