Steaming bowls of ramen have got to be one of the best additions to London’s food scene over the past few decades. When Wagamama opened in the early 1990s, Londoners were besotted by the Tokyo-inspired charm of slurping noodle soup side by side. There were queues of office workers around the door every day, jostling for a spot on the oh-so-cool communal tables, chowing down noodles topped with teriyaki salmon like it was a fashion statement. Now, a whole slew of dedicated ramen spots such as Bone Daddies and Tonkotsu keep the Japanese dish as popular as ever in the UK.
In Tokyo ramen is often considered a street food, but making it at home can be surprisingly easy once you’ve nailed the basics: really, it’s just noodles in a hot broth. To keep our miso levels up during lockdown, some of London’s coolest ramen and noodle joints have shared their recipes with GQ. From classic pork Tonkotsu to instant chicken noodles to a “you-won’t-believe-it’s-not-meat” veggie ramen from Bone Daddies, we’ve covered all bases. And, of course, if you fancy cutting some corners, ever-innovative restaurants such as Koya and Carnaby’s Shoryu have launched ramen kits that’ll be delivered nationwide.
Many of the elements are the same throughout (marinated eggs are a staple), so the recipe from Tonkotsu can be adopted in all of the recipes below. Likewise, dried noodles, soy sauce, spring onions and a good quality stock are a must. Enjoy.
Tonkotsu’s simple soy-marinated eggs (nitamgo)
This recipe comes from Tonkotsu, one of London’s coolest ramen bars, who has kept afloat during lockdown by doing deliveries across the city. The secret to nitamgo is using good eggs: try Burford Browns for their thick orange yolk. You can tweak this recipe by adding ginger, dashi or mirin. tonkotsu.co.uk
Ingredients (serves four):
6 Burford Brown eggs
25ml sake
160ml soy sauce
10g sugar
1 spring onion
5g sea salt
350ml water
Method:
-
1
Add all the ingredients except the eggs into a saucepan and heat until the sugar and sea salt have both dissolved (do not let it boil). Let the mixture cool to at least room temperature. The marinade can also be made in advance and kept in the fridge.
-
2
Boil eggs so they have perfectly soft yolks, which should be around 6 minutes 30 seconds from room temperature, depending on the size of the eggs. Take off the heat and plunge into iced water to cool.
-
3
Peel the eggs then put them into the marinade. Put a piece of kitchen paper on top to make sure all 6 eggs are fully submerged.
-
4
Leave in the fridge, ideally for at least 24 hours.
Shoryu’s tantan tonkotsu (pork broth with minced pork)
Tantan or dandan noodles are a dish that originates from Sichuan cuisine and consists of a rich pork bone soup stock, topped with spicy sauce, preserved vegetables and minced pork. This Japanese interpretation includes red pickle ginger and marinated eggs, spicing up the dish with umami and heat. Shoryu in Carnaby’s Kingly Court has shared its irresistibly spicy version of the ramen noodles to make at home. shoryuramen.com
Ingredients (serves two):
For the soup…
700ml pork bone soup stock
1tbsp red miso
1tbsp Korean gochujang spicy miso paste
2tsp lard (optional)
2 bunch ramen noodles
For the seasoned pork mince…
300g pork mince
2tbsp soy sauce
1 fresh red chilli
2 garlic clove, finely chopped
2tsp vegetable oil
2tsp sesame oil
To serve…
Red pickled ginger
2 soy-marinated egg
2-3 green onions, thinly sliced
4 nori seaweed sheets, cut in half
Method:
-
1
Heat your pork bone stock in a large saucepan and bring to a low simmer. Feel free to use store-bought soup stock or, if you’re adventurous, make your own from scratch.
-
2
Once simmering, add the red miso, spicy miso paste and lard (or leave out the lard if you prefer) to the stock and stir until evenly combined. Remove from the heat and set aside.
-
3
Prepare your ramen noodles according to the package. Drain and set aside.
-
4
Brown the mince in a frying pan in the vegetable and sesame oil for a few minutes. Add the soy sauce, red chilli and garlic and cook for 3-4 mins more, until cooked and smelling delicious.
-
5
Reheat the soup stock if needed. Add the noodles to a large ramen bowl and then top with the soup. Add the seasoned pork mince on top of the noodles.
-
6
Serve with red pickled, ginger, boiled eggs cut in half, green onions and nori. Feel free to add other toppings as desired.
Taka’s post-work instant noodle chicken paitan ramen
This recipe comes from Taiji Maruyama, executive chef at Taka in Mayfair and Marylebone, and is something he loves to cook himself after a long shift in the kitchen or during lockdown. Good-quality stock is essential – brownie points if you make your own. Emulsifying the chicken stock with duck fat will add a delicious creaminess to the broth, making it thick and cloudy. takalondon.com
Ingredients (serves two):
80ml soy sauce
50ml mirin (if you can’t find it, use 15g sugar)
5g Hondashi Japanese stock powder (a regular chicken stock powder would work fine too)
700ml good-quality chicken broth
30g duck fat
5g fresh grated ginger
2 soy marinated eggs
200g dried ramen noodles
1 spring onion, finely sliced
2 sheets nori seaweed
Sprinkling of white sesame seeds
Method:
-
1
When you’re ready to make the ramen, simply put the soy sauce, mirin, grated ginger and stock powder into a pot and bring to the boil.
