A bowl of ramen on a shop counter with a sheet of nori, a marinated egg, a raw yolk and chashu pork

How a bowl of ramen fits together

Broth, tare, fat, noodles, toppings

Broth

The body of the bowl. A clear broth (chintan) is simmered gently for a few hours; a cloudy, creamy one like tonkotsu is boiled hard for 10 hours or more. Broth on its own is unseasoned.

Tare

Two or three tablespoons of concentrated seasoning in the bottom of each bowl. Soy tare makes shoyu ramen, salt tare makes shio, and miso makes miso ramen. A batch keeps about a week in the fridge.

Fat

A spoonful of chicken fat, pork fat or a flavored oil on top carries aroma and keeps the soup hot.

Noodles

Ramen noodles are made with alkaline salts, which make them yellow, springy and slow to go soggy. Buy them at first; making your own is a later project.

Toppings

A marinated egg, sliced pork, nori, green onion. Each one is a small recipe you can add over time.

Start with shoyu ramen on a clear chicken-and-pork broth.

It teaches every part without a 10-hour boil.

Your first bowl, step by step

The tested recipes

What you can make in your first month

Ramen eggs

Soft-boiled eggs marinated overnight in soy sauce and mirin, the easiest topping and a good way to learn exact timing.

A pot of chicken-and-pork broth

One long simmer, strained and frozen in portions, enough for six to eight bowls.

Shoyu ramen

Your broth, a kombu soy tare, noodles, egg, nori and green onion, assembled in a hot bowl.

Shio ramen

The same broth with a salt and kombu tare instead of soy, which shows how much the tare alone changes a bowl.

Skills to practice early

Holding a bare simmer

For a clear broth, the surface should just tremble. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and turns it cloudy and greasy.

Seasoning with tare, not the pot

Taste a spoonful of broth with a drop of tare in it and adjust the ratio there. Broth stays unsalted so it can serve any style.

Timing eggs

Cold eggs straight into boiling water, a timer, then ice water. Half a minute changes a jammy yolk into a firm one.

Fast noodle service

Noodles cook in 1 to 3 minutes and soften in the soup, so have the bowl, broth and toppings ready before they go in, and shake off the cooking water well.

Choosing the pot

A 12- to 16-quart stock pot with a thick base fits a batch of bones without boiling over. Check that it fits your largest burner and your sink before buying.

A hand lifting thick yellow ramen noodles out of a bowl with chopsticks — A lift of springy alkaline noodles

Food safety for big batches

Cool broth fast: a full stock pot can stay warm for hours, which is where bacteria grow. Divide the strained broth into shallow containers (about 2 inches deep), leave the lids off until it stops steaming, and get it into the fridge within 2 hours of cooking.
Never put the whole hot pot in the fridge. It warms everything around it and the center cools far too slowly.
Refrigerated broth keeps 3 to 4 days. Freeze what you will not use by then and bring thawed broth to a full boil before serving.
Ramen eggs keep only 3 to 4 days in the fridge in their marinade, so marinate a few at a time. Do not freeze them.
Soft yolks are only partly cooked. For anyone pregnant, very young, elderly or with a weakened immune system, use pasteurized eggs or cook them longer.
A full 16-quart pot weighs over 30 pounds. Strain it in stages with a ladle rather than lifting and pouring the whole thing.

Official cooling and storage guidance

USDA: Leftovers and Food Safety Official guidance on cooling large batches in shallow containers and how long leftovers keep

What trips beginners up

Your first broth may taste flat. That is normal: broth is unseasoned until it meets the tare, so judge it in the bowl.
A cloudy, greasy clear broth usually means the pot boiled. Turn it down and skim more in the first half hour.
Too much tare is the most common bowl fault. Start with two tablespoons per bowl and add more after tasting.
Cooking noodles in the broth makes it starchy and dull. Always boil them in their own pot of plenty of water.
Lukewarm bowls kill the noodles fast. Preheat the bowls and keep the broth at a simmer until you ladle.
Do not start with tonkotsu. The 10-hour-plus hard boil is a project for after you have a clear broth down.
Leaving eggs in the marinade for days makes them salty and rubbery. Overnight is plenty.

Time, stove and freezer space

Broth day is about 5 hours, but most of it is an occasional check and a skim, so it fits around a weekend at home. After that, a bowl takes about 15 minutes. You need one large burner, counter space next to it for straining, and room in the freezer for six to eight flat portions of broth. One batch every two or three weeks keeps a household in ramen.

Two cooks behind a small ramen shop counter, with stock pots on the stove and a row of empty bowls ready — Stock pots and a row of bowls behind a ramen counter

Where to learn more

Free video series and an active online community cover almost every broth, tare and noodle question a home cook runs into, including how to move on to tonkotsu, miso and homemade noodles once the first bowls work.

Free places to learn

Why the kit looks like this

The kit doubles as the shopping list for the shoyu broth recipe above: the pot and strainer for broth day, and the shelf-stable pantry items (soy sauce, mirin, kombu, bonito flakes, dried noodles and nori) for the tare and toppings. The bones, aromatics and eggs come from the grocery store each time. The pot is the one item worth spending on; if you already own a 12-quart or larger pot, the start costs about $45. Recommended items make service faster and safer: a noodle basket, real ramen bowls, a skimmer and shallow containers for cooling.

Nests of fresh yellow ramen noodles on a wooden board at a ramen kitchen counter — Portioned noodle nests at a ramen counter

Set up your ramen station

Clicking a card selects it in the kit, and clicking the selected card again takes that line out.

Large stock pot (12-16 quart)

Essential · Core equipment

A batch of bones plus 4 quarts or more of water needs a big pot with headroom so it can simmer for hours without boiling over.

budget

IMUSA USA Stainless Steel Stock Pot with Lid 16-Quart, Silver

4.3(1,379)

$30.00

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Ramen Making

How a bowl of ramen fits together

Your first bowl, step by step

Skills to practice early

Food safety for big batches

What trips beginners up

Time, stove and freezer space

Where to learn more

Why the kit looks like this

Set up your ramen station

Large stock pot (12-16 quart)

Fine-mesh strainer

Japanese soy sauce

Mirin

Dried kombu (kelp)

Bonito flakes (katsuobushi)

Dried ramen noodles

Roasted nori sheets

Noodle strainer basket

Ramen bowls

Fine-mesh skimmer

Shallow food storage containers