[ed. See also: Food and Consequences: Ramen and Momofuku Ramen 2.0 ]
In the first issue of Lucky Peach, Ivan Orkin wrote about what it was like to be a Jewish guy from New York running two of the most popular ramen shops in Tokyo. Now, three years later, he’s moved back to the States to open two more shops in New York. If there’s anyone who can talk about the differences between the two ramen cultures—and what it’s like making ramen in each of the cities—it’s this guy.
It's Harder to Make a Proper Ramen Noodle Here
First of all, I daresay that bread and pastry production are more sophisticated in Japan. When I’m in Tokyo, there’s pastry everywhere! Everywhere. There are amazing loaves of white pullman bread, baguettes, and croissants. It’s all cooked hourly. Here in New York, where are you going to find fresh, warm bread? You’re going to have to seek it out.In Japan, flour companies have different divisions that make flour for noodles. In general, this flour is milled as much as ten times more finely than it is here. The flour doesn’t need to be as absorbent here in the U.S.—it’s primarily for bread production. So there’s not as much of a reason to mill it as fine. The result is that it’s harder to make a proper ramen noodle here, since the flour is just not fine enough.
Relative to pasta, ramen noodles are on the low end of the water-content spectrum—some can contain as little as 26 percent water. In Tokyo, where we make our own noodles, my machines have these giant, very heavy rollers. When you initially mix your flour in the hopper, it’s not all clumped together; it’s usually very feathery. As you push it through these rollers, it rolls into a sheet. Without the additional water, there’s a tremendous amount of force that’s needed to press the flour into dough. The more refined your flour, the better it will bind with water, and the better the texture of the final noodle.
When I talk to our flour salesman in Tokyo, I can say, “I’m thinking about making a tsukemen noodle, and I want it to be aromatic and have a chew,” and he’ll send me samples that make sense. Then we can talk on the phone and I can say, “I want my ash content to be a bit lower or higher” or “I want to be able to see more or less of the grain color in the noodle.” I can really talk to them and have a super intellectual conversation, and at the end of the day you’re able to make a really good product. (...)
You Can't Get Good Chicken Fat Here in the States
In Japan, you can get great chicken fat for cheap. It’s orange and it doesn’t taste funky—it almost tastes like chicken soup. At the ramen shop where I went with Chang for Mind of a Chef—69 ’N’ Roll One, the one where you’re not allowed to talk—the chef just covers the whole top of the soup with a slick of this amazing chicken fat. It’s so delicious.
You can’t get good chicken fat here in the States. A USDA plant needs approval for each part of the animal they want to use: necks, wings, heads, whatever. A guy at one of the chicken farms we use says he throws all his chicken fat away; it’s too much of a hassle to get it USDA approved, and nobody wants to buy it.
So I use whatever I can get. It’s not bad. It’s good, but it’s not as delicious. At the shop, people are like, You could use Flying Pigs Farms or whatever, and it’s like, Yeah, but they want $15 per pound for their birds. Then they’ll say, Why don’t you use pastured, sustainable, organic meat? And I’m like, Will you pay $25 per bowl of ramen?People think that’s terrible, but it’s like, What the fuck—you don’t want to pay! They want me to have some fucking lady in upstate New York picking carrots out of the ground and carrying them to my restaurant. But they don’t want to pay for that.
by Ivan Orkin, Lucky Peach | Read more:
Image: Lucky Peach
