Tonkotsu Ramen

Making Tonkotsu Ramen Ahead

The broth keeps 4 days refrigerated and freezes 3 months — it will set to a solid jelly, which is a sign you did it right. Never store assembled ramen; the noodles disintegrate.

Tonkotsu Ramen: The Method

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1. Cover the trotters and neck bones with cold water, bring to a rolling boil for 15 minutes, then drain and scrub every bone clean under running water. Scrub the pot too.

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2. Return the clean bones to the pot, cover with 5 litres of fresh water and bring to a hard, rolling boil. Keep it there — this is the opposite of stock-making.

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3. Boil for 8 hours, topping up with boiling water to keep the bones submerged and stirring every hour to keep the emulsion moving. The broth will turn opaque and creamy white.

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4. Add the onion, garlic, ginger and spring onion whites for the final hour, then strain through a coarse sieve, pressing hard. You should have 2 litres.

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5. For the chashu, simmer the rolled pork belly in the soy sauce, mirin, sake and 400 ml water for 90 minutes, turning occasionally. Cool in the liquid, then chill and slice thinly. Reserve the liquid as your tare.

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6. For the ajitama, boil the eggs for exactly 6.5 minutes, shock in ice water, peel, and marinate in 200 ml of the cooled tare in the fridge for at least 4 hours.

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7. To serve, put 3 tablespoons of tare in each hot bowl and add 400 ml of boiling-hot broth. Whisk in a teaspoon of sesame oil.

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8. Boil the noodles for 60 to 90 seconds only, drain hard, and lower into the bowls in a neat fold.

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9. Top with chashu, a halved ajitama, menma, nori and spring onion. Eat immediately, and loudly.

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Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.

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A Few Pointers

• Ask your butcher to split the trotters. Whole ones will not release their collagen properly.
• Do not salt the broth. All seasoning comes from the tare in the bottom of the bowl, which lets you tune each serving.
• Warm your bowls with boiling water. Ramen broth loses 10°C / 50°F the moment it hits a cold bowl.

Behind the Recipe

Unlike most stocks, tonkotsu is boiled violently on purpose: the agitation shatters fat globules and collagen into a permanent emulsion, which is exactly what turns the broth opaque white and gives it body. Blanching the bones first removes the blood and scum that would otherwise make that emulsion grey and gritty.

Good Alongside

Cold Japanese lager or barley tea · Serve gyoza on the side · Finish with a matcha ice cream

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Nasu Dengaku.

Changing the Recipe

• Out of spring onions? A small regular onion, finely sliced, or a few chives stirred in at the end both cover the job.
• If you only have ground ginger, a quarter-teaspoon for each tablespoon of fresh is the ratio usually given; it tastes warmer and less bright than the fresh root.
• An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.

Questions About Tonkotsu Ramen

What's in a Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

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