Tell us what you have cooked lately (that's interesting)

I’d recommend a spoonful of sherry vinegar for the eggs, especially if you use sherry in the marinade, or mirin, as they’re pretty complementary.

Gizzards are awesome! Skewer them, grill, and brush on some teriyaki in the process. Goes great with beer!

The recipe I used actually has both :D

Although I do have a crock pot, I did the oven method.

Awesome, thank you!

Ramen porn from last night. God I have so much broth leftover.

Freeze it for later

and GOD DAYMN

I crave good Ramen. I feel like I haven’t had it in over 10 years. What recipes are you using for the broths?

A blend of various recipes and techniques that I’m still perfecting. It’s not perfectly traditional by any means, and is heavily adjusted toward my own tastes and preferences. I’m stealing heavily from Serious Eats, Just One Cookbook, a random food blog, and a book on Japanese street eats my girlfriend got me for Xmas last year, mixing and matching. But, in short, it’s something like this:

Armando’s Definitely-Not-Trying-to-Pretend-I’m-Even-Kinda-Japanese Ramen Recipe

This recipe makes 1.2 imperial fucktons of ramen; adjust as needed. Sorry, I don’t have the metric measurements.
Tonkotsu-Style Broth Ingredients

  • 3lbs Pork Trotters/Pig’s Feat, ideally split and chopped to expose the marrow
  • 1.5-2lbs Chicken Wings (or Chicken Carcass, if you can easily get that)
  • 3" length of Ginger, thinly sliced
  • ~10 cloves Garlic, peeled and smashed
  • 1 Bunch of Scallions, cut in half lengthwise

Chashu Braise + Ajitsuke Tamago Ingredients

  • 2lbs Skin-on Pork Belly
  • Oil
  • 1/2 cup Soy Sauce
  • 1/2 cup Water
  • 1/4 cup Mirin
  • 1/4 cup Sake
  • 4 tbsp Sugar
  • 2" length of Ginger, sliced thinly
  • 4 Garlic Cloves, peeled and smashed
  • 4 Scallions, cut in half lengthwise
  • 6 Large Eggs, soft-boiled and peeled

Shoyu Tare Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup Dashi Stock (from powder is fine)
  • 1/2 cup Soy Sauce
  • 1/4 cup Sake
  • 1/4 cup Mirin
  • 3 tbsp Sugar
  • 2 tbsp Salt

  • Ramen Noodles
  • Green Onions
  • Corn, fish cakes, nori, shiitake mushrooms, beni shoga, etc.

Cover the pork trotters and chicken wings in water and bring to a boil, then drain and rinse the meat of scum and try to dig out any especially gnarly looking bits of dark marrow or leftover blood. Re-cover with water, add in the ginger, garlic, and scallions, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer, cover, and cook, skimming scum for the first 30 minutes or so, for 4-12 hours, adding water occasionally to keep the mixture from drying out. You’re shooting for about 3 qts in the end. Strain out the solids and reserve. If you want, you can refrigerate it and peel off the fat cap that forms, if you want a less oily ramen (this is mostly an issue if you have to use chicken wings rather than carcasses, as has been the case for me traditionally).

Meanwhile, sear the pork belly on all sides on high heat until browned and crisping up. If you can actually get a hold of a wide “slab” of pork belly, you can absolutely roll it up into a log and use butcher’s twine to hold it together to get those perfect spiraling round slices you see on all the fancy food blogs, but my local stores only carry narrower “stripes” of pork belly, so I just cook those as-is.

Bring the water, mirin, sake, sugar, ginger, garlic, and scallions to a boil in a dutch oven or other lidded cooking vessel. Put the seared pork belly in there, partly cover with the lid, and then add it to a 300F oven for about 3-4 hours, flipping every hour, until it’s completely tender and darkened and the liquid is reduced.

Again, you can absolutely chill this liquid to remove the fat more easily (and there will be a LOT), but do reserve it, and put the soft-boiled eggs into it once it’s cooled down for 4-12 hours to marinate them. Chill the pork enough to make it sliceable, ideally overnight.

Finally, for the tare, just heat those ingredients enough to dissolve the sugar and salt easily while stirring.

