10 hour Miso Ramen - Making Mistakes to Get Better 

A few weeks back, I decided to make miso ramen for my coworkers to try and critique so I can be a better ramen maker. As a hobbyist making it for friends with different years of experience and training levels in the food industry, it was an honor to have them taste it.

So like previous ramen recipes I've used before (Tokyo shoyu, tonkotsu, & shio), I used Mike Satinover's reddit recipe for the ramen (click here for recipe!). The hardest part about this ramen was the tare (seasoning sauce). How the pros put it, the tare for miso ramen breaks or makes it. If done wrong, it ends up being a glorified bowl of miso soup. If done right, it becomes a godly bowl of miso ramen (obviously).

Of course being the first time making miso ramen, there were issues such as lack of depth and acidity to the ramen soup when the tare, aroma oil and broth were combined.

After some nights of further researching and having my friends, family and coworkers taste test my ramen, it was eventually remedied, but it could've been done better for future batches. 

In terms of adding more depth, instead of pouring the hot broth over the tare and aroma oil, I've decided to stir fry some ground pork and aromatic vegetables with the tare and aroma oil and deglazed the wok with the broth.

Even then something was still missing. The soup was indeed good, but it didn't hit all the taste buds. It didn't give that taste-smell connection and then it hit me. Yes, the soup had some form of fat and salt in it, but what about acidity? So with that in mind, I added some rice vinegar and titrated it until that connection was made and holy shit, it worked.

One minor issue that my coworker brought up was that, though the soup was very savory and good, the taste of umami and maximum depth of taste was lacking. She recommended I roast the bones and aromatics next time to give that extra "oomph". Salamat po, Esther, for that advice. I will be sure to keep that in mind next time!

Overall, the miso ramen was well received and I wished I had made more to feed all my coworkers. I dream about having a midnight ramen shop, but I'm nowhere near perfect to do so.

Maybe I should stop dreaming about silly things like that.