A cross cultural favorite with some interesting connections to World War II!
I love ramen. For a carb lover like me, it’s hard not to be excited about a massive bowl of hot noodles swimming in salty or spicy broth. The meat and veggies are good too of course, but for me, it’s definitely all about the carbs.
As it turns out, those carbs – and more specifically, what kind of carbs – are responsible for why ramen enjoys such international fame. Although this dish originated in Korea, it became intensely popular in post war Japan because the noodles were made of wheat flour, not rice. Read on to find out why that was so crucial, and how to make a yummy bowl of ramen in your own home.
As it turns out, those carbs – and more specifically, what kind of carbs – are responsible for why ramen enjoys such international fame. Although this dish originated in Korea, it became intensely popular in post war Japan because the noodles were made of wheat flour, not rice. Read on to find out why that was so crucial, and how to make a yummy bowl of ramen in your own home.
Ramen is a Japanese adaptation of Chinese wheat noodles. Its early history and exact date of introduction to Japan is – like many other recipes – a subject of debate. Some scholars place it as early as the mid 1600’s, while others claim it first appeared two hundred years later. The earliest bowls were likely topped with Chinese style roast pork, making ramen with pork one of the more historically authentic versions of the dish.
By 1900, ramen was sold by Chinese street vendors living in Japan, and was a common dish for Japan’s working class. There is some evidence that the first ramen shop opened in Yokohama in 1910, but again, the dish’s early history is a little fuzzy and still debated.
Similarly, I can’t find definitive evidence of when ramen would have been available in Hawaii. It’s totally possible that Lily and her family would have known about it or prepared it in their own home, and it’s also possible there were restaurants that served it in Hawaii in the 1940’s, but pinning it down specifically would require access to better records about restaurants in the islands than I have access to right now. Still, the fact that it was a popular street food in Japan by the 1900’s suggests it definitely could have tagged along with Japanese immigrants to Hawaii, especially because many of those immigrants would have been working class people eager for a taste of home and familiar comfort food.
Regardless, ramen really exploded onto the scene in the wake of World War II. Japan’s economy was utterly destroyed by the war, and Allied bombing raids damaged farms and production facilities alike. For years after the war ended, people in Japan suffered from really extreme food shortages, and many people literally starved to death even with American aid providing relief to impoverished communities.
One of the big challenges was the damaged rice crop. Rice is an staple food in Japan, and losing such a heavily relied on food was absolutely devastating to the population. In December of 1945, only a few weeks after the war had ended, Japan reported the worst rice harvest in 42 years. To help fill the gap, the US flooded the Japanese market with wheat flour, and even began producing propaganda instructing Japanese people to eat more wheat based products and recipes to stay healthy. Ramen noodles are produced with wheat flour, not rice, and they quickly became a staple at black market food stalls for people literally just trying to stay alive. Most of these food stalls were in urban areas, which helped ramen attain an association with city living.
In 1958, instant noodles were invented by Momofuku Ando, making the dish even more accessible to a broader audience. Ramen stalls and shops in cities became a staple of Japanese culture, and in the 1980’s the international community began to embrace and celebrate it as well. There’s even a ramen museum located in Yokohama where visitors can sample various varieties of this tasty dish!
Although ramen was certainly not an unknown dish going into World War II, it’s amazing how its modern popularity and international appeal can be traced back to such a dark time in Japanese history. Eaten as a necessity, it also represents how powerful propaganda can be when it comes to convincing people what to think, do, or eat!
Now, what I’m about to share with you isn’t a wholly authentic recipe, nor is it really true to what the “first” bowl of ramen probably tasted like. My wife doesn’t like pork, so I decided to make a chicken option we could both enjoy instead of making two batches or taunting her with my ramen bowl.
I referenced a few different recipes to bring this ramen bowl to life, but one I definitely want to make sure I credit is this recipe for a ramen egg, which is really easy to make and will definitely up the flavor of your bowl to eleven.
To make the egg, you boil water on the stove and add the eggs to the water once its boiling. Immediately reduce it to a simmer, and cook for seven minutes.
After that’s done, put the eggs into an ice bath and let them sit for three minutes to stop them from cooking any further. You can have hard boiled eggs if you prefer, but you’re shooting for soft boiled.
When the three minutes is up, peel the eggs carefully and put them into a plastic bag filled with two tablespoons of soy sauce, two tablespoons of mirin, and between three to six tablespoons of water. Leave these in the fridge for a few hours, overnight, or up to three or four days after you make them.
When you’re ready to start assembling the other parts of the bowl, I started with my main protein: chicken. The recipe I decided to follow was Unicorns in the Kicthen’s Easy Homemade Chicken Ramen, selected mostly because it included most of the ingredients I was already planning on using when I first visualized this project.
