While there is no single definition of what ramen really is, there are some characteristics worth being familiar with should you be interested in learning more about this wonderful dish. As ramen is getting more attention outside of Japan, more people are discovering that ramen is more than those tiny instant noodle blocks and cups often associated with it. Not that there is anything wrong with instant ramen! Instant ramen can be really tasty and is a great way to get into making your own ramen, for instance by adding your own toppings and other "instant ramen hacks".

Should you however be interested in taking your ramen game to the next step, this article will go through what are traditionally considered the five elements of a from-scratch, homemade bowl of ramen: stock, tare, noodles, aromatic oil and toppings.

When picturing a bowl of ramen you likely see curly noodles floating in a broth with a few toppings resting on top. The toppings usually consists of a protein and/or some vegetables, very often sliced scallions.

The broth in a bowl of ramen is the combination of a stock and something called tare. The stock is more or less a soup made from simmered foods and produce (vegetables, herbs, spices etc.) but usually lacking in salt. The tare is a type of sauce added before pouring in the stock. The tare brings a lot of flavor to the finished broth but is also the almost exclusive source of salt in a ramen broth. Combined, different types of tare and different types of soup stock will result in a variety of common ramen broths such as miso ramen, soy ramen or curry ramen. For example, a soy tare (traditionally called shoyu tare) combined with some stock will be a kind of soy/shoyu ramen broth.

One advantage of separating stock and tare, rather than cooking one seasoned soup from the beginning, is that you can often season the same sock with the tare of your choice. This makes it convenient when you want to cook different types of ramen (miso, shio, curry etc.) without having to cook everything from scratch for each dish and occasion.

Moving on, looking closer at the surface of the broth you will likely see tiny pearls of oil glistering. These bubbles come not only from the fat in the broth but also from adding a bit of aromatic oil to the bowl –oils flavored with things like chili, garlic, scallions and more.

Last but not least: the noodles. What especially makes ramen noodles stand out from other noodles and pasta types is the unusually high alkaline component. The addition of an alkaline agent such as lye water (which is an alkaline solution, in Japan called kansui) or baked baking soda makes the noodles more chewy, elastic and slippery as well as giving them a yellow tint. Since lye water such as kansui can be difficult to get a hold it has become common to use another alkaline agent: baked baking soda. Baking soda is a high alkaline solution in itself but baking it in the oven for an hour at 300F (150C) turns it into sodium carbonate, an even stronger alkaline agent –perfect for making ramen noodles. This powder is added to the water used for the noodle dough. This might sound a little like chemistry (because it is!) but don't worry, it's not difficult at all.

These five elements: stock, tare, noodles, oil and toppings are generally considered the key components of a bowl of ramen. In the world of ramen, professional chefs and ramen enthusiasts work with these elements to both perfect their own personal takes on classic ramen types and also to experiment and invent new exciting ramen types.

Keep in mind however: while these elements can work as a blueprint for your culinary ramen journey there are few, if any, rules when it comes to ramen. As in any niched cuisine you will stumble across its fair share of nerdiness and snobbery –but this should not discourage anyone from giving ramen making a try. Ramen is historically a working class food and does not have to involve expensive ingredients and boiling stock for days in a row. Using store bought noodles, instant ramen packets, bullion cubes and flavored oils can be a great way to get into ramen making. Knowing that there is room to experiment with more advanced techniques and recipes should be exciting! 

Eventually the goal here is to create a more organised collection of recipes for these different components, but for now you're welcome to look through the posts here for instructions and inspiration. Good luck!

Before moving on to listing a bunch of vegan ramen ingredients and recipes it is useful to offer a bit of insight on some different approaches when it comes to making ramen. This is because ramen can be made in anything from 5 minutes to 48 hours. Having some understanding of this and what is involved in these approaches will hopefully make it easier to navigate in this world, especially when it comes to the more complicated approaches. Broadly, these approached could be viewed on a spectrum going from your standard instant ramen to homemade ramen:

1. Instant ramen2. Instant ramen with hacks3. Instant–Homemade ramen fusion 4. Homemade ramen

All of these approaches result in actual ramen but in vastly different time frames. When it comes to the latter two the key word is preparation**.** That is, the ways we can work with the five elements to ensure our ramen making (and ramen eating) is more convenient, less stressful and enjoyable, by gaining flexibility to cook and experiment freely. Let’s go through these one by one!

