ramen in portland - part 5 中華料理拉麺

It has been a ramen week as I made a big stock pot of pig bone stock and a modest amount of slow braised pork butt. BTW, if you think pork butt is literally what what they call it, you would be rather disappointed. It is not the butt of the pig. Often it is really pork shoulder.

One thing that I've never mentioned in my many posts on ramen. It is that to me ramen is not the most healthy dish. For the bowls that are made with love they are rather calories-fill meal in it's own right so if you are concerned about your belly or weight, better skip the generous serving of gyoza. Fortunately you don't have to cut ramen totally out of your diet. Like anything good, just exercise moderation or think out of the box.

another bowl of homemade ramen without cutting corners

the broth is precious so I don't put in a lot for the sake of presentation; I only put in enough that I will finish to the last drop

I have been roasting single-origin espresso recently - the reason would be another post

I went back to Uwajimaya to get more Sun Noodle's noodle and went by this ramen place I wrote about in the previous post; this is their menu in which they charge extra for a number of toppings; no where can you add a piece (half) of half-boiled egg, or a few pieces of menma 麺麻 - disappointing!

this is a serving of noodle from Sun Noodle - for $2.50 is really expensive; I reckon a commercial ramen shop pays $0.50 max

as my broth is very flavorful I have cut back on the amount of chashu I serve in each bowl; I also like to add other unusual toppings

here are some of the toppings - the menma 麺麻 is in the jar to the right (I bought them in a 1kg bag as that is the only decent quality one I could find)

I have written about that I botched this batch of boiled eggs but please read on

this bowl is miso flavor with butter and guess what? I added two mozzarella cheese balls

I decided to conduct a few simple experiments to crack the timing and technique making half-boiled eggs reliably. I didn't want to go look for a solution online as often the finer variables are not covered in the recipes. I want to discover a fool-proof method myself.

The variables that I aim to eliminate are the temperature of the eggs, and the how much heat the range hob produces. I conducted just two tries which I want a simple and reproducible technique. As people in western countries store the eggs in the refrigerator I chose to use cold eggs as starting point. Preparing half-boiled eggs successfully is all about managing the heat transfer. In simplistic terms, it is how the heat energy of the volume of hot water transfers to the egg and cooks it. The amount of hot water versus the amount of eggs are very important variables.

I would rather avoid getting to the physics of heat energy calculation so here I would just cut to the chaise of what I found worked. I used large eggs so you would want to reduce the timing slightly for smaller eggs. Here is my result after 2 tries using one egg each time.

1. Prepare a pot of water that is at least 10x the volume of the egg(s).
2. Select a pot in which this water would adequately submerge all the eggs - the fact is most eggs would float slightly above the water which is to be expected.
3. Bring the pot of water without eggs to a full boil and reduce the flame of the hob so the water just barely simmers. This is an important step to control the degree of doneness of the eggs.
4. Put in the eggs and start a timer for 5 minutes.
5. On the clock when the timer times out after 5 minutes, turn off the flame and leave the eggs to continue poach in the hot water. Again set the timer for 3 minutes to time this soak time.
6. Prepare a generous pot of cold water. Cold water from the tap would do fine. Once the 3-minute is up remove the eggs from the hot water and dunk them into the cold water and let sit for a few minutes. This process cools the eggs for shelling. I think this also tends to separate the egg white from the membrane for easier shelling.
7. As I mentioned in last post you want to use eggs that are not too fresh. I found ones that has been stored in refrigerator 2 or more weeks work quite well.

The egg yoke is nicely half-cooked and the egg can still be cut with a piece of thread. I could not shell the egg cleanly as I ran out of old eggs, hence the torn egg white

a near perfect half-boiled egg with runny yoke

I have found that my waist size increases if I have too many meals of ramen. The effect is quite immediate and I am slimmer than average. I know the culprit is the wheat noodles. There are two solutions. Reduce the serving size of the wheat noodles or substitute it with other types of noodle. I like to substitute the ramen noodles with good quality rice noodles.

a bowl of ramen substituted with Thai thin rice noodles - miso broth with chashu, sea scallops, mozzarella balls and butter; the green is Chinese choysum; the highlight here is the runny half-boiled egg which is how it should be

Normally you would never find ramen shop serve a bowl with green vegetable. It is my compromise as I want a balanced meal all in a bowl.

here you can see the rice noodles