Posts Tagged 'soup'

Mmmm! Delicious pork noodle soup!

Pork stock is a staple of many delicious asian soups, and in the case of ramen noodles in Toronto, it seems to be the thing that every restaurant gets wrong. I haven’t tried my hand at a truly authentic ramen yet: I’ll have to get some pork leg bones from my butcher as well as some skin to break collagen down from. Not to mention authentic fresh ramen noodles aren’t locally available to cook. However I decided I wanted to make a versatile pork stock with the resources at hand, and work on the flavours from there. By keeping my soup fairly generic, I was able to produce both Koreany and Japanesey noodle soup dishes, pork stock is really awesome.

The ingredients!

I started with a big pork shoulder that was onsale, a little bit of pork belly (for added richness, more on this later), fresh garlic (was far more potent than I’d have gathered by the bulb size), a cooking onion and a giant head of napa cabbage (which was the smallest I could get :D). I began by braising my pork shoulder, just to seal the outside a bit. This was just done by using a stainless steel pan, maximum heat for literally just 30-60 seconds per side to get a nice brown. Tossed that bad boy into the crock pot. Next, I sliced the pork belly into some thick strips, and then braised it also. I then filled the crock pot with enough water to cover those guys and watched the delicious oils seep out into the water. I didn’t keep any of the pan drippings, as they contained a bit of char from the outside of the meat.

Crock pot locked and loaded!

Next up I sliced the lower half (maybe slightly less than half) of the napa, washed it and chucked it into the crock pot on top of the meat. I chose the lower half, which is the thicker half to make my stock from, and saved the leafier half for later. I peeled and quartered the onion, tossed it into the pot. I began peeling the gigantic garlic and tossed it in as well. After the first two bulbs, I tried a tiny slice and realized it was a lot more potent than I had imagined (very impressive for such large bulbs), and kept the third bulb for another day. I filled the crock pot the rest of the way up with water, covered it, and turned it on low for 10 hours, and went to work…

The richness is absurd

When I returned home from work I was greeted by a delicious smelling house and a rich full pot of pork stock. Upon tasting the stock I was shocked by the richness. The shoulder itself was a very rich cut, I probably *didn’t* need to add the belly, but no complaints from me. I added a few healthy shakes of MSG and tasted again, and refrained from adding salt as I wanted some versatility later. We boiled our fresh wonton noodles (the closest thing I could find to ramen noodles, fresh, at Longos) for a minute, drained, rinsed and left them to chill a bit. We took the other half of the napa cabbage and sliced off a bunch of leaves, washed and halved them, then blanched them for about 30 seconds in salted water and drained/rinsed them as well. By doing this we’ll have two textures of cabbage in the soup: both the stewed white parts in the stock and some crispier leaves.

Beginning to stage a bowl of our Korean noodle soup

With the cabbage and noodles ready, we can begin putting a dish together. I took a few leaves of the blanched napa and a handful of noodles and threw them in a bowl. Next I took some ladles of the soup broth, along with the stewed napa, garlic and onion and poured them over top of the noodles. I then hand picked some leaner meat from the pot and put them in the bowl. The shoulder has some very fatty parts, and the belly itself is exceedingly rich when boiled. While I did eat one of the belly slices on its own, it certainly isn’t a texture everyone wants, and definitely not in noodle soup. For the initial recipe, I added a half teaspoon of gochujang to each bowl, which is a sweet/sour spicy fermented pepper/soy/rice paste, stirring it in until it dissolved giving the soup a red tint.

Koreany pork noodle soup

It was a deliciously rich soup, maybe even too rich, but the little bit of spice kick and sweetness from the gochujang balanced it out. I wasn’t 100% happy with the dish, but I was pleased with the stock itself. After the crock pot was cooled, I skimmed off the fat, removed the larger bone pieces, and tossed out the fat cap that had become separated. It chilled in the fridge over night, and I skimmed off the rest of the fat that had congealed at the surface in the morning.

For todays lunch, I packed some more of the leftover blanched napa and noodles to some of the meat and broth in a tupperware. I then added a bit of water, a bit more MSG, and a bit of light soy (not low sodium). Upon a reheat at work I was delighted that I had a very Japanesey, dare I say, shoyu-esque soup! Delicious and definitely even better the second day :)

Shoyu-style ramen-esque noodle soup for lunch!

Pork soup is wonderful, and it’s definitely something I’m going to keep iterating. I will eventually get some bones and skin and do a traditional ramen, but until then I’ll be happily eating these left overs for weeks!

Perfect with and without pepper!

I have never been totally happy with my chicken soup efforts, but I finally nailed it this week. The stock was flavourful and sweet while the vegetables maintained crispiness.

Start by taking a big pot, filling it with water 3/4 of the way up. Throw in the chicken carcass (ours was a 1kg bird, roasted) with the meat removed, skin and jelly bits of fat are a must. Put in about 3/4 of a bunch of celery in, diced. Important step, and the reason the stock came out so sweet, dice up a sweet onion and throw it in. See this picture, it is the onion on the left. Next, add a half teaspoon of rosemary (ground), a half teaspoon of thyme (ground) and four bay leaves. All important, add two tablespoons of garlic powder, make sure its reasonably potent since its going to all cook away. Bring it to a boil on relatively low heat (3/8 for me), and then let it boil uncovered for 1.5 hours without a top. It’s important for this to be a low boil, a fast boil will lose water too quickly. After 1.5 hours the water level was down by an inch or so, so I closed the lid and turned the stove off.

Ingredients laid out for stage 2

Stage 2! Returning home from work ~7 hours later, I uncovered my soup to reveal a fantastic looking broth. Straining it through a reasonably small holed spaghetti strainer I now had a large pot of just stock. All of the chicken bones, celery (now completely flavourless), onions (surely flavourless too), and any skin or jelly left are tossed into the trash. I took half of it and poured it into a ziplock bag (which I triple bagged!) and put in the freezer for a later date. Next we add our 5 yukon gold potatoes, diced relatively into relatively small chunks, this helps them cook faster. We begin boiling the soup on medium heat (4/8) for about 30 minutes, covered, this is important. While we’re doing that, we fry up 4 carrots, also sliced, and a small yellow cooking onion (this is the onion on the right) in just a little bit of vegetable oil. I cooked it in reasonably low heat (4/8) to prevent it from burning, we just want to sorta saute them lightly, so that the onions are soft and sweetened, while the carrot slices still have their crispiness.

Final steps of cooking, let the noodles become soft!

Now we add the onions and carrots into our pot, along with 1/3 bag of NoYolks egg noodles. Let that boil uncovered for 10 more minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat, let it cool slightly and serve! The way it turned out there was very little broth compared to the amount of stuff in it, but that just depends on how much of the broth you use in stage 2.

If all has gone well, your potato slices will be soft but will still have retained their shape and that great yukon gold flavour, the carrots will still have some firmness to them, the stock will be rich and sweet. I really like the flavour of the yukon golds (over say white potatoes) and the sweet onions flavour in the stock while the cooking onions are delicious when sauteed. These choice ingredients are the real secret to this recipe. Personally I like it with lots of pepper, though either way is good. Enjoy the cooking!

Delicious!