Miyajima Ramen School in Osaka

This was great fun!

The cooking school is just outside Osaka and offers a variety of courses from 1 to 5 days. The 1 day covers basics and focuses on giving you everything needed to cook something up at home. The 3 & 5 day courses let you come up with new recipe's and learn about shop management.

The owner is Miyajima-sensai! It was great fun being in a proper ramen kitchen with all the tools and we learnt some very useful tricks. You don't have enough time in a day to cover bone broth but he does have a super expensive noodle machine which more than made up for it!! 

Here is a breakdown of the day in pictures along with his most useful tips...

Broth:

  • I have never seen or heard of this "short-cut" to making a meaty, umami rich broth but before bone broth purists dismiss it (as I did to begin with), don't ... it works well and takes hours not days! 
  • DETAILS: 2KG pork mince, 1KG, 7L cold water, 2 ground up dried shitake, 20G konbu. Mix well then bring slowly to boil (stirring constantly) and simmer for 30 mins. Strain. 

Chicken Chashu:

  • Braising liquid: 330G sugar, 180C sake, 1L shoyu, 1.18L hot water.
  • Chicken: use thighs. Roll up and tie with strong, brown, simmer for 25 mins, cool and leave in fridge for a day.

Half Boiled Eggs:

  • Soak eggs in warm water prior to cooking to ensure start at the same temperature
  • Punch a hole in the egg shell before cooking
  • Stir eggs gently but continuously while boiling to ensure centre gets even cooking
  • 7 minutes for large eggs, 6 min 30 secs for small/medium
  • Shake eggs in bowl with ice to crack shells so water gets inside. Then cool and leave for 2 hours.
  • We didn't marinade but I have recipe's for this in other posts

Dried Fish:

  • 300G of dried fish. Use a combination of mackerel, bonito & sardine.
  • 1800C cold water
  • Bring to boil and simmer for 15 minutes

Noodles:

  • 3KG bread flour
  • 30G Kansui (lye). You can use baking soda but need to add water, heat up and let cool
  • 60g salt
  • 960g cold water
  • Mix well for 10 mins
  • Roll to 3mm thickness then to 2mm and eventually 1mm.
  • Leave for 30 hours, covered. 
  • Make sure you to do this in a dry and cold room - humidity is bad for the process. Miyajima had a separate room with an awesomely expensive noodle making machine and pully system to lower noodles downstairs into the kitchen!

Bowl #1: Shio Ramen:

  • Ratio of meat broth to dried fish = 2:1. Total broth per bowl 360C.
  • Shio tare: he just added 5g at the bottom of each bowl using table salt (sodium levels less consistent in natural salts).
  • Bowl noodles for 2 minutes (a little less if they have been set aside for 30 hours to sit).

Bowl #2: Tantanmen Ramen:

  • Miyajima-sensai used the same meat broth but whisked it up to look creamy, a bit like tonkotsu broth
  • Then he made a tantanmen tare:
    • 200g pork mince fried, squirt of tobanjan sauce (Chinese hot bean) and togarashi
    • 50g ground sesame seeds fried in 50g sesame oil
    • 30g chilli powder + 20g water + hot sesame oil
  • To plate, he added to a hot bowl: 360C broth, 5g salt, 20c chilli oil, 20c sesame seeds plus some browned mince.
Tom Case