The hardest bowl on our menu to get right was the one with no bones in it. Pork gives you body for free: collagen, fat, the lot. Take it away and you have to build that depth from somewhere else, layer by layer, and every layer has to earn its place. Here is how I do it, and how you can at home.
Start with dashi, not stock
Kombu, the dried kelp, soaked in cold water and brought slowly up to just under a simmer, never boiled, then lifted out. That gives you a clean, savoury base with the same deep note you get from meat, without any of the heaviness. Then dried shiitake, steeped in the same water, for the smoky, almost meaty side of the flavour. That is your foundation, and it takes an hour rather than a day, which is the one place a bowl without pork is quicker.
Miso for body
A single miso gives you one note. Two give you a chord. Our Smoked Tofu and Spiced Miso Ramen uses a red miso for depth and a white for sweetness, loosened with sesame and a little of the kombu dashi into a paste that goes into the bowl as the tare. Stir the hot dashi over it and the broth turns from thin to full in front of you. That is the moment the bowl stops being a soup.
Fat, because a bowl needs it
Without pork fat you need another one, and it should carry flavour rather than just sit there. Ours is an aroma oil of spring onions roasted in oil until they're slightly caramelised and charred, finished with pure virgin sesame oil. You get that roasted spring onion sweetness with the nuttiness of the sesame, and it rounds the whole bowl off. It goes into the warm bowl first, before the broth, the same as any other ramen.
Something to chew on
Smoked tofu, sliced thick and warmed through in the broth, gives you the savoury, slightly charred thing that chashu gives a pork bowl. Sweet potato roasted in a miso glaze gives you sweetness against the salt and something soft to set against the noodle. A pinch of shichimi, the Japanese seven-spice, across the top, so there is a warm hum of chilli running through the middle of every mouthful.
What to leave out
Piles of raw vegetables. A ramen bowl is not a salad, and cold vegetables drop the temperature of the broth and dilute the flavour you spent an hour building. Two or three toppings, warmed and placed, always beat six thrown on.
The bowl we make
All of that is in our Smoked Tofu and Spiced Miso Ramen: the two misos, the sesame and kombu, the smoked tofu, the miso-glazed sweet potato, the roasted spring onion oil and the shichimi, with fresh noodles, portioned for two. It is 10 minutes from box to bowl, and it happens to be plant-based. It is here. Order by Sunday 8pm. Delivered Thursday or Friday.
