54 recipes. Page 3 of 3
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The filling is just four things: beef marinated in soy and sugar and stir-fried, spinach, carrot and strips of thin omelet. The beef is sliced thin against the grain and cooked until the marinade clings with no liquid left, which keeps the rice dry and the cut slices clean.
Chicken stock and a separately cooked clam broth, seasoned with nothing but salt, give this Hakodate-style ramen a pale golden soup that tastes clean and briny. Shio ramen traces back to Hakodate in southern Hokkaido, and with no soy or miso to hide behind, every flaw in the stock shows, which makes careful blanching and scrubbing of the bones worth the effort. Toppings stay simple: sliced chashu and blanched spinach.
Cutting each seaweed sheet in half makes rolls small enough to fit tuna mayo, pickled radish, carrot and spinach into a single bite. With only half a sheet to close around everything, the rice is spread thin and the fillings kept in a narrow line down the middle.
Each vegetable is cooked on its own and folded in at the end, so the spinach stays green and the carrot stays bright instead of fading into the glass noodles. The beef is marinated in soy and garlic first, and the noodles soak up that seasoning in the pan before the last of the soy sauce adds gloss. Spinach that is not squeezed dry leaks water and thins the dressing.
The spinach is dressed with sesame oil and salt, the carrot is cut into strips and sauteed, and the burdock is braised in soy sauce, then all three are rolled with pickled radish and thin egg strips. Each filling is seasoned on its own, so the colors stay separate and sharp when the roll is sliced.
Without any meat, japchae leans entirely on its vegetables: spinach, carrot, shiitake, bell pepper, and onion each keep their own color and sweetness because they are stir-fried one at a time. The spinach only needs to wilt over high heat and is spread out to cool at once, or it dulls in color and turns tough. The glass noodles soak up soy sauce, sugar, and sesame oil before anything else joins them and come out glossy, chewy, and seasoned through. Tossing them with vegetables straight from a hot pan makes the noodles slump and clump, the usual way this dish goes wrong. It works as an everyday side dish or on a holiday table.