To serve, slice some of the chashu pork and sear it in a skillet to brown it. Add the tare to the reheated tonkotsu broth until you’re satisfied with the flavor (you may want to tweak the levels of salt, sugar, and soy sauce to your personal tastes. You can also mix tare and broth separately for each bowl you prepare, but to be honest, after spending an entire day making this shit, I just do not have time for that).

Place cooked, drained noodles in a bowl, pour over the broth-tare mixture, and then serve with the sauteed pork belly, a split soy-marinated egg, and whatever other toppings you like (e.g. corn, scallions, fish cake, nori, sliced shiitakes, etc.).


Edit: I stress the non-traditional/I’m doing it wrong part here before someone leaps down my throat for sullying the beautiful creamy pale texture of tonkotsu ramen with a soy-sauce-based tare seasoning, rather than just salting it until it tastes like the milky pork water that it is in truth :)

As long as you don’t stick cream cheese in everything and call it Asian “Fusion”. I think you’re fine. Thank you. I’ll have to try a a few of these and, umm, scale it down. I roughly know how to convert. hehe.

Yeah, I was cooking for 13, hah. And I still had half the broth leftover at the end. . .

Have you read Ivan Orkin’s book Ivan Ramen? It’s a cookbook that’s part life story, and in it he talks about his trials as a westerner trying to break into the Tokyo Ramen scene.

Anyway, in his words, the cool thing about Ramen is that it isn’t a traditional food in Japan. It’s barely 100 years old, and as such doesn’t have the same appeal to ‘authenticity’ as a majority of Japanese cuisine. He says it was easier for him to play with new ideas and become successful, compared to other Japanese foods which are very strict about methodology (even the ‘westerm’ yoshoku dishes).

Anyway, long story short, authenticity is overrated in this case :)

So I have made a few new dishes recently. One thing I love about fall is the soups and stews that mark the season. So what better way to kick off the fall than a veggie soup


This approach would be best described everything. Carrots, kidney beans, barley, rice, quinoa, onion, celery, corn, all in a seasoned beef broth. Just a bundle of healthy.

But I also made a sweet and sour cabbage soup. Cabbage, naturally, potatoes, carrots, corn, with red wine and apple cider vinegar broth, mixed marjoram and Italian seasonings, and a dash of sugar. Came out quite well.

Fall soups, I love it.

Tonight I went for another go at biriyani. My first attempt was ok, but not as good as I’d hope. Well tonight I think it came out better.


South Indian (Chennai style) chicken biriyani with Chana massala and a paratha. Took a fair bit of work, but the additional butter really helped. On top of that I used more seasoning, the seasoning to chicken and rice ratio was too low the first time.

This time it came out good. Flavor profile was right, and it was as close as I could get to authentic. It was a lot of work, @ArmandoPenblade is a crazy man to make as many Indian dishes at once as he does.

I’ve never made chicken biriyani, it seems intimidating. I have made chana masala though, and that whole plate is something I would scarf down in record time. I approve!

Thanks for this. I watched this & went out the next day & bought some Pecorino & some nice thick spaghetti.

For my first attempt, it was delicious, but I did make a few mistakes (I went back & watched the video afterwards). My biggest problem was I added the cheese while the pan was still hot & cooking the noodles & the left-over cheese stuck to the pan like concrete!

I made quite a bit, so for leftovers for lunch the next day I threw in a few thai chili’s and a few pieces of bacon and it was even better. I love how much you learn with this dish/video.

Pecoriino was a new cheese for me and I was glad that Costco had a huge hunk so I can try it in some other dishes!

I love the addition of thai peppers and bacon. That sounds fantastic!

We’re hosting Thanksgiving for our friends this year, and as such have the responsibility for the turkey, stuffing, and .gravy.

Anyone have a good stuffing recipe I could use?

Alton Brown has an updated recipe for this that looks interesting.

https://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/alton-brown/cacio-e-pepe-5458695

Disregard my previous request, all The missus is making her mother’s matzoh stuffing.

I feel like you have an obligation to post that recipe now :)

I’ll have to get it from Mrs. tgb.

Salad. Steak. Gorgonzola bacon mac and cheese. Oh yeah.