Photo credit – tripadvisor.com

A hearty soup appreciated on a cold day in the snow, is ramen. It is not hard to cook but I am led to believe that making the stock is a long process.

Ramen is a Japanese soup dish. It consists of noodles served in a meat- or fish-based broth, often flavored with soy sauce or miso. It uses toppings such as sliced pork, dried seaweed, bamboo shoots, boiled eggs and green onions.

Bar Moon is one of the restaurants in Hirafu and it is THE place to go for ramen. When selecting your ramen, you get to select your base stock and then you can add extra ingredients eg extra pork, extra vegetables. The miso broth that I chose was a spicier version than anything I have produced at home so far.

My research tells me that there are a few types of ramen to seek out:

Shoyu – a soy sauce base with a clear, brown colour, curly noodles, and the meat or vegetable stock gives it a delicious, tangy flavor. This is a familiar ramen found in Tokyo.

Tonkotsu – thick and cloudy, white broth, with the colour and consistency from boiling pork bones and fat on high heat for many hours (up to 20 hours).

Shio – is a salty broth, and one of the oldest ramen broths. Sea salt is considered the oldest form of ramen seasoning. It is made with chicken or pork base broth. Besides being salty, it is a clear yellow colour and often contains a lot of seaweed.

Miso – Developed in Hokkaido, this broth is considered the youngest of the broths. This nutty, sweet soup is entirely Japanese, has thick, curly, chewy noodles.

Tsukemen – The noodles are served separately from the broth, but they’re meant to be dipped. The broth is thick and made for dipping.

I have been making a sort of miso ramen here with a few short cuts. I hope to make a more traditional version in the weeks ahead.

Are you a ramen fan?