-
2
Add your fresh chicken stock and bring to a gentle simmer, then take it off the heat.
-
3
Cook the instant noodles separately, according to instructions on the packet (it usually takes about two minutes), and drain.
-
4
Add the noodles to the stock, bring very briefly to the boil, then remove from the heat and serve into two bowls.
-
5
Garnish with the sliced spring onion, white sesame seeds and nori sheets, with the marinated egg, cut in half, on top. It really couldn’t be simpler.
Koya’s udon noodles and prawn tempura pancakes
Dashi, the key to this dish, is basically liquid umami: the indescribably savoury fifth flavour that’s so prevalent in Japanese cooking. It can be made with vegan kombu or dried bonito fish flakes and Koya restaurant is also selling its handmade dashi nationwide through a new delivery service, Koya Mail. This noodle broth recipe is topped with kakiage, clusters of prawns and veggies deep-fried in tempura, which come out a little like fritters. You can play around with the veggie combinations. koya.co.uk
Ingredients (serves two):
2 servings dashi (available nationwide from Koya)
2 servings fresh udon noodles
50-60g green beans
40-50g podded peas
4 large fresh prawns
200g tempura flour
350ml water
400ml vegetable oil (preferably corn or peanut oil)
Spring onions, finely chopped to garnish
Grated ginger, to garnish
Method:
-
1
Before frying the kakiage (tempura fritters) make sure your udon, dashi and garnish are ready to go. Place the cold udon in each of your serving bowls and prepare a kettle of boiling water.
-
2
Next, start preparing the tempura prawns and vegetables. Top and tail the runner beans, then slice them at a sharp angle to make thin matchsticks.
-
3
Peel the raw prawns (take the head and tail off), then de-vein the back of prawn using a small sharp knife. Cut the prawns into 1cm pieces.
-
4
To make the batter, mix 150g tempura flour with 350ml cold water. When you are mixing, start by going around the sides and bottom a couple of times. Rather than “whisking” try to “stomp” into the mixture, as we are aiming for a lumpy, pancake type of batter.
-
5
Place equal amounts of runner beans, peas and prawns in two separate small bowls and sprinkle tempura flour as you shake them until they are all coated in thin layer of flour.
-
6
Pour in about a couple of ladles (80-100ml) of batter into each bowl and give it a quick mix.
-
7
Heat the oil to 160-170C in a pan or deep fryer. Once it’s reached this, pour half of the bowl into the oil (this recipe makes four kakiage tempura, so you have two per bowl). Remember to pour batches of the batter gently and gradually into the oil, rather than “dropping” them in one go. With a chopstick you can gently shake them once in the oil to loosen some of the lumpy bits.
-
8
Let one side fry for a minute, then flip to fry the other side for a further minute. Continue to fry all four kakiage tempura.
-
9
When you’re ready to eat, pour in the boiling water over each bowl of udon and leave them to heat up for 1-2 minutes, then drain. Meanwhile, heat the dashi liquid in a pan.
-
10
Add the dashi to the udon, top with two kakiage tempura each and garnish with spring onions, grated ginger and anything else you like.
Supa Ya’s smoked bacon, morel and truffle mapo tofu
This weird and wonderful recipe from supper-club-turned pop-up-restaurant Supa Ya takes ramen to the next level. The dish was partly inspired by Black Axe Mangal and also by the mapo tofu from Sichuan Folk on Brick Lane. Supa Ya is on a mission to serve the finest “traditionally inauthentic” ramen London has ever seen and this will be one of its regularly changing “new wave bowls” once the restaurant reopens. Meanwhile, enjoy making it at home. linktr.ee/supaya
Ingredients (serves four):
50g dried morel mushrooms
500ml hot water
150ml light soy sauce
150g Gochujang (Korean chilli paste)
150g thick tomato paste
5 rashers smoked bacon
30g fresh black truffle (or a few drops truffle oil)
100ml chill oil
25g garlic
300g Guinness
3g Sichuan peppercorns
8 soy marinated eggs
1 block firm tofu
4 spring onions
800ml chicken stock
4 nests dried noodles
Method:
-
1
Rehydrate the morels in the hot water and soy sauce for about an hour.
-
2
Toast the Sichuan peppercorns in a frying pan until you can smell them and then grind to a powder in a pestle and mortar or pepper grinder.
-
3
Dice the bacon and start to slowly render in a deep frying pan. You can add a little oil to the pan to get it going, if needed.
-
4
Finely chop the garlic and add it to the bacon, taking care not to burn it. Add the chilli oil to the pan.
-
5
Strain the mushrooms and add them to the frying pan too, setting aside the liquid, which will become your stock.
-
6
Add the peppercorns to the frying pan, then pour in the Guinness to deglaze – simmering the liquid until the beer has reduced by two thirds.
