Tantan Ramen
- Kurumi Hayter
- 7 hours ago
- 3 min read
Tantan ramen - known all over Japan as "Tantanmen" - is right up there with the other all time favourite ramen dishes like Miso Ramen and Shoyu Ramen. Like almost all Japanese noodle dishes, it's roots go back many centuries and inevitably to China. In the case of Tantan Ramen, the dish harks from the City of Chengdu in the Chinese province of Sichuan. If you know your Chinese cooking, you'll know that most Sichuan cooking is spicy and oily and the original Chinese version of Tanttan Ramen - called Dandanmian in Chinese - is no different. The original dish was said to be a soupless bowl of noodles and hot, chilli oil spiced pork with pickled mustard leaves. As it spread across China, the spiciness of the dish was toned down and in Shanghai - so the story goes - a milky broth was added.
The Tantan Ramen you'll find in Japan today is closer to the Shanghai version of the dish - not so hot and hosted in a bowl of rich, soya milky broth.
My recipe is all about using ingredients that you can source easily and bring to the table quickly. So, I use instant noodles from packs that I've bought in my local supermarket along with some minced beef (which I find enriches the flavour better than pork), pak choi and spring onion. The broth uses a soy milk base so as you can imagine, it isn't too chilli hot on your tastebuds.
If you would like to try this recipe out, you can find the Youtube tutorial by clicking Japanese Tantan Ramen or by scrolling to the bottom of the page. The written recipe is just below.
Happy cooking! Kurumi XXXX.
ingredients:
(makes 2 servings)
1 pak choi, rinsed
1 white part of spring onion, rinsed
2.5cm / 1 inch ginger, peeled
2 large garlic cloves
200g / 7oz minced beef
2 tsp vegetable oil
1/2 tbsp Toban djan (chilli bean sauce)
2 tsp miso
2 tbsp Japanese cooking sake
for the broth:
2 tsp vegetable oil
350ml / 12floz water
2 tsp vegetable stock granules
2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp sesame paste or tahini
2 tsp saoy sauce
350ml / 12floz soy milk
2 packs of instant ramen noodles (only the noodles, you won’t need the seasoning powder that comes bundled in the pack.)
how to:
cut the white part of a large spring onion longways into shreds. then put the shreds into a small bowl of water. (this is just so they curl up - it’s purely cosmetic.)
remove the root end of a pakchoi. cut in half to separate the green leaves, then slice the white part in half longways. rinse the leaves and set aside.
mince the cloves of garlic and put them in a small bowl.
repeat with the piece of ginger.
heat 2 tsp of vgetable oil in a frying pan. add 1/2 of the minced ginger and 1/2 of the minced garlic. stir fry for 1 minute.
add the minced beef to the frying pan and stir fry for 1-2 minutes. next, add the toban djan, miso and cooking sake. stir fry for about 2-3 minutes until the beef is cooked, before turning off the heat.
to make your soup broth, add 2 tsp of vegetable oil to a hot saucepan. add the rest of the garlic and ginger and stir fry for about 1 minute.
next, add the water, vegetable stock granules, sesame paste, oyster sauce and soy sauce. stir together well and bring to the boil.
turn down the heat and add the soy milk. at this stage, keep the soup broth hot but don’t let it boil or the soy milk may curdle.
bring a large pan of water to boil. cook the instant noodles according to the instructions on the packet (usually 4 minutes.) 1 minutes before the noodles are ready, add the pak choi leaves.
when the 1 minute is up, remove the pak choi and drain the noodles.
to serve, add the drained noodles to 2 serving bowls. then, add the soup broth, the minced beef and the pak choi.
last, garnish with the shreds of spring onion.
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