(part of the Secret Pro Techniques ramen style research series)

@Elvin Yung <shikaku.ramen>

I don't need to use the J word here, as the style that originated it needs no introduction. What started off as the impactful style of ramen developed to feed starving students has since evolved into a deep taxonomy of unique and interesting styles, many of which resemble the original only superficially, and vary wildly upon further examination.

What I'm making is a mishmash of all these styles, so I'll call it by the most general possible term: G-kei, short for either gatsuri-kei (ガッツリ系) or "garlic-kei".

What makes this style so delicious? If you haven't tried it, you'll probably think that it's just the MSG, it's just the fattiness, it's just the pork, etc., but I don't think so. None of these things by themselves result in a balanced product. The elements seem simplistic, but weaving them together into a beautiful and balanced experience requires an incredible amount of skill and intuition. This style is deceptively difficult, but when done right, it makes an amazing product. I'm still far from it, but along the way I've learned many interesting things.

When making this ramen style, I try to optimize for something that I tentatively call "uneven balance", which is unlike many other ramen styles that aim for "even" balance. Both can be just as refined; both can be just as "kodawari". Here, this "uneven balance" manifests to me mainly as three things:

• Staggered punchiness that comes from experiencing various elements in different stages over the course of the bowl: porkiness, shoyu, garlickiness, vegetable crunchiness and sweetness, etc. (An orthogonal idea that I'll mention in this post is aji-hen 味変, which is the idea of the flavor profile changing over time as different ingredients and seasonings become added and infused over the course of the bowl.)
• Textural variety that heavily showcases the intermixture of different elements and their textures. For me, the noodles are alternatingly chewy and snappy, the vegetables are crunchy, the abura is soft but not perfectly yielding, the chashu is juicy, meaty, soft, but not dry or stringy, etc.
• Finally, I think this ramen style relies heavily on the element of choice: Not only does the user have the option to choose their toppings however they like, but also there are enough different ways to proceed through the bowl such that they're never bored. Successive mouthfuls balance out one another, things can be enjoyed together or apart, etc. This is much more true of this ramen style than others.

This page is not a recipe. It aims to summarize some of the things I've learned about the techniques and optimizations used for this style at shops, but there's still enough variation in the style such that ambiguity is unavoidable. Spoiler: the moral of the story is to learn to trust your senses. It's worth remembering that every recipe is a compromise with false precision, and any ratios and techniques used here will just be points in a vast sample space. A recipe can help you make a decent product, but there is no shortcut to making a good product.

Soup

For me, the soup is the most important, most finicky part of the process. This is an austere style with very little to hide behind — maybe even less than a tanrei shio bowl — and using the freshest, porkiest soup is paramount.

I want to stuff the soup with as much porkiness as possible. The basic idea here is pork flavored with more pork. You can use aromatics here (and in fact many/most shops do), but personally I find that it detracts from the porkiness.

For the bone mix, my mental model is that femurs are the most efficient source of collagen and thus serves as the foundation for the soup, while necks and backs elevate the "meatiness" of the final product. Too much femurs, and the soup will feel a bit bland despite an abundance of extracted inosinic/glutamic acids. Too much necks/backs, and the soup doesn't take on the right body unless you reduce the heck out of it.

My process for the soup is usually to start with a somewhat femur-heavy mix of pork bones (usually at least 2:1 femurs to necks) in a pot with enough water to cover (~1.75L of water for ~2kg of bones), simmer overnight (bring to low boil, skim, then lower heat and cover), then post-adjust in the morning with extra pork necks/spines to fill extra space, continuing to simmer.

Add fatback and pork shoulder to cook in the morning whenever (you'll want these to be as fresh as possible; see respective Ajitsuke Abura and Tare and Chashu sections below), and remove when done. Both the chashu and backfat are crucial components of the soup, and they make the soup significantly "brighter" in terms of porkiness, especially aromatically.

This soup should be served fresh. There's basically a 4-6 hour window during which I find the soup is optimal, which starts at around the 13-hour mark. Fresh soup and oil smell "fresh"; there's a brightness that's hard to describe. Soup that's been sitting for too long or spent a night in the fridge smells vaguely dull.

"Emulsification Level"

Soups here are generally described using a sliding scale of emulsification (nyūka 乳化), which confuses overseas ramen nerds because it's similar but distinct from the chintan-paitan spectrum. Personally I think of it as a narrower form of the chintan-paitan spectrum: high-emulsification (乳化系, nyūka-kei) soups still tend to be somewhat lighter than a true paitan, and low-emulsification (非乳化系, hinyūka-kei) soups are still less clear than a true chintan. This scale also often conflates how gelatinous the soup feels with how oily the soup feels. (At least one ra-ota out there has posited that emulsification is really about whether the bean sprouts float or sink in the soup.)