Survival Sunday