I seasoned a chicken breast with salt and pepper, and put it into a very hot pan with some olive oil to get a nice sear on both sides. Once it had enough color, I put the chicken in the oven at 400 degrees for about twenty minutes to finish cooking. Depending on the thickness of the chicken breast and the temperature of your oven, it could take a little longer or a little less, so just keep an eye on it and use a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature, or cut it open to check and see if it’s done.
Set that aside while you get the rest of your ingredients ready.
Wouldn’t be a ramen bowl without the ramen, right? I’m not talented enough to make my own noodles from scratch, so I prepared two packets of ramen according to the package’s cooking instructions, but leaving out the seasoning packets. Once they're done, drain them and set them aside. You’ll be making your own broth next.
To make the broth, I chopped up two cloves of garlic and added that to a tablespoon of olive oil with about a teaspoon of minced fresh ginger. After letting these cook for a little bit, I added four cups of chicken stock and two tablespoons of soy sauce. Once this comes to a boil, add 3/4 of a cup of sliced mushrooms and let them cook for five minutes. Finally, add some chopped bok choy and let that cook for an additional five minutes.
The recipe I was working off of used baby bok choy, but we bought a full sized one. It does look pretty if you just cut the baby in half and cook it that way, plus it keeps your greens together in the bowl, but our leafier version worked just fine for us too.
Once that's done, start assembling your bowl. Add noodles and arrange your chicken as artfully as possible.
Next, you'll want to get out your eggs. I was really nervous about what mine would come out looking like, as I've never actually soft boiled an egg before. I think they came out pretty well for a first try!
Next comes everything else! Add your broth first - add just enough not to fully submerge your chicken or your egg. Then carefully place your vegetables in the bowl, and add some chopped green onion on top as a garnish and for extra flavor.
You're ready to dig in!
I had a lot of fun researching this post. Ramen is a food I’ve enjoyed for years, but I hadn’t really done much digging into its history beyond knowing the noodles were not a wholly Japanese invention. I honestly had no idea that there was a connection between their boom in popularity and the invention of the instant noodle to World War II. It’s not exactly a happy connection, but still something I appreciate learning about and sharing with all of you. Too often Americans assume that after the war ended, things pretty much went back to normal for civilians, and in many countries, that just wasn’t the case. Hunger and starvation were a grim reality for countless people in the post war years.
As for the recipes themselves, both were easy to follow and produced some good results. I was a big fan of the ramen egg in particular, and enjoyed the second one I made as a snack the following day. Even after only marinating for a few hours, the eggs had a really nice, intense flavor, which got better the following day. They’re a great, protein rich snack to treat yourself to when you’re in the mood for something a little sweet and a little salty.
The ramen soup itself was also pretty decent. It tasted fairly similar to chicken ramen bowls I’ve eaten at various restaurants and was a very filling and satisfying dinner. The broth was a little bland, but that could easily be adjusted or played around with to give it a little more salt or ginger or whatever you think might be missing.
My only complaint? This did involve a lot of different pants, equipment and ingredients. I’ve said it before that I’m actually pretty lazy when it comes to cooking dinner, and I’ve become spoiled by dishes that are easy one pan or one pot meals. Frying the chicken, roasting it, cooking the noodles and making the broth each involved a different vessel, as did boiling the eggs. I had a lot of dishes to clean up when all was said and done. It was absolutely worth the hassle, but I’m definitely not really in a hurry to do it and all the dishes over again. For a lot of people, ramen in the home represents extreme convenience – this was definitely a lot more involved than just boiling noodles and adding a packet of seasoning!
By 1900, ramen was sold by Chinese street vendors living in Japan, and was a common dish for Japan’s working class. There is some evidence that the first ramen shop opened in Yokohama in 1910, but again, the dish’s early history is a little fuzzy and still debated.
Similarly, I can’t find definitive evidence of when ramen would have been available in Hawaii. It’s totally possible that Lily and her family would have known about it or prepared it in their own home, and it’s also possible there were restaurants that served it in Hawaii in the 1940’s, but pinning it down specifically would require access to better records about restaurants in the islands than I have access to right now. Still, the fact that it was a popular street food in Japan by the 1900’s suggests it definitely could have tagged along with Japanese immigrants to Hawaii, especially because many of those immigrants would have been working class people eager for a taste of home and familiar comfort food.
Regardless, ramen really exploded onto the scene in the wake of World War II. Japan’s economy was utterly destroyed by the war, and Allied bombing raids damaged farms and production facilities alike. For years after the war ended, people in Japan suffered from really extreme food shortages, and many people literally starved to death even with American aid providing relief to impoverished communities.
