Ramen broth has a reputation: bones, a tall pot, the better part of a day. Miso ramen asks for none of it.
The smell starts about a minute in, when sesame oil meets ginger and garlic. The vegetables follow, and then the miso — not stirred into a finished soup, but dropped into the hot pan and fried with everything else before a drop of water goes in. That is where the broth gets its depth, and it is the step worth learning.
Kombu carries the rest. One pot, about twenty minutes, and a bowl that is entirely plant-based — tender vegetables, springy noodles, sweet corn and nori on top.
Serves 1 · about 20 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 portion dried vegan ramen noodles (80g) — check the noodle's own ingredients for egg and meat extracts, and set aside any soup sachet
- 1⅔ cups (400 ml) water
- 1 tsp kombu dashi powder — pure kombu, or a dashi labelled vegan
- 1½ Tbsp miso — a red or brown rice miso rather than the sweet white kind, with no dashi blended in
- 1 Tbsp sesame oil for the pot, and 1 Tbsp more to finish
- ½ tsp fresh ginger, finely chopped
- ½ tsp garlic, finely chopped
- 1 to 2 tsp soy sauce
- Black pepper
- Vegetables, whatever is in the fridge: onion, carrot, bean sprouts, spinach
- To finish: sweet corn, scallion, a pinch of sesame seeds, a sheet of nori
- Optional: cubed firm tofu, for a more substantial bowl
We measure with a 15 ml tablespoon and a 5 ml teaspoon.
How to make it
- Chop everything first, and put the noodle water on. Once the oil is hot this moves quickly. Bring a second pot of plain, unsalted water to the boil now, but leave the noodles out of it until the broth is finished — noodles wait badly.
- Start with the oil, the ginger and the garlic. Warm 1 Tbsp of sesame oil in a pot over medium heat, add the ginger and garlic, and cook until you can smell them — soft, never browned. This first minute is doing the work that pork fat does in other bowls.
- Add the vegetables and cook them through. Onion and carrot first, then anything quicker. Keep going until the onion turns clear at the edges.
- Now the miso — into the pan, not into the soup. Drop it straight onto the hot vegetables and stir it through for about a minute, until it coats every slice and smells lightly toasted. Keep it moving so it does not scorch.
- Add the water and the kombu dashi powder. Lower the heat, pour in the water, add the kombu powder, and stir until the miso has dissolved completely and the broth is smooth.
- Season, and taste. Start with 1 tsp of soy sauce and a few turns of black pepper. Taste the broth, then add a little more soy sauce if it needs it.
- Only now, cook the noodles. Into the boiling water, and cook according to the packet — ours take about four minutes. Boiling them in the broth would cloud it with starch, and cooking them early would leave them soft by the time the bowl is built. Drain them well.
- Build the bowl. Noodles first, broth over the top, the vegetables piled on. Then the corn, the scallion, a pinch of sesame, a sheet of nori — and the second spoonful of sesame oil, poured over at the very end.
Tip
A bowl of miso soup asks for the opposite of this. There the miso goes in at the very end and is never allowed to boil, because heat costs it its aroma. Here the heat is the point: frying takes some of the sharpness away and leaves something rounder and deeper behind. Same paste, two different jobs.
Your broth may come out paler or darker than the one in these photographs. Miso varies more than anything else in the bowl, and so does how much soy sauce a kitchen likes. Go by the taste rather than the colour.
In Sapporo, where this bowl comes from, a handful of sweet corn and a pat of butter often go on top — the cold outside asking for them. The corn is worth adding whatever you eat; leave the butter out and the bowl stays entirely plant-based.
Two more things worth knowing before you shop: whether a packet of ramen is actually vegan, and what shio, shoyu and miso are really naming. If you are not sure which noodle is in your cupboard, Soba vs Udon vs Ramen covers that too.
Part of our Vegan & Vegetarian collection — Japanese dishes that leave out the fish.
From our Pantry
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— Yan & Keiko