Ramen is synonymous with Japan, from the exoticism of its very particular appearance, its ubiquity in Japanese popular culture like anime and manga, and the way it seems to represent the people of Japan as an accessible, hearty, and delicious food. At the same time, ramen is as quintessentially Japanese as a hot dog is quintessentially American – it kind of is, and yet, it kind of isn’t.

Ramen was developed by Chinese settlers in Japan, from noodle soup dishes in the Canton or Jiangnan area, reflective of how most of the Chinese settlers came from Guangzhou and Shanghai. Some ramen shops still even refer to their ramen as chuuka soba (中華そば), i.e., “Chinese noodles”. However, like many dishes adapted by a different country, it underwent a number of changes until it gradually came to be more like the ramen we think of it as today. In essence, ramen is Chinese, though with Japanese influence and created for a Japanese palate, and while it’s still considered Chinese food by local Japanese, it’s so far removed from its origins that the distinctive dish it has since become is considered by the rest of the world as Japanese cuisine.

The history of the exact moment ramen became its own thing is complex, and continues to be argued. Instead, we’re exploring what makes this enigmatic noodle soup its own unique dish, and what identifying factor is consistently present in every bowl of ramen in Japan, despite the countless variations. After all, ramen is not a monolith, with many components, and thousands of artisans pursuing its perfection.

The Soup

Every aspect of ramen is important, but the soup is especially critical. The soup is how ramen is judged, and it’s how it’s categorised. In the case of ramen, the soup is typically (but not always) made up of 3 components. The broth; the tare (たれ) or kaeshi (かえし), the seasoning sauce; and the koumiyu (香味油), the flavoured seasoning oil.

Broth

First is the broth itself, sometimes referred to as the dashi (だし). This is essentially the soup stock that makes up most of the soup, and like soup stocks from around the world, it’s made with water, umami components, and aromatic compounds.

Umami, referring to deliciousness, refers to one of the five basic flavours. This is used to describe savouriness, such as the flavour of a juicy steak, or the meatiness of a mushroom. Typically, umami is derived from compounds called glutamates and nucleotides, with the four common ones outlined in the table.

Umami Compound	Common sources
Glutamic acid	Kelp, fermented products
Inosinic acid	Meat and fish
Guanylic acid	Mushrooms, seafood
Succinic acid	Shellfish, some vegetables, fermented products

Broths from ramen can be made from any ingredients, with the most common being pork bones and chicken bones. Ramen chefs will also take advantage of the synergistic effects of these umami compounds by combining ingredients for an intensely savoury broth. Some older styles of ramen will use a combination of chicken stock as well as a traditional Japanese dashi, a stock made of dried kelp or dried bonito flakes, which is why the broth is sometimes referred to as such. One of the most famous ramen shops to adopt this technique is the Michelin-starred Tokyo restaurant Sobahouse Konjiki Hototogisu, who combines 3 separate soup stocks: one of clams, one of red sea bream, and a dashi of bonito and kelp.

Aromatic compounds, which include herbs, spices, and vegetables, could include things such as garlic, ginger, and scallions. Any of these ingredients can depend from shop to shop, or region to region. The broths can be chintan (青湯), clear, or they can be paitan (白湯, パイタン), cloudy. Clear broths are made by simmering the ingredients gently. Cloudy broths are made by cooking the ingredients at a rolling boil. The higher temperature and the movement of the boiling water help to break up and emulsify the fats and proteins, suspending the particles in the water to give the cloudy look. Cloudy ramen broths usually bring to mind thick, rich, creamy tonkotsu (豚骨) pork bone broths, though another popular famous example is tori paitan (鶏白湯), a cloudy ramen made using chicken bones.

Tare

The broth of a ramen soup is rarely or minimally seasoned with salt. The seasoning instead comes from the tare (たれ), which is usually seen as a small amount of liquid added to the bowl before the soup or noodles go in. This is a practice from how soba noodles are served, and can be used to control how strong the soup is, and what it tastes like.

Broadly speaking, there are popularly 3 main types of tare: shio (塩,しお) salt, the most lightly-flavoured tare, shoyu (醤油) soy sauce, and miso (味噌,みそ), typically the strongest. The tare uses these ingredients as a source of salt, and can add any additional flavouring compounds such as dried bonito, dried kelp, mirin, wine, and sugar to create an intensely-flavoured sauce that is used to add flavour to the soup.

Koumiyu

The final component of a ramen soup is one that usually hides in plain sight. Koumiyu (香味油) translates to a seasoned or flavoured oil. As its name suggests, it’s a flavour-infused fat that can add flavour from fat-soluble compounds to add layers of complexity to a soup. In the case of places such as Hokkaido, which is typically colder than the rest of Japan, fat on the top of a ramen soup can also act as an insulator to trap the heat of the soup, keeping the broth piping hot as you eat.

Some examples of koumiyu are flavoured rendered chicken fat, black garlic oil, chilli oil, and scallion oil. This can vary from region to region, or shop to shop. You can usually see koumiyu as a light sheen of oil floating on the surface of the soup, or even a spoonful of what looks to be a sauce. Not every ramen has koumiyu, and if you’re looking for a lighter ramen, you can sometimes request for koumiyu to be left off your order.

If we compare a ramen soup to cake, then the broth would be the base ingredients such as the butter, flour, eggs, and sugar, which determine what type of cake you’ll be making, such as a pound cake, a butter cake, or a sponge. The tare are the ingredients that determine how it’s flavoured, such as the carrots and spices of a carrot cake, or the cocoa powder and vinegar of a red velvet cake. The koumiyu may not be necessary but might be the ingredients that add flavour or texture, such as sprinkles, nuts, or fruit in the case of a cake.