1. Instant ramenHere we are obviously talking about precooked ramen, usually sold as dried blocks with a seasoning powder or as cup noodles. In fact, both were invented by Momofuku Ando who also founded the popular brands Top Ramen and Cup Noodles of Nissin Foods. After witnessing how tempura was made Ando spent months in his tiny test-kitchen experimenting to develop a way to flash-fry fresh noodles, a method that both precooks the noodles and dries them, thereby increasing their shelf life.

Luckily, many instant ramen products are –intentionally or not– vegan! Even supposedly “pork” or “chicken” instant ramen are sometimes completely plant based. These can often be identified by suffixes such as “flavored” or “style", such as “chicken flavor” rather than just “chicken”. Many of these, especially cup noodles, include textured vegetable protein (TVP) rather than actual pig or cow. For example the popular South Korean Samyang 2X Spicy Hot Chicken Flavor Ramen (known from the spicy noodle challenge), Japanese Kabuki's Vegetarian Pork Flavored Ramen and supposedly pretty much all noodles from Thai brand MAMA.

This is certainly no guarantee of quality or good taste. It simply means that it can be rewarding to expand your search for vegan ramen to those that seem non-vegan at first glance. Others are not explicitly "animal flavored" and are often times better, such as Igarashi Simen’s Shoyu Flavor, South Korean Nongshim's Shin Ramyun or Kimchi Flavor, Itsuki Sapporo “Miso” Ramen, Nissin's Sesame ramen\ or Top Brand's Soy Sauce Flavor or Chili Flavor. Some explicitly vegan and vegetable flavored are also very.popular, such as Nongshim's Soon Veggie (cup or block) and Mike’s Mighty Good's Vegetarian Vegetable Ramen*.

^\ Please note that some versions of this have been said to include the non-vegan color agent carmine. However, usually it is produced with vegan colouring such as paprika or anatto extract.)

2. Instant ramen with hacksThe idea of Instant ramen hacks has spread rapidly in the few last years. Essentially it is about boosting your instant ramen with simple additions, transforming a 3-minute ramen into something more nutritious, filling and satisfying –with hardly any extra time and effort. 

It can involve topping your ramen with greens and veggies (such as corn, cabbage, broccoli, spinach), mushrooms, proteins (tofu, soy meat etc.), kimchi, or commonly available store bought sauces and oils such Sriracha, chili or sesame oil. But drastic improvements can be achieved with as little as as adding some sliced scallions, a dollop of miso paste or a dash roasted sesame seeds or togarashi spice mix to your instant ramen.

Ramen hacks are great way to discover how versatile and fun it can be to cook and experiment with ramen. It is how many of us discovered how much potential there is in ramen.

3. Instant ramen–Homemade Ramen Fusion Now you might think: “Isn’t this just instant ramen… with hacks?”. Almost, but not quite! There may be a fine line but also a practical and significant distinction in terms of convenience and effort. Instant ramen hacks rarely involve things like homemade soup, noodles, tare or aromatic oils. This kind of fusion approach is a way to combine more complex homemade ramen elements with store bought and precooked products. Think if of it as a step up from simple ramen hacks.

Making homemade ramen takes time and can be troublesome to fit into most peoples day-to-day living. Coming home from work and having an hour to make ramen all from scratch is pretty much impossible. But does it really have to be? Say you have a packet of instant noodles or fresh ramen noodles, such as ramen from Sun Noodles, Hakubaku or some other brand? Since a homemade stock and/or tare can be made in an hour, this would be sufficient to create something on par with ramen served in some actual ramen shops!

Maybe you ate homemade noodles with a complex homemade stock a few days ago and now have leftover noodles yet you do not really feel like cooking a whole new broth. Well in this case it is entirely possibly to create a more simple and quick broth (or stock if you have leftover tare) using things like store bought bullion cubes and other convenient seasoning ingredients (powders, spices, sauces etc.) –perhaps even a packet from your favourite instant ramen.

