I mean, not to brag or anything. BUT I’m not a Ramen person, so it literally was the BEST Ramen I’ve ever had! LOL. Ramen noodles tend to be too heavy for me – I prefer the lighter vermicelli noodle in Pho, but that said, last night I SLAYED on a table for 10, hot-pot-style Ramen Feast.
I wasn’t sure I could pull off a hot dish like Ramen for a table full of people – at the same time – but thanks to a few tricks, I pulled it off and everyone was definitely lulled into a YUMMY place of heavenly bliss…
By now you know we’ve been making a lot of Peking Duck stock – and trying to find new or creative ways to use it up. This round, I ramped it up by adding some chicken feet for a light gelatin, some roasted beef bones (I kept the meat and sliced it up for topping), and a bit of frozen marrow stock I had lying around. Add in a little fish + soy sauce, lime juice, kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass and VOILA! The layering of this stock made it a soup fit for a King.
Just my luck, though, my daughter is Pescatarian, so I had to also make a quick fish stock from spines and heads in the freezer. I added some “Seafood Gold” stock from my freezer along with a special recipe for Vietnamese chicken I learned 20 yrs ago and – YUM. It was served to her w Vietnamese grilled tofo.
As MORE luck would have it, the red meat in the Duck stock and the shellfish in the Seafood stock meant my gout-ridden Dad couldn’t eat either, so I also pulled out some plain Turkey stock from the freezer just for him.
I love a creamy soup, so I sous vide a dozen eggs (in the shell – how awesome that they come with their own packaging?!) with soy sauce water to a soft poach and they were perfect to crack open over the soup. So easy to do a big batch, and leave in the sous vide until you’re good and ready for them.
Along with all that came a bunch of chopped fresh ingredients, a selection of beef (from the roasted bones), duck breast sliced thin, and chopped pork belly. I think I piled all 3 on mine LOL along with 2 sous vide eggs – I was on a protein high for awhile!
BUT – let me tell you – the MOST AMAZING PART!!
We made our OWN FRESH Ramen noodles!!! REALLY!!
And they were so easy!
I’d made them in cooking school the past summer, but hadn’t practiced them since. To be honest, my daughter and I were pretty skeptical that they’d turn out, and I even asked Hubby to do a grocery run for dried noodles just in case…
The flour and water combo was pretty slaggy and crumbly, and we only had 1 hour to proof the dough rather than the 3 hours required (I put it in a low oven for the hour). But once we started kneading it out of the oven, it was PERFECT! We pulled it with the Kitchenaid pasta attachments.
We tested a few strands, and landed on a 1-minute boil to get the noodles to perfection. Our triple-batch was JUST enough for 11 people to be FULL to the ears on Ramen.
It was so delicious, barely anyone spoke for a full 10 minutes at the table – all you could hear were happy slurps.
While I wasn’t sure I could do a hot soup “DIY” style for a larger group, it ended up being the perfect way to feed a group while letting everyone customize their dishes. I would MOST definitely do it again!
