First full new post of the Azuki Ice Cream reboot! 行こう！(let's go!)
So I'm a full on college student now. Like dorm room living, group work doing, midterm related crying, sleep deprived spacing out college student. I was in community college before so technically a college student but I feel a lot more of the student activity related soul death now. Anyway, this new living situation makes cooking a lot more difficult. My residence hall does have really nice kitchens, but there is the issue of that they are shared and that I don't have very much equipment (like literally all I have is one pot, a cutting board and knife, two bowls, one spoon, and three sets of chopsticks). Time to get resourceful because I enjoy cooking and don't want to eat dining hall food all the time. I developed quite a taste for miso soup while I was in Japan and have been making it back home. My mom found these rice ramen pack things at Costco so I can eat ramen like a proper college student. Combine my taste for miso soup and my college student desire for ramen and you get miso ramen! I make this ramen usually twice a week, sometimes more depending on how I feel. Okay, enough with the life update, let's watch me make this!
Step One: Chop Up Ingredients!
First things first get all your ingredients. I do as much as I can in my dorm room because I don't exactly trust the other people using my floor's kitchen. Ingredients are up to you, but I start by putting 1/3 to 1/2 a block of tofu into the bottom of my tupperware (it's pyrex so I can bake in it too. Pretty cool, isn't it?). Then I put 2-6 cut up green onions in there as well. Why so many, you ask? Because the campus grocery store sells them in bunches and for some reason I can't get them to store well so I just buy them then use them. Also onions are fabulous.
Step Two: Gather Other Ingredients!
Next grab your noodles (I use
rice ramen, but you can basically use any noodles) and miso paste. Get your miso paste from a Japanese store if you can. It's a million times better than what you can get in a regular grocery store, even a nice one. You can use as much or as little of these as you want, but I use one ramen hunk (what would you even call that...?) and about a tablespoon of miso paste. Sticking the miso paste to the lid of your container makes it convenient to grab it to stir into your boiling water later.
Step Three: Pack Up Your Stuff and Head to the Kitchen!
Close up your container of ingredients, get your pot, and grab some sort of utensil. I try to keep everything as self contained as possible so I have less to carry to the kitchen. Also, it was snowing when I was making this! 😄
Step Four: Boil Some Water!
Put 2-3 cups of water in your pot and bring to a boil. If your kitchen has one of those hot water things like my kitchen has, get hot water from that so you don't have to wait as long for the water to boil. Also putting a lid on your pot makes the water boil faster. Once your water boils, grab the miso paste hunk from the lid of your container (see why I do that?) and stir into the boiling water until the miso paste dissolves.
Step Five: Add Other Ingredients!
Now that your water is boiling and miso paste is dissolved, add the other ingredients from your container, but don't add the noodles yet. These ingredients are not hot so they will decrease the overall heat of the solution so you must add more heat for your soup to boil again (haha can you tell I'm taking general chemistry? 😜).
Step Six: Add Noodles!
Once your soup is boiling again, add the noodles! Cook them for however long it says to cook them for, which for my noodles is four minutes. Make sure to stir things around every minute or so.
Step Seven: Put into Bowl and Clean Up a Bit!
Remove your pot from the heat and wait for your noodles and such to cool for a few minutes. Transfer your noodles and such to a bowl. Clean up a bit while waiting for your bowl to be cool enough to carry and so the custodial staff won't hate you. Once cool enough to carry, carry everything to where you intend to eat your food.
Step Eight: Add the Seaweed!
Given that the most readily available seaweed is sushi nori or seaweed snacks, I use that in my miso ramen. Take two sheets of sushi nori or however much you want and tear it into pieces. Stir into soup. You add this now because it maintains flavor better and doesn't explode. Learned this the hard way last term. One time a Japanese exchange student saw my failed noodles with exploded seaweed and made fun of them for a solid 10 minutes. We are friends now, actually 😂
Step Nine: Enjoy Your Miso Ramen!
Now that you have everything cooked and mixed in and stuff, it's time to enjoy your ramen! Do your dishes later because ramen is best fresh. I'm a nerd so I eat at my desk while watching youtube gaming stuff or kpop music videos or whatever suits my fancy that day.
Hope you enjoyed my little tutorial on how I make miso ramen! I make this all the time when I want something home cooked and that reminds me of my adventures in Japan.
