A Quick and Easy Ramen Bowl for One

This recipe is part of the series The Recipe I Mastered This Year.

From a staple food of Chinese immigrants in late-19th century Japan to the comfort food of choice for many all over the modern world, if there’s one dish that has found a home wherever it has gone, it’s a steaming bowl of ramen. While the earliest known iteration of ramen was a simple meal made of soba or buckwheat noodles, a few toppings, and a straightforward broth made of salt and pork bones, its many modern iterations can be as simple or as complicated as you want them to be.

I made my first bowl of ramen earlier this year. I didn’t even know where to begin, but a lot has changed since then. After many failed attempts and a few successes, this is how I make ramen at home now.

Recipe: Drishya’s Ramen Bowl for One

(Serves 1)
Ingredients
For the Noodles
1 serving of Egg noodles (approximately 75 gram)

For the Broth
1 bone-in, skin-on chicken thigh
2 shiitake mushrooms (dried)
1 large onion (peeled and quartered)
1 large tomato (quartered)
2 red chillies (roughly chopped)
1 carrot (peeled and roughly chopped)
½ cup Mirin (Japanese rice wine)
½ cup Sake (Japanese rice beer)
½ cup light soy sauce
½ cup dark soy sauce
½ cup toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon gochujang (fermented Korean chilli paste)
1 tablespoon of miso (fermented soy paste)
1 teaspoon Chinese five spices
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger (peeled and sliced)
4-6 cloves of garlic (peeled and smashed)
500 ml of water
Salt, to taste
Sugar, to taste (optional)

For the Toppings
1 soft-boiled egg
A handful of finely sliced coriander (or a whole baby bok choy)
A handful of green spring onions (or finely sliced leek)
1 cup carrot (peeled and julienned)
A sprinkle of chilli flakes
A sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds
A dash of toasted sesame oil (or chilli oil)
A smidge of butter or sesame oil (to sauté the chicken thigh and shiitake mushrooms)

Method
Begin with the broth. In a pressure cooker, add all the ingredients (except for the miso, which should never be boiled) and cook until the first whistle. Then fish out the chicken thigh and the shiitake mushrooms and strain the broth into a saucepan.

Cook the noodles in the broth itself until they are cooked to your preferred consistency.

Meanwhile, debone the chicken thigh and sauté it with the shiitake mushrooms in a tablespoon of butter or sesame oil and set aside.

Once the noodles are cooked, strain the noodles, reserve the broth in a separate bowl, and set aside.

Begin plating by placing the miso at the bottom of a bowl. Add a little bit of the reserved broth, and stir well until the miso dissolves completely.

Gently form the noodles into a nest and place the nest of noodles at the centre of the bowl.

Cut the egg into halves and place both halves on one side of the bowl, along with the chicken thigh and the shiitake mushrooms.

Strain the broth into a saucepan and bring to a boil once again.

Add the broth to the bowl and garnish with the rest of the toppings.

Allow the coriander or baby bok choy to wilt slightly before you serve.

Slurp. (Yes. That’s how you should eat your ramen. Always.)

Use the leftover broth ingredients to make a smooth sauce using a blender. This sauce makes for a flagrant and full-bodied base for an egg curry (or any curry for that matter!) while reducing your waste to a bare minimum at the same time.

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