Ramen, Shoyu (Tokyo-Style)
Shoyu (soy sauce) ramen is the old Tokyo default, and it's the one I'd point a newcomer to first — clear brown broth, springy alkaline noodles, and a soy-based seasoning that tastes savory and clean rather than heavy. → photo 1 The thing most people get wrong about ramen is thinking the 'shoyu / shio / miso / tonkotsu' labels describe the soup. They don't — three of the four name the TARE, the concentrated seasoning that sits in the bottom of the bowl, not the broth. Understand that and ramen suddenly makes sense.
Shoyu (soy sauce) ramen is the old Tokyo default, and it’s the one I’d point a newcomer to first — clear brown broth, springy alkaline noodles, and a soy-based seasoning that tastes savory and clean rather than heavy. → photo 1
The thing most people get wrong about ramen is thinking the ‘shoyu / shio / miso / tonkotsu’ labels describe the soup. They don’t — three of the four name the TARE, the concentrated seasoning that sits in the bottom of the bowl, not the broth. Understand that and ramen suddenly makes sense.
Ingredients
- Broth (chintan — clear)
- 2 lb chicken backs/wings (add a pork bone or two for body)
- 1 onion, 2 in ginger, 2 scallions, 1 piece kombu, a few dried shiitake
- Shoyu tare (per bowl: ~2 Tbsp)
- 1/2 cup soy sauce, 2 Tbsp mirin, 1 Tbsp sake, 1 tsp sugar, a little dashi
- To serve
- Fresh ramen (chukamen) noodles — the yellow alkaline kind
- Chashu (rolled braised pork belly), menma (bamboo), ajitama (marinated soft egg), nori, thin-sliced scallion, naruto
Directions
Key ingredients
- Build a clear broth:
- Blanch the bones first (boil briefly, dump the water, rinse) so the broth stays clear, then simmer gently — not a rolling boil — with the aromatics for a couple of hours. A clear soup (chintan) is the Tokyo goal; a hard boil emulsifies fat and clouds it.
- Make the tare separately — this is the key idea:
- Warm the soy, mirin, sake, sugar and dashi into a concentrated seasoning. The tare is the SEASONING; the broth is unsalted stock. You put ~2 Tbsp tare in each empty bowl and pour the hot broth over it. Keeping them separate is how one pot of broth becomes shoyu, shio, or miso ramen depending on which tare you add.
- The noodles matter — kansui is what makes a noodle ‘ramen’:
- Use real chukamen. Their yellow color and springy bite come from kansui (alkaline salts), not egg — that alkalinity is literally the definition of a ramen noodle. Boil them hard and fast, drain well, no rinse.
- Assemble fast:
- Tare in the bowl, hot broth, then noodles, then toppings arranged on top — chashu, menma, a halved ajitama, nori, scallion. Ramen waits for no one; serve immediately.
Notes
Where this came from Standard shoyu-ramen method; a reconstruction, not a shop’s recipe.
Ramen is Chinese-derived — and not ancient Ramen descends from Chinese wheat noodles (lamian), and was long called nankin soba, shina soba, then chuka soba — ‘Chinese noodles.’ The charming tale that the 17th-century lord Tokugawa Mitsukuni (‘Mito Komon’) ate the ‘first ramen’ is a legend. The usual landmark is Rairaiken, which opened in Tokyo’s Asakusa in 1910 serving a Chinese-style soba — though even that is a bit overstated as ‘the first.’
Tare is not broth The four ramen ‘types’ mostly name the tare (seasoning), not the soup: shoyu = soy tare, shio = salt tare, miso = miso tare. The odd one out is tonkotsu, which names the BROTH (cloudy pork-bone), not a tare. Miso ramen is the youngest of the four — a 1955 Sapporo invention.
Instant ramen Momofuku Ando invented instant ramen in 1958 (Chikin Ramen) and Cup Noodle in 1971 — one of the most consequential food inventions of the 20th century.
Sourcing Buy fresh chukamen if you can; the springy alkaline noodle is non-negotiable. Marinate the eggs in leftover tare thinned with dashi for ajitama.