Rockin Ramen

a recipe to help you forget your delivery apps

Hey my lovely Pot Heads,

I hope you all had a wonderful New Years and didn’t miss me too much while I was out sick last weekend. I’m on the mend and have been back in the kitchen using all my simmer sauces. This week, we’re back on the leek train.

If you follow me on IG, you know that I love whipping up a bowl of ramen for dinner. I’m constantly posting them on my Story feed and everyone always wants the recipe. But most of the time, it’s something I just sort of throw together. So now I am going to teach you my ways. I love using whatever fresh veggies I have on hand or in the freezer to make a sort of clean-out-the-fridge type meal that actually tastes good and looks gorgeous. But when it comes to the broth, I like to keep it simple. I don’t want to work all day on it; I want to throw it together while I’m cooking my noodles and prepping my veggies. Any longer is too long for me.

when i tell you i make this all the time, I mean it

My favorite shortcut is having a batch of melted leek and soy simmer sauce stored in the freezer. I use it for the base and just build from there. Yes, it will start off looking a little green but once you add the soy sauce and it gets to simmering, it turns a delicious brown. The resulting broth is just as good as delivery, but so much quicker and 90% cheaper. That’s my sweet spot. I’ve made the recipe for 4 servings, but this broth keeps great in the fridge for dining during the week so don’t be scared of some leftovers. The recipe is easy to scale up and down so I’m going to give you the breakdown for one bowl in case you are whipping up a quick lunch for yourself.

¼ cup Melted Leek Simmer Sauce + 2 cups veggie broth+ 1 ½ teaspoons soy sauce= one batch of ramen broth

The biggest key to a good, quick homemade ramen is to cook the noodles and veggies separate from the broth. It sounds like it will take a ton of extra time but really, it goes fast. The veggies cook quickly, just a light sauté to soften them up with a pinch of salt. The noodle cook time will vary based on what you buy but there’s not a wheat noodle on the market that’s going to take longer than 15 minutes to cook. Need help picking out a noodle? The Kitchn published a pretty helpful guide right over here. If you are using any frozen ingredients like corn or edamame, I like to stick them in a little mesh colander and then dip it right into the boiling water before or while the noodles cook. This warms them up in the laziest way while keeping them all together. Cooking everything separately lets you build each bowl to order and makes the leftovers taste just like the day you made them.

After you nail down the basics, try playing with the broth. Add a tablespoon of miso to the mix, a little plain soy milk, or even some sesame paste for a totally different experience. Once you’re confident on the basics, you’ll never take this meal out of rotation, and you can change it a thousand different ways that no one will know it’s basically the same thing over and over.