Ramen Noodles

Most of us can probably cook fairly well with a full pantry of ingredients but making something really good using only a few ingredients is the most rewarding. These types of recipes are usually technique heavy and I believe they are the basic building blocks of rudimentary cooking. We tend to forget there was a time when unlimited amounts of ingredients were not available to cook’s. Sourdough bread comes to mind, water + flour + salt.....there better be some solid technique involved because these three ingredients have a better chance of tasting like crap than not, but when you can transform them into something great it’s magical!

Another recipe using simple ingredients is ramen noodles – water + flour + baking soda*

There are several articles in first edition of David Chang’s magazine Lucky Peach, it's about everything ramen. I was intrigued by the alkaline noodle recipe, aka ramen noodles. The recipe involves taking baking soda and baking it at 250° for 1 hour. This process changes the sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate, an alkaline salt. This method was developed by Harold McGee and published in the NY Time. Previously this ingredient could only be purchased at a specialty store, commonly called kansui.

The chilled ramen dough

Step #1 - run the dough through a pasta roller.

The ramen dough after sheeting it out on the pasta roller.

Step #2 - Running the dough through a cutter.


Finished ramen noodles (alkaline noodles)