Hello! I’m Komugi!
I like making Ramen at home.
When it comes to Tonkotsu soup Ramen, You might think of Hakata Ramen with hard thin noodles in white soup. However, cloudy white tonkotsu soup is used as base soup of other kinds of Ramen as well.
For example,
・Sapporo Miso Ramen
・Wakayama Ramen
・Nagasaki Champon / Sara Udon
・Tsukemen (noodles served with a diiping sauce separately)
・Iekei Ramen (Tonkotsu Shoyu Ramen)
・Seafood Tonkotsu Ramen etc.
It means that if you are able to make Tonkotsu soup, you can use it to make various kinds of Ramen.
So, this time, I will show you how to make basic Tonkotsu soup using pork shin and thigh bone and pork backbone.
Will it take no less than 10 hours to simmer Tonkotsu soup ?!
I do’nt have time for that!
You might think so, but
If you use a pressure cooker, you can make Tonkotsu soup, which puts pros to shame for only 4 hours.
The process is so simple.
Let’s get started!
↑You can also try authentic Tonkotsu soup recipe without using a pressure cooker. Those who are interested in it, please take a look at the above article.
Ingredients（for 2100cc soup）
・pork shin and thigh bone 900g
・pork backbone 900g
・pork shoulder 500g
・water
That’s it. It’s so simple, isn’t it ? You don’t need to prepare many kinds of ingredients for this recipe.
Let’s make 2100cc soup for about 7 portions.
Pressure Cooker
I use a 6 L pressure cooker to cook all the above ingredients at once.
In the case that you don’t have such a big cooker, please reduce the ingredients to half.
Steps
1. Break bones
0:00
Let’s start cooking! First of all, wash break shin and thigh bones with water briefly, and break each of them with a hammber on a cutting board. I grip the bone using cloth or wearing a glove on my left hand because bone is slipping. You will be able to break up the bone with several hits utilizing the edge of the hammer.
This step is indispensable to extract bone marrow and make good soup. As for backbone, you can break it with your hands to peices small enough to put into the pressure cooker. Please take care not to get hurt with sharp bones.
2. Put All the Ingredients into Pressure Cooker, and Add enough Water to Cover
0:15
Put all the ingredients into the cooker, and add enough water to cover them. You do not have to be so strict about the volume of water here because you can add water when it evaporates.
3. Heat Water to a Boil and Skim off Foam for 20 mins
0:20
Bring Water to a boil over high heat in full swing. Once it boils, darkish foam appears, so please skim such foam from the soup to get rid of the unfavorable smell.
As you can see in the following picture, the color of the foam changes to white after skimming off foam for about 20 minutes. However some pros of Iekei Ramen, which is a style of ramen with Tonkotsu soy sauce-based soup with thick flat noodles, skip this process, so you do not have to be so strick about it.
4. Make Sure if Water Level is Appropriate and Close the Lid
0:40
As the water evaporates, it goes down to the appropriate volume for the cooker. Then close the lid, and start to heat it. (In general, about ⅔ full of liquid is the maximum limit because it needs extra room for the steam to accumulate.) At first, cook on medium heat, and then reduce the heat to a low level after the pressure reaches the limit. Please check how to use your own pressure cooker yourself.
5. Continue to Heat it for 2 hours
0:45
Please continue to heat the cooker for 2 hours. You have nothing special to do except for paying attention to the cooker.
6. Release Pressure and Open Lid
2:45
Turn off the heat after maintaining the pressure for 2 hours. Release pressure quickly using cold water as shown in the picture below.
7. Put Pork Shoulder in it, and Continue to Boil it on Medium Heat
2:50
Add pork shoulder and boil it for 1 hour on medium heat to emulsify the soup. Pork shoulder makes the soup tastier, and it will become Char-siu pork (pork stewed in soysauce /rost pork) later.
Please stir the soup just like scraping the bottom of the cooker every 5 minutes to prevent the soup from burning and sticking to the bottom. Please be careful not to spill the soup. It’s very hot. Add water when the water level goes down excessively due to evaporation.
8. Turn off Heat 1 hour after Putting Pork Shoulder in Soup.
3:50
Please turn off the heat after boiling for 1 hour.
First of all, take out pork bones for the soup. All the cartilage as well as the meat would be melted away into the soup.
Strain the soup with a strainer and squeeze the pieces of meat with a spatula like the following picture, so that you won’t waste the soup.
4:00
It’s dane! It’s good-looking brownish cloudy soup. This time, it decreased to 1900cc because of evaporation, so I add some water to make it 2100cc.
It’s still quite thick with collagen even after adding some water.
I usually aim for making 1000cc white cloudy soup from 1000g ingredients (pork backbone + pork shin and thigh bone + pork shoulder). It means that I can thin the soup to 2300cc according to the total weight of the ingredients, but I don’t do taht this time to keep the soup thick.
Finish up Soup
Cool it in Refrigerator and Eliminate Lard.
The soup has quite amount of lard even though we didn’t put any pork back fat in it.
In the case that you prefer very rich soup, there might be no need to adjust the quantity of lard, however I recomend that you do it to make the soup fit for various kinds of Ramen. Cooling the soup in the refrigerator helps you eliminate lard very easily. Skim the lard from the surface of the soup, and keep it in a container.
豚肩ロースは焼豚にする
Let’s make char siu using the pork shoulder taken out from the soup.
Please put the pork and char siu marinade in a bag.
Let it sit in the refrigerator over night. After that, take it out and grill its surface with a gas burner.
You can use some slices of it for your Ramen. This char siu is well-done and very traditional. It’s surprisingly tender and good.
You can Store Soup in Freezer for up to 2-3 Months.
I suggest that you store the tonkotsu soup you made in the freezer.
Let’s make Various Kinds of Ramen using this soup!
You can make various kinds of Ramen using this basic Tonkotsu soup.
I will introduce how to make them to you on this blog, so please check those articles as well.
Classic Tonkotsu Ramen
Rich Miso Ramen!
And you can also make Jiro style Ramen using this base soup!
That’s all for today. I wrote about basic Tonkotsu soup made with a pressure cooker!
See you!
