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.