[Recipe] Chicken Dashi Shoyu Ramen

As I take more time to focus on what's more important lately, I've prepared more one pot meals. I still desire to feed my family well but I will not attempt something fancy which is time consuming or requires a lot of new fancy sauces that I have to accumulate in my already close to 'exploding' kitchen storage space.

Ramen, something I've made quite often which requires very little effort and time. In the past, the Ramen that I prepared was made in miso soup base. Today, I tried something different, and it was great! I just had to share the recipe with all of you! *smile*

The broth was made with chicken breast meat, dashi stock and soya sauce. It's simply a perfect combination. The thing is, it's not bothersome nor require many steps to get the broth prepared.

This is the dashi stock powder that I've used as part of the ingredients for the soup base. It can be easily found in most supermarket's Japanese food section.

As for topping for the Ramen, it's as fancy as you want it to be. I prefer char siew as I have a great char siew recipe that always never fails.

Nice oven grilled char siew ready to be served.

To save time, I always purchase this pack of bean sprout as the head and tail end of the bean sprouts are already plucked. Alternatively, you may also use baby bok choy for this ramen meal.

Surprised that I use pasta for ramen? heh... the idea was taken from here in which these Japanese ladies who lived in the USA couldn't find another noodle that has a texture as close to ramen as these pasta. So take it from the Japanese, not me, about using pasta as an alternative if you can't find ramen noodles in the supermarket nearby you.

So seriously, how easy is it to make this Ramen meal? See for yourself -

Ingredients
*serves 4 people
400-500gms shoulder butt pork (see char siew recipe here)
1 large skinless chicken breast meat (approx 300gms)
100gms bean sprouts
Angel Hair pasta (amount of pasta as required accordingly)
4 eggs (recipe for lava egg here)
2 tbsp light soya sauce (adjust to your preference of saltiness)
1 tsp dark soya sauce
2 sachet packs of dashi stock
Chopped spring onions and chilli (optional)
Nori sheets or Nori topping

Process
1) Wash chicken breast meat thoroughly and place it into a soup pot filled with approx 3ltrs of water. Bring it to a boil and let it simmer for 1hr.
2) 15mins before soup base is ready, boil pasta in boiling water (follow instructions on the time of cooking the pasta accordingly).
3) Once soup has simmered for an hour, add in seasoning of light soya sauce, dark soya sauce and dashi stock stir till well combined. Set it aside for later use.
4) On a separate saucepan, boil some water to blanch bean sprouts (or any other green vege you plan to use) till it's sufficiently cooked.
5) Assemble all the ingredients together - add soup in bowl, followed by cooked noodles, top with char siew, bean sprouts, spring onions and nori sheets if you have otherwise, you could use nori topping like I did in my ramen.

Enjoy!