-
7
Once most of the beer has evaporated, add the soy and mushroom liquid, tomato paste and gochujang paste to the frying pan. Simmer to reduce the liquid again by a third.
-
8
Dice the tofu and add that to the pan too.
-
9
Take off the heat and shave or dice the truffle into the sauce.
-
10
Bring your chicken stock to a simmer.
-
11
To assemble the dish, add about 200ml of chicken stock to each bowl. Divide the noodles between the four bowls, then spoon some of the mapo tofu over each.
-
12
Cut the marinated eggs in half and place into the bowl, then top with a pinch of good sea salt and some cracked black pepper. Finish with some sliced spring onions.
Bone Daddies’ veggie miso mushroom ramen
A stalwart of London’s ramen restaurants, Bone Daddies can do no wrong. “We didn’t have a vegetarian ramen on the menu when we opened, but then we never thought vegetarians would even enter a Bone Daddies,” the restaurant’s group executive chef Loic Leguay tells GQ. “We were wrong, so we set out to make a ramen that was incredibly ‘meaty’ without the meat, a rich and deeply savoury ramen.” For those craving the inimitable flavour of a real Bone Daddies ramen, it’s open for collection and delivery from its six restaurants across London. bonedaddies.com
Ingredients (serves two):
For the mushrooms…
5tbsp vegetable oil, or as needed
250g oyster or hon shimeji mushrooms, ends trimmed
4 medium field mushrooms, stems discarded, peeled and cut into wedges
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
3 sprigs of thyme
Maldon sea salt, to taste
For the soy tare base (makes 300ml)…
250ml soy sauce
10g caster sugar
45ml mirin
For the mushroom broth (makes 1.25 litres)…
3 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly charred
1 small piece green leek top, well charred
2 sprigs of thyme
40g dried shiitake mushrooms
1 medium onion, well charred
25ml soy tare
For the ramen…
2 asparagus spears, woody base trimmed
50g pak choi, leaves separated
4tbsp soy tare, plus 1tbsp for marinating the tofu
30g drained silken tofu, cut into 1cm dice
2tbsp garlic oil
600ml hot mushroom broth
200g straight white tonkotsu noodles, cooked
60g bean sprouts
2 marinated egg, halved
60g sliced soy-braised shiitake, heated through
Method:
-
1
First, cook the two types of mushrooms in separate frying pans. Cover the base of each pan with half the vegetable oil and place both over a medium-high heat. Add the hon shimeji mushrooms to one pan and the field mushrooms to the other and cook for a few minutes until coloured on all sides.
-
2
When almost cooked, add half the garlic and thyme to each pan, adding more oil if necessary. Sauté for a further 1-2 minutes and season well with sea salt. Remove the mushrooms from the pans and drain on kitchen paper. Keep warm for serving, reserving the mushroom oil to drizzle onto the ramen at the end.
-
3
To make the soy tare, add half the soy sauce and all the sugar to a saucepan and place over a low heat until the sugar has completely dissolved, but do not allow to boil. Add the remaining ingredients and stir to combine. Store in an airtight container in a cool, dark cupboard for up to a month.
-
4
To make the mushroom broth, tie the garlic, leek and thyme in a square of muslin cloth into a bundle. Put all ingredients into a large saucepan with 3 litres of water and bring to the boil. Turn off the heat, cover with cling film and leave to infuse in a cool place for at least 3 hours. Strain the mushroom broth through a fine-mesh sieve, pressing the solids to extract as much flavour as possible. Discard the muslin bundle, but reserve the shiitake. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or freeze for up to 6 months.
-
5
To make the soy-braised shiitake, mix the soy tare and mirin together in a saucepan with 3 tbsp water, add the shiitake and simmer gently, stirring frequently, until only a little liquid remains but the mushrooms are still moist. Cool quickly, stirring. Cut into 6mm-thick slices.
-
6
For the ramen, start by blanching the asparagus (remember to blanch as many spears as needed according to how many people you are serving – you will need one spear per portion of ramen) in plenty of boiling water for 1 minute. Remove with a slotted spoon and immediately plunge into iced water. Drain, cut the spear into thirds and set aside.
-
7
Blanch the pak choi in the boiling water for 5 seconds. Remove with a slotted spoon and plunge into iced water, then drain. Plunge into iced water and drain once again.
-
8
Blanch the bean sprouts in the boiling water for 10 seconds, then drain.
-
9
Sprinkle the extra soy tare over the tofu (1tbsp per 15g portion) and leave to marinate for one minute. Drain.
-
10
To construct the ramen, add half the garlic oil, then the remaining 2tbsp soy tare and the garlic shoots to a hot serving bowl, then add the hot mushroom broth and mix gently. Top with the remaining ingredients in the order above, adding the asparagus, pak choi and the drained tofu cubes after the cooked mushrooms, finishing with the remaining ½ tbsp garlic oil and a drizzle of leftover mushroom oil.
Now read
Five epic sandwiches to help you survive WFH
The most delicious pasta recipes to make at home
Best Michelin-star and fine-dining food deliveries