The Strange History of Ramen Noodles

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"It has to be al dente," says Yo Matsuzaki, executive chef at Ozumo restaurant in Oakland, California. Born in Shikoku and trained in both French and Japanese cooking, Matsuzaki spent years working with Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto at New York City's Nobu.

"Ramen should be eaten very quickly, because if it sits in the broth too long, it will get mushy. That's why we have to make that slurping noise when we eat it, because the broth has to follow the noodle into the mouth, and it's hot."

Although Matsuzaki says he "grew up on ramen" and ate countless packages of instant ramen as a student, at Ozumo he serves the real stuff: Red miso enriches the broth, Hokkaido-style; then spicy ground pork with chili, garlic and sesame oil go on top.

For his own meals, he likes to make it with duck-bone broth and naniwa noodles, a type of high-quality thinnish udon that has been handcrafted in Japan's Akita Prefecture for over 300 years.

"They're my favorite," Matsuzaki says of these noodles, which he buys dry, "because they're delicate yet still have a sort of crunch to them."

In a fusion mood, Matsuzaki tops the dish with duck confit, Japanese fishcake "and sometimes a poached egg -- but you don't want to overcook that."

And then?

"Make noise," he urges. "Don't be shy."

My friends the Lee family eat ramen nearly every day. When wife Susan met husband Evan while both were students at UC Berkeley, "Evan had an old, thin, cheap pot that he always made his ramen in; he used it until the handle fell off," Susan says. "Then he had to find a new ramen pot. This one is good quality, and will outlive all four of us."

When her now-teenagers Maria and Michael were small, Susan made them instant ramen using just a bit of the flavor packet, with frozen mixed vegetables -- peas, carrots, green beans, corn -- mixed in:

"This was pasta primavera for tots.  Pour off almost all the broth, stir in a couple of big spoonfuls of cream cheese, and we had Alfredo-style pasta for tots."

These days, "we love ramen because it's salty and slurpy, and because the curliness of the noodles gives some pleasure to the lips and gums but we can just crush them against our palate and swallow without chewing," she explains. "We love it because we can make it in the dark with our eyes half-closed. We love it because it's exactly the same size portion every time, so we can make it and eat it out of the pot without measuring anything or having to wash anything but the pot and the fork/spoon/chopsticks. 

"We love it because it comes in different flavors, but they all taste the same. We love it because it appears to be 100 percent fat-free, but it's not. ...
 
"At our house, almost every pot of ramen has an egg stirred into it and cooked through before being eaten. This makes it proteinaceous enough to qualify for breakfast, which is in fact the hour at which we most frequently eat it. A couple of us like to up the protein -- and salt -- by slicing a hot dog directly into the pot, to heat through before serving. One of us particularly likes the egg and hot dog version with a slice of American cheese laid gently on top at the last minute, thence to take a bit of the softly melting square with each bite. 

"Stirring the cheese in would miss the whole point."
 
Sure would.