BEFORE THE BOWL
Our pork broth takes an average of 18-20 hours to make, and a batch will produce 200 litres – enough for around 600 bowls of ramen.
The flavour is extracted through hard boiling and pressure cooking over 180kg of meat and bones and 18kg of vegetables.
Making broth is a hugely physical, knackering job. Our expert workshop crew are responsible for blitzing, stirring, sifting, lifting bones and carrying buckets.
A huge amount of time and care goes into every portion of broth before it hits the bowl.
INGREDIENTS
Some might say that if you could see what goes into broth – you’d never eat it again. But while some of these elements might not be particularly photogenic, after a hard boil, hand-sifting and straining – they’re what give our broth that creamy, rich, unctuous porkiness.
Although, if you’re a bit squeamish you might want to skip down to the ‘method’ section, or switch to Mushroom Ramen for the foreseeable…
Bones, trotters, skin and fat
Pig trotters – these release gelatine, which adds stickiness and richness to the finished broth. The mouthfeel of a creamy broth comes from the trotters.
Pork leg bones – these bones are super hard, but after being cooked down for hours they release bone marrow, which adds body and richness to the broth. They also give the broth its main porky flavour.
Chicken carcasses – adding chicken bones and cartilage to the pork broth adds another dimension and flavour profile.
Pork skin – the skin that comes from our chashu pork bellies releases collagen and gelatine for added stickiness. Collagen is also famously good for the skin!
Pork back fat – the final meaty ingredient – there to ensure maximum flavour.
Veg, rice and seaweed
White onion, garlic, Granny Smith green apples and ginger – these ingredients add acidity, sweetness and freshness to cut through the rich and heavy porkiness.
Rice – a small amount of rice helps to stabilise the emulsification of the broth – you can’t taste rice in these small amounts but helps hold everything together.
Kombu – kombu is a giant kelp seaweed, which adds natural MSG and umami flavour.
METHOD
Prepping the bones – 3:30pm
The meat and bones simmer at a medium heat to clean them and remove blood. The crew mix and skim the stock for at least 30 minutes – manually removing impurities to leave a whiter stock.
The big cook – 4pm
The lid closes at around 4 o’clock, and the bones are left to pressure cook overnight. This hard boil breaks everything down, releasing fat, bone marrow, collagen – and ultimately flavour – from the ingredients.
Adding the veg – 6:30am
At 6:30 in the morning, the crew wrap all the veg and rice in muslin cloths, and these parcels are added to the stock, along with sheets of kombu, and boiled hard for an hour.
Blitzing begins – 8am
The muslin veg and rice parcels are removed, decanted and blitzed to a paste. This paste is added back into the main stock – which is boiled hard for another hour. The crew regularly mixes the stock to really get the emulsion going.
Straining and the last big blitz – 9:30am
The broth is decanted one bucket at a time and strained through a machine, before being added to a second pan for one last big blitz. This ensures that the broth is creamy, white and emulsified.
Measuring and sending – 10:30am
Using a broth ruler, the finished broth is decanted into buckets. This is then labelled, blast chilled and ready to go out to our ramen bars.
FROM OUR WORKSHOP TO YOUR FINISHED RAMEN
The broth’s journey doesn’t end there, obviously. We deliver buckets of broth to the ramen bars, and these hit our 50L pans for service throughout the day.
To make sure the broth has the same creamy emulsion before its served, as it did leaving the workshop, our kitchen crew regularly blitz the stock throughout the day.
So there you have it – we’re too f*cking proud of our broth to be shy about our methods!