One of the big challenges was the damaged rice crop. Rice is an staple food in Japan, and losing such a heavily relied on food was absolutely devastating to the population. In December of 1945, only a few weeks after the war had ended, Japan reported the worst rice harvest in 42 years. To help fill the gap, the US flooded the Japanese market with wheat flour, and even began producing propaganda instructing Japanese people to eat more wheat based products and recipes to stay healthy. Ramen noodles are produced with wheat flour, not rice, and they quickly became a staple at black market food stalls for people literally just trying to stay alive. Most of these food stalls were in urban areas, which helped ramen attain an association with city living.
In 1958, instant noodles were invented by Momofuku Ando, making the dish even more accessible to a broader audience. Ramen stalls and shops in cities became a staple of Japanese culture, and in the 1980’s the international community began to embrace and celebrate it as well. There’s even a ramen museum located in Yokohama where visitors can sample various varieties of this tasty dish!
Although ramen was certainly not an unknown dish going into World War II, it’s amazing how its modern popularity and international appeal can be traced back to such a dark time in Japanese history. Eaten as a necessity, it also represents how powerful propaganda can be when it comes to convincing people what to think, do, or eat!
Now, what I’m about to share with you isn’t a wholly authentic recipe, nor is it really true to what the “first” bowl of ramen probably tasted like. My wife doesn’t like pork, so I decided to make a chicken option we could both enjoy instead of making two batches or taunting her with my ramen bowl.
I referenced a few different recipes to bring this ramen bowl to life, but one I definitely want to make sure I credit is this recipe for a ramen egg, which is really easy to make and will definitely up the flavor of your bowl to eleven.
To make the egg, you boil water on the stove and add the eggs to the water once its boiling. Immediately reduce it to a simmer, and cook for seven minutes.
After that’s done, put the eggs into an ice bath and let them sit for three minutes to stop them from cooking any further. You can have hard boiled eggs if you prefer, but you’re shooting for soft boiled.
When the three minutes is up, peel the eggs carefully and put them into a plastic bag filled with two tablespoons of soy sauce, two tablespoons of mirin, and between three to six tablespoons of water. Leave these in the fridge for a few hours, overnight, or up to three or four days after you make them.
When you’re ready to start assembling the other parts of the bowl, I started with my main protein: chicken. The recipe I decided to follow was Unicorns in the Kicthen’s Easy Homemade Chicken Ramen, selected mostly because it included most of the ingredients I was already planning on using when I first visualized this project.
I seasoned a chicken breast with salt and pepper, and put it into a very hot pan with some olive oil to get a nice sear on both sides. Once it had enough color, I put the chicken in the oven at 400 degrees for about twenty minutes to finish cooking. Depending on the thickness of the chicken breast and the temperature of your oven, it could take a little longer or a little less, so just keep an eye on it and use a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature, or cut it open to check and see if it’s done.
Set that aside while you get the rest of your ingredients ready.
Wouldn’t be a ramen bowl without the ramen, right? I’m not talented enough to make my own noodles from scratch, so I prepared two packets of ramen according to the package’s cooking instructions, but leaving out the seasoning packets. Once they're done, drain them and set them aside. You’ll be making your own broth next.
The recipe I was working off of used baby bok choy, but we bought a full sized one. It does look pretty if you just cut the baby in half and cook it that way, plus it keeps your greens together in the bowl, but our leafier version worked just fine for us too.
Once that's done, start assembling your bowl. Add noodles and arrange your chicken as artfully as possible.
Next comes everything else! Add your broth first - add just enough not to fully submerge your chicken or your egg. Then carefully place your vegetables in the bowl, and add some chopped green onion on top as a garnish and for extra flavor.
As for the recipes themselves, both were easy to follow and produced some good results. I was a big fan of the ramen egg in particular, and enjoyed the second one I made as a snack the following day. Even after only marinating for a few hours, the eggs had a really nice, intense flavor, which got better the following day. They’re a great, protein rich snack to treat yourself to when you’re in the mood for something a little sweet and a little salty.
The ramen soup itself was also pretty decent. It tasted fairly similar to chicken ramen bowls I’ve eaten at various restaurants and was a very filling and satisfying dinner. The broth was a little bland, but that could easily be adjusted or played around with to give it a little more salt or ginger or whatever you think might be missing.
My only complaint? This did involve a lot of different pants, equipment and ingredients. I’ve said it before that I’m actually pretty lazy when it comes to cooking dinner, and I’ve become spoiled by dishes that are easy one pan or one pot meals. Frying the chicken, roasting it, cooking the noodles and making the broth each involved a different vessel, as did boiling the eggs. I had a lot of dishes to clean up when all was said and done. It was absolutely worth the hassle, but I’m definitely not really in a hurry to do it and all the dishes over again. For a lot of people, ramen in the home represents extreme convenience – this was definitely a lot more involved than just boiling noodles and adding a packet of seasoning!
Time to dig right in!
No comments:
Post a Comment