Ingredients
- Faux Pho:
- Mix-ins:
- easiest way to quickly upgrade a bowl of instant noodles is with ingredients that require no extra cooking. I'm talking simple sauces and condiments like:
- Miso paste
- Chili bean sauce
- Thai curry paste
- Japanese curry powder
- Fish sauce
- Harrisa
- Vinegar
- Ponzu
Preparation
Step 1
The key is not to go overboard with too many different competing flavors. I often make this mistake after long nights out, assuming that when it comes to hangover cures, more is better. Not the case. Keep it simple. Bear in mind that if you're using a salty condiment, you should omit some of the seasoning packet. You can also add:
Spices like white pepper, sichuan pepper, or chili flakes to the finished dish, or try adding a cinnamon stick, star anise, and coriander seeds to the simmering broth (remove 'em before serving!)
Fats like toasted sesame oil, chili oil, or an animal fat (pork, chicken, or duck are all awesome)
Citrus juices—a quick squeeze of lemon or lime right before serving can go a long way to brightening flavors.
Vegetation
Spinach.
Let's face it: Ramen ain't health food. But it's pretty simple to add a bit of roughage to your starch.
Quick cooking vegetables like baby spinach, romaine lettuce, bean sprouts, thinly sliced cabbage, watercress, and scallions (amongst others) can be stirred into the soup right before serving. They should wilt in a matter of seconds.
Longer cooking vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, snap peats, snow peas, shredded carrots, and whatever else your heart fancies can be added to the noodles as they're cooking. It may take a bit of finagling to get the timing just right, but I have faith in you, young grasshopper.
Frozen vegetables can work great—corn and peas in particular fare well frozen (often being significantly better than their fresh counterparts!). I like to thaw them out by running them under hot water straight out of the tap for 30 seconds or so. They can then be drained and added directly to the hot soup just before serving.
Eggs
Boiled eggs.
Ramen are pretty much all starch and fat (with most inexpensive ramen brands, the noodles are dehydrated by deep-frying them!). What about adding some extra protein? Eggs are cheap, delicious, and in most cases, can be cooked directly in the same pot with the noodles or the broth. Here are a few simple ways to do it. The World Society for Ramen Egg Cookery (an organization which I founded, chair, and am the sole member of) has divided ramen-eggs into 5 levels. It is unadvisable to attempt a higher level process until you've completed each of the levels preceding it.
Level 1: Hard boiled eggs are the easiest—just add the eggs to a pot of cold water, bring it to a boil, then drop in your noodles. The egg should be pretty perfectly hard boiled in just about the same time that it takes to cook the ramen through.
Level 2: Soft boiled eggs are a tad trickier, because they involve a time. Drop them into the pot after it's come to a full boil, start a timer, and pull them out after 3 minutes for super-soft, or 5 for a fully-set white and semi-liquid yolk. I like to cut the eggs open and stir the yolk into the broth as I eat it.
Level 3: The egg-drop method creates small curds of egg blossoms that float in the broth and coat your noodles. Lightly beat an egg in a small bowl. Once your noodles are cooked, swirl the noodles and hot broth gently around the pot. While the broth is moving, slowly drizzle in the beaten egg. It should set into fine ribbons.
Level 4: Poached eggs will never come out perfectly shaped, but who really cares? Just cook the noodles until they've just started to separate from each other (about halfway through their total cooking time), pull the pot off the heat, break a raw egg into the center, place the lid on the pot, and let the whole thing sit for a couple minutes until both the noodles and eggs are cooked.
Level 5: Fried Eggs require the use of an auxiliary pan and heat source. This is hyper-advanced stuff, and not to be trifled with until you've mastered all of the first-level egg techniques.*
* Not really. It's still pretty darn easy.
Simple Simmered Meat
Flank steak with scallions.
Thinly sliced meats can be cooked in a matter of seconds directly in the pot. Chicken breast, pork tenderloin, or flank steak are all great candidates. I like to pick the pieces up one at a time and swish them back and forth in the hot broth until cooked while the noodles are simmering, then set the cooked meat aside and put it back on top right before serving. Cured meats like ham or bacon are great as well, as are cooked meats like leftover chicken or steak, or hot dogs. Want something really interesting? Add a bit of shredded up beef jerky as your noodles cook. It lends a nice smoky saltiness to the broth, and achieves a really delightful tender-chewy texture.
And that's about it for the basics of ramen cookery. Once you've mastered all of the simple methods, upgrading your noodles is simply a matter of combining various techniques to achieve delicious end results. The most obvious ones are simplified, ramenified-versions of classic East Asian dishes. A dash of fish sauce and lime juice along with some beef and herbs quickly converts a bowl of noodles into a delicious Faux Pho.