Using this same analogy, it becomes more apparent that some tare are more suited to some broths than others. Adding carrots, nuts, and spices might be too heavy for a sponge batter to retain its fluffy texture, and adding a few tablespoons of cocoa powder might be sufficient to flavour a genoise, but not enough for a chocolate mudcake. In this same way, lighter broths such as seafood broths are best paired with lighter salt tare, whereas a very thick pork broth can withstand the savoury richness of a miso tare. Such considerations are important to a ramen chef to maintain the balance of flavours.

The Noodles

Noodles might seem straightforward, but for the same reason that Italian pasta comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, as does ramen noodles, even if you may not have noticed. For the most part, ramen noodles are made up of wheat flour, water, and an alkaline solution called kansui (かん水), sometimes referred to as lye. This alkaline compound performs similarly to the lye water used for making soft pretzels, activating flavones in the flour to create a chewy texture, a yellow colour, and a distinct flavour associated with ramen noodles.

When “shape” is discussed in the context of ramen, it isn’t in the same capacity as Italian pasta. It usually refers to two aspects: the cross-section of the noodle, and how straight or wavy it is, which affects how it interacts with the soup. Straight noodles have fewer kinks, and when picked up can remain closer together. This allows the surface tension of the broth to cling between the noodles, so it holds more soup. On the other hand, wavy noodles typically rely on thicker soups to cling to it, so it is best used with richer soups.

Ramen noodles are usually shaped by rolling and slicing it or extruding it like pasta, as compared to something like Chinese hand-pulled noodles. As such, the cross-section of ramen noodles can vary from round to square, to flat, and this can depend on the preferences of the ramen chef, the manufacturer of the noodles, or what is typical for a specific variation of ramen.

The thickness of the noodle can also vary. Thin noodles are usually paired with lighter soups, to not overwhelm the flavour.

There is also a matter of hydration. Like in the context of baking, hydration is denoted by (%) and refers to the unit weight of water used per unit weight of flour. For example, 100 g of flour with 30 g of water is 30% hydration, whereas 100 g of flour with 80 g of water is 80% hydration. Low water hydration typically sits at around 25-30%. Less water means the noodles are easier to preserve, and results in a firmer, denser texture. Since it doesn’t hold much water, it can absorb the soup easily, and subsequently pick up the flavour. However, that also means low-hydration noodles can get soggy quite quickly.

Conversely, high hydration noodles are about 35-40% hydration. More water allows for more gluten development, which results in a chewier noodle that doesn’t get soggy quickly. However, it also doesn’t absorb much of the soup, so high-hydration noodles are more common in thicker, richer soups.

Not every ramen shop makes their noodles in-store. However, this doesn’t dictate the quality of the ramen shop, as ramen chefs often work with suppliers to have them make noodles to their exact specifications. In fact, ramen shops are often very open about where their noodles are from, especially if they source them from a highly reputable supplier. Good noodle manufacturers understand the properties of the flour they receive and formulate a recipe to achieve the right outcome. They need to be consistent when there are changes in the composition of the flour or even the humidity of the environment they work in.

Some noodle manufacturers also open factory shops to the public, selling fresh noodles, or collaborating with the stores they work with to make souvenir versions which you can buy and make at home yourself. In Sapporo, Morizumi Seimen (森住製麺) is an example of such a store, but there are countless examples throughout Japan.

The Toppings

Toppings are the least strict component of ramen, with even regional variations of ramen having different toppings from shop to shop. Some toppings are more common than others, and some may be associated with a certain style or region in Japan. For standard ramen, it is pretty common to have a slice of pork, be it from a roll of chashu or a braised cut of meat, but you can also find minced meat, or other proteins, such as chicken, or beef. We’ve had duck ramen before, too.

Other common toppings include bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, boil egg, nori seaweed, kikurage wood ear mushrooms, fish cakes, and the white or the green part of a spring onion. Some less common toppings might include butter, corn, wontons, and kimchi, but there are no end to unusual toppings, such as those you’ll find in shops like Franken Ramen in Osaka, who offered soft serve ice cream and a slice of strawberry cream cake in their ramen as a topping for a short while.

Ramen shops almost always offer a number of condiments that you can add to your ramen, with popular selections being garlic, chilli oil, chilli flakes, pickled ginger, vinegar, and pepper.

So: What is Ramen?

With all of these components, and all of these variations, it then becomes tricky to pinpoint a unifying identifier that determines whether something is ramen. After all, ramen can be made without some of its key components.

Taiwan mazesoba and abura soba are examples of ramen that don’t use broth. Michelin-starred ramen restaurant Ginza Hachigou makes their ramen without any tare, and koumiyu can be absent from a ramen, or omitted from an order. You can even have ramen without any toppings, such as in the case of Ichiran, where you can opt out of the spring onion and the slice of chashu pork.

It then becomes clear that ramen is determined by the noodles. More specifically, it’s the use of kansui in the noodles that results in that texture and flavour specific to ramen. This is a collective agreement among the top voices in ramen, such as Toshiyuki Kamimura, a writer for the ramen publication Ramen Walker and creator of the blog Ramen Wonk Junction 9, a man who averages 400 bowls of ramen a year. It’s the reason why you can’t use fresh pasta, plain egg noodles, or rice noodles in place of ramen noodles and achieve the right feel. Even other alkaline Chinese noodles may not have the right flavour, because of the variety of alkaline compounds used in cooking, and the balance in the noodle dough.

There is no doubt that the broth is the most difficult aspect of ramen to perfect. It takes the longest time to make and is what’s remembered when a diner leaves a restaurant. The soup is the soul of the dish, the pride and joy of a ramen chef, but the noodles are what make a ramen.

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