Staff Meal Ramen: My First Miso Ramen (Authentic Tonkotsu-Based Sapporo Miso Ramen Made for an Italian Chef)

Get the prep ready. Gather the aromatic vegetables and ginger for the broth along with the seasonings for the miso and the chashu marinade, then prepare the miso base and the chashu marinade.

Vacuum-seal the prepped items and store them. Italian restaurants store their prep using large vacuum machines.

Wash the pork bones and chicken carcasses thoroughly. Normally they would soak in water for a day to draw out the blood, but with no time, wash them carefully to remove blood and impurities.

Bring the pork bones to a boil once and discard the water. After removing the impurities and the smell of blood, scrub between the bones with a toothbrush or similar to clean them.

Prepare the ramen noodles. Add water and salt to the flour, adjust the hydration while watching the dough, and knead with a machine. Salt is added to give the noodles chew.

Clean the pork back fat. Carefully remove any remaining hairs to prepare it as back fat for the ramen.

To the pork bone base simmered for 3 hours, add the cleaned back fat, the chicken carcasses (with the skin fat on for a cloudy white broth), and the salted and drained umami base, then simmer slowly for 8 hours total.

To bring it closer to Italian tastes, blend the softly simmered back fat and add it to the ramen base, then simmer in this state for about an hour.

On day 2, strain the broth simmered since the previous day. Strain the broth, concentrated with the sweetness and umami of the vegetables, until clean and reduce it once more. Rapidly chill the fat collected on top to solidify it and use it later for the aroma oil.

Make the marinade for the ground pork and the chashu. Prepare a marinade of soy sauce, mirin, and ginger, sear the meat for a fragrant browning, then vacuum-seal it with the marinade and cook sous vide.

On the final day, check the prepped eggs (boiled too long, so they became hard-boiled) and mix the leftover chashu marinade into the miso tare to add depth.

Roll out the fresh noodles. The dough cannot be stretched all at once, so roll it out in halves, turn it lengthwise, and cut it. Massage the noodles by hand to give them the crinkle of Sapporo-style wavy noodles.

Make the soup base. Stir-fry the ground pork and aromatic vegetables well, and once fragrant, pour in the tonkotsu base.

Make the fragrant burnt oil. Burn the oil thoroughly to bring out the aroma, and once it settles, strain it to finish the burnt oil. Blend the soup base to make it even smoother.

Make buttered corn sauté as a topping for the Sapporo miso ramen. Sauté the corn in butter to cook off the moisture and concentrate the umami.

Get ready to plate a large portion. Cut a generous amount of butter, and since there are no ramen bowls, choose a deep dish instead.

Combine the miso tare with the soup and stir-fry to draw out the aroma. Boil the noodles and combine them with the soup poured into the bowl.

Warm the chashu and finish. Put the noodles in the bowl, top with the chashu, buttered corn, boiled egg, and butter, drizzle over the burnt oil, and complete the miso ramen.