momofuku ramen
We got the Momofuku Cookbook as a gift and turned to the first recipe. Ramen! We love ramen! Quick noodles in a meaty broth with a soft poached egg? Delicious! Easy! That’s when the nightmare began.
Actually, it was one of those nightmares that ends happily, with a big bowl of steaming ramen. But before you get to the table, you lose your phone and realize you’re naked in the sixth-grade hallway.
“I’ll get the ingredients!” Michael volunteered and then vanished for two hours. He came home with half of what he intended to get—neck bones are hard to find! I went next, hitting H Mart, Whole Foods and Stop & Shop. I started making the broth around 1pm on a Saturday and by 5pm, I had made little headway. I was on step #2 of 40. I’d basically only boiled some water.
David Chang’s recipe for ramen broth is a fool’s errand. Over forty steps and each step has its own steps. Four pounds of chicken wings and a pound of bacon went into the ramen broth, which I didn’t finish until the following weekend (when I finally found the right cheesecloth for the final strain.) And that was only the broth! There was another 15 hours of shopping, prepping and cooking to prepare the ingredients for the soup, including cured and roasted pork belly, sous-vide eggs and marinated bamboo. And I skipped the make-your-own noodles – after that broth, I couldn’t spend another week in the kitchen.
Was it worth it? Hell no. Was it delicious? Better than anything I’ve made in a long time. But next time, I’ll probably made a quicker broth in the Instant Pot (using pork bones and kombu). I did appreciate the cured and roasted pork and I’ll be sous-viding eggs for years to come. But next time, a bowl of ramen won’t take me three weeks to make. In fact, I might just make Momofuku reservations now.