There are so many different types of ramen, it’s hard to even know where to begin. Setting aside the dry styles of ramen mentioned earlier, and just looking at traditional soup ramen, there are still more categories than you can shake a stick at. Like thin noodles? Head to Kurume or Fukuoka in the south of Japan. Prefer thicker ones? Go up north to try Akayu karamiso-style ramen. Want a light broth? You’ll probably enjoy Tokyo-style tori shoyu ramen. Craving something heavy and funky? Tonkotsu all the way – unless you’re hungrier than you’ve ever been in your life, then try Jiro-style ramen.

All of these styles, while distinct, follow a consistent pattern. They use ramen noodles (of course), a highly flavourful broth, tare (seasoning for the broth, pronounced tah-ray), an aromatic oil and some toppings. While most people can see at first glance that ramen needs noodles, broth and toppings, the importance of aroma oil and tare is often overlooked.

Tare just means ‘sauce’ in Japanese, and is used to season ramen broth. It tends to be super concentrated, so you’ll just add a couple spoonfuls per broth. The tare is a large part of what gives a bowl of ramen its identity. Shoyu (soy sauce) ramen uses a shoyu tare. Shio (salt) ramen uses a shio tare. Miso ramen uses – you guessed it! – miso tare. 

Aroma oil is a fragrant oil that’s added to the base of the ramen. It can be as simple as a few spoonfuls of lard, but is really important for giving ramen the richness and depth of flavour it’s known for, so make sure to use something you like.

If you want to know more – and try as many different styles as you can – there are lots of resources out there for you. Tim Anderson’s Ramen Forever shows you how to create each ramen component from scratch. The blog and YouTube channel Way of Ramen has recipes developed by the host, Ryan, and shared with him by ramen chefs from around the world. Mike Santinover, a.k.a. Ramen_Lord, also has a free ebook jammed with incredible ramen recipes which is available online.

Outside of Japan, making ramen at home is, as we noted in our piece on ramen noodle factories, something of an extreme sport. Forums and YouTube channels are filled with amateurs vying for the perfect bowl. Inside Japan, the idea of making ramen at home will give you a blank look that is comparable, perhaps, to if you asked a British person if they’d ever thought of making their own blutack. The response to both questions would likely be a combination of ‘But you can buy it incredibly cheaply…?’ and ‘That sounds insanely complicated!’ 

Extremely high quality, cheap ramen in Japan is everywhere – although, curiously, blutack is nowhere to be found. Japanese recipes for homemade ramen on mainstream cooking websites don’t generally attempt to teach readers how to make alkaline noodles. Instead, they use shortcuts, like using chicken thigh and fried spring onion as both the base of the broth and a topping, or a couple pinches of chicken stock powder and oyster sauce to give the broth some quick depth.

These recipes are delicious, and fairly quick – they hit the spot if you’re craving something comforting, and can be made on a weekday. For our recipe below we’ve tried to walk to the line between the incredible but incredibly complex recipes of ramen chefs, and the homestyle recipes found on Cookpad.

This tori shoyu (chicken soy sauce) ramen recipe was inspired by Nancy Hachisu’s recipe for ramen from her book Japan: The Cookbook, Tim Anderson’s ‘Whole Chicken Ramen’ from Ramen Forever and Way of Ramen’s 10 minute shoyu ramen and Mike Santinover’s 'Lighter Shoyu Tare'. The toppings in the recipe below are very simple. You can substitute the soft-boiled eggs for ramen eggs, add a piece of nori or chashu pork, or any other toppings you like (see below).

The quality of the chicken used in this recipe really matters. Higher welfare chickens will give the broth a much more intense flavour, and lower quality chickens will give the broth a much weaker flavour. Also, don’t be surprised if the broth barely tastes ‘chickeny’ before seasoning – the salt in the tare really brings out the flavour of the chicken!

Serves 2

Ramen is designed to be eaten fast – really fast. You go into the shop, order and pay at a vending machine, give the chef your ticket, sit down, eat within a few minutes, and then leave. It’s not food designed to be lingered over; the noodles will bloat and sog as they sit in the broth. Ideally, don’t add the noodles to the water until the bowls (and your guests!) are ready.

For sides, ramen shops in Japan will often offer fairly simple and limited sides: plain rice, fried rice, maybe tamago kake gohan (rice mixed with a raw egg). While there are some exceptions, ramen is generally thought of as a standalone dish.

The options for toppings, however, are endless. Perhaps the most classic ramen toppings are an ajitsuke tamago (soy sauce-marinated egg), menma (preserved bamboo shoots), chashu pork and some spring onions. However, toppings vary shop to shop, bowl to bowl. Some nori, blanched greens, thinly sliced kikurage (wood ear mushrooms) and a round of naruto (processed fish cake) are also really popular. We’d recommend trying to have toppings in a range of colours, to brighten up the bowl. However, don’t add so many that you can’t see the noodles – unless you’re making Jiro-style ramen of course. Then, if you can see the noodles, frankly you’re doing something wrong!