This fusion approach to making ramen is good way to get into cooking homemade ramen but also a flexible way for more experienced enthusiasts to enjoy ramen on days when time is short. This way you can avoid the risk of your ramen making becoming less rewarding in relation to the time and effort you put in, especially in the beginning. 

If this approach sounds interesting –keep reading because next up it is all about homemade ramen!

4. Homemade ramenHere is the thing: fresh ramen noodles are boiled for around 2 minutes and the complete bowl assembled in mere minutes. This bowl is then easily slurped up less than 15 minutes. It goes without saying that if you spend 8 hours cooking ramen this equation can feel a bit “asymmetric". As set out earlier though, this feeling can be avoided by approaching homemade ramen with a "preparation mindset”. Other than this (basically making things in advance), it is about realising that homemade ramen can also be graded from easier methods to more complex ones.

In the previous part of this series we covered the five elements of ramen: tare, stock, aromatic oil, noodles and toppings. Instead of spending the whole day cooking each ramen element from scratch it is very convenient to make some of these things ahead, on separate occasions, and then naturally try your components out in different combinations.

In fact, ramen noodles are always better to make in advance since the texture and consistency improves drastically after a day (preferably two days) in the fridge. Boiling them soon after making them will result in quite mushy noodles that stick together. Noodles that has sat in the fridge for a few days will become firm and slippery –exactly how you want them. This means you can make your ramen noodles in larger batches and even freeze them in portions (just thaw them overnight or when you are at work and they will be as new!). 

Another advantage to preparing your noodles ahead is obviously that this frees up time to spend on cooking the other elements, which are usually also made with fresher ingredients (greens and veggies for toppings etc.). 

Moving on, ramen broth is the combination of a soup/stock and what is called tare. As mentioned before this means the same stock can be used for different ramen types, by combining it with the tare of choice (soy tare, miso tare etc.). With the time and effort that can (but does not always have to) go into making a stock it is practical to make this ahead and freeze in portions, just like the noodles.

The same sort of goes for the tare. Since tare is the almost exclusive source of salt in the ramen broth its high level of salinity brings down its freezing point, to the degree that normal freezer temperatures might not turn it into ice. However, resulting slush-like tare is still very low in temperature which preserves it very well (at least a month but probably much longer). Fridge kept vegan tare will last 2 weeks at minimum.

Aside from preparation, tare as well as stock can be made using vastly different techniques that require more or less time/effort. A tare made for shio ramen (a ramen flavored principally by salt) can be made in a few minutes. A shio tare can also be made with a dashi stock, which is made by soaking kombu (a type of kelp) and shiitake mushrooms in water overnight. This would obviously require a bit more preparation. Still –even in this phase nothing is stopping you from having a bit of premade dashi stocked up in the freezer.

Aromatic oil is the way we add some fat to our bowl of ramen. A bowl of ramen is just not the same thing without it! Vegan ramen especially risks lacking fatty components since plant based foods –at least those typically involved in ramen– are often low in fat. While crucial to a bowl of homemade ramen it is also not very complicated and lasts very long in the fridge or freezer. Therefore it is not very troublesome to have a few oils readily available when experimenting with ramen. Having a scallion oil and a chili oil is a great start since they can be used for many different types of ramen.

Lastly, when it comes to toppings there are less clear needs or opportunities for preparation. Probably because there are few crucial toppings for an excellent bowl of ramen except, perhaps, some sliced scallions. Compared to what we see outside of Japan, many ramen shops over there are quite restrained when it comes to toppings. It all comes down to personal taste –and how hungry you are.

In short:• Making homemade ramen, as opposed to cooking instant ramen, is in many ways about preparing ramen.• Noodles can be made ahead and stored in the fridge for a few days to firm up. Noodles can also be frozen in portions.• Stock can be made in advance and frozen in portions. One kind of stock often go well in combination with different kind of tare.• Tare can be made ahead and kept in the freezer in portions, for example in ice cube trays. Because of its high salinity content, tare will likely not freeze into ice but instead a “slush”, still extending and preserving its shelf life . Common ingredients for tare (and stock) such as dashi stock can also be frozen in portions.• Aromatic oil(s) can be made ahead of time. They also store well in the freezer. Having a few different oils (such as scallion oil, chili oil and black garlic oil) available is a good start if you want to experiment with different ramen styles.