How To Make Alkaline Ramen Noodles?

There is no avoiding the fact that you will have to work for the noodles if you want to make your own fresh ramen, but the effort will be worthwhile. Finding the ideal ingredient proportions—specifically, using the right amount of alkaline salts—is the key to getting the texture just right. Too much results in soapy-tasting noodles, while too little renders the noodles lifeless and consigns them to the bottom of your steaming ramen bowl as a mush.

Serving ideas ▲ Sichuan street food Dan Dan noodles

There are many delicious ways to serve alkaline noodles. Try the following:

Alkaline noodles and ramen have the advantage of maintaining their shape for a considerable amount of time when compared to other fresh noodle types. In other words, the noodle strands won’t adhere to one another and create a sticky mess.

Making them in bulk for later use is therefore a great idea. My recipe makes 4-6 servings (depending on your appetite). You can simply increase the quantity of the ingredients proportionally.

Divide uncooked noodles in portions then seal in bags/containers. They can be kept frozen for three months or in the refrigerator for up to five days.

Cook the noodles following the same instructions explained above. If frozen, they can be boiled straight away without defrosting.

Every bowl of ramen should be crafted around the best wheat-based, alkaline noodles you can get your hands on. Here’s how to make them at home.

Some people might be surprised to learn that a bowl of ramen is defined by its noodles rather than its broth. Everything else is meant to elevate that one essential ingredient, either as a complement (the soup, the aroma oil), or a foil (crunchy pickled bamboo, bland blanched spinach, a meltingly soft—or pleasantly chewy!—bit of pork). For a bowl of noodle soup to be classified as ramen, it must contain alkaline, wheat-based noodles.

The dehydrated noodles in those packages rarely have much flavor or character of their own and typically serve as little more than a vehicle to transfer excessive amounts of salt from bowl to body, so this may seem a little strange to those used to eating packaged ramen. However, if you’ve visited top-notch ramen restaurants in Japan, other countries, and the United States, the concept of a noodle worth designing a bowl around should make sense.

The only true constant in the vast and varied world of ramen is also the noodles. While the soup may be clear or milky, thick like sludge or light as a curative broth (and there may be no broth at all, as in abura soba and hiyashi chuka), and the seasoning may be anything as long as it’s sufficiently salty—miso, salt, soy sauce, dehydrated, powdered country ham, say—and the application of toppings may vary from restrained and refined to grossly overabundant, the one thing

In the past, we’ve suggested that home cooks simply purchase noodles from ramen manufacturers; Sun Noodle, the now ostensibly ubiquitous supplier of many ramen restaurants nationwide, sells its noodles online and at Whole Foods and other places all over the country, and they’re very good. If you have a favorite ramen shop, you can politely ask them to sell you some noodles, and it’s likely that they’ll agree. For those who really have no other way to obtain fresh ramen, there is also a method for “ramenizing” dried pasta, which is a flawed but serviceable alternative, as Daniel wrote several years ago.

If you want the very best noodles, your best bet is to buy from a noodle manufacturer, like Sun Noodle or Shimamoto Noodle. The machinery they have at their disposal, as well as their expertise, cannot be matched by a home cook with a pasta machine. But for those home cooks who want to explore the wide world of alkaline noodles, weve come up with a basic recipe that is relatively simple to make and uses fairly common ingredients and equipment.

This recipe’s aim is to demonstrate that making alkaline noodles at home is not only feasible but also satisfying. If you’re interested in experimenting more, we’ve provided the formula for each portion of noodles. Once you’ve made the recipe a few times and become familiar with the steps, you can gradually change the ingredient amounts to gain a better understanding of how even minor changes in ingredient quantities can have a significant impact on the noodles you ultimately produce.

You can make this exact same recipe with just one more gram of water per serving, and the resulting noodle will still be delicious to eat, but will have a less chewy bite and a slightly more slippery texture. This is an example of how sensitive noodles are to small changes in formula. The noodles produced during these experiments were all consumed by my wife, who actually preferred the 41% hydration noodle. You might feel the same way.

You can experiment with different flour types, custom flour blends, and alkaline salts in addition to altering the ratios of the ingredients. Doing so will help you understand the intricate interactions that result in such a wide variety of noodles from the very few basic ingredients of flour, salts, and water.

Sheeting the Ramen Dough

Before we begin sheeting the dough, I must warn you that I have previously made ramen dough on two pasta machines, neither of which were inexpensive. I ended up seriously, if not fatally, damaging my current pasta roller while creating this recipe and method. As long as you’re careful, the method I came up with should prevent you from ruining your pasta rollers. However, you’ll want to carefully follow the instructions, especially those relating to how thin the dough sheets should be. (Please don’t ask me to fix your broken pasta machines; you’ve been warned; I can’t afford it; it’ll be fine, really.)

I pull the dough out of the bowl and set up a pasta roller on a work table when I’m ready to begin rolling the dough. The dough will appear to be very crumbly and like it won’t hold together, but if you squish it with your hands, a ball should form. Using a bench scraper or knife, divide the dough in half. Wrap one half in the plastic wrap that was used to cover the mixing bowl, and set the other half aside.

One dough half should be flattened on your work surface with a rolling pin (or your hands) until it is relatively thin, about 0.5 cm (or 1/5 inch) thick. You simply need to make the dough thin enough so that it can fit into the widest setting of your pasta roller. This is crucial if you have a less expensive pasta roller because you can’t completely rely on the roller’s gear strength and pressure to flatten the dough for you. Forcing the dough through the roller could cause the inner mechanism to become misaligned or even completely break. A rolling pin is very helpful because you can exert a lot of force with your body weight on the tough dough.

When the dough is thin enough, begin gradually running it through the pasta roller’s widest setting. The dough will look terrible as it goes through the roller; it will be crumbly, dry, and splotchy, and it won’t resemble dough in any way. Don’t worry though; all that must occur is for the dough to pass through in one shaggy, raggedy piece. Roll the dough back and forth if necessary to get it through. Do not try to force the dough through.

Pass the dough sheet through after adjusting the pasta roller to the next widest setting. Repeat this two more times.

FAQ

How do I make ramen noodles more alkaline?

These ramen-style noodles are also known as alkaline noodles because the key is in the “baked” baking soda. You can get a traditional, chewy ramen noodle with an authentic bite, chew, and flavor by adding baked baking soda to the dough.

How do you make alkaline water for noodles?

Baking soda from the store can be used to make alkaline salt by baking it in the oven for an hour, which is a great alternative to lye water when making alkaline noodles.

Does ramen have alkaline?

Ramen noodles are made of wheat, and the dough frequently contains one or more alkaline salts in the form of kansui, which is Japanese for “alkaline water” or “lye water.” The majority of noodle producers use a kansui powder that they dissolve in a specific potassium carbonate to sodium carbonate ratio.

Why do ramen noodles need to be alkaline?

The noodles get a more elastic, bouncy texture by adding an alkaline agent to the dough, which prevents them from snapping easily. Additionally, they taste smooth and slippery after cooking rather than soggy or starchy. Since alkaline noodles also have a yellow tint, they could be mistaken for Chinese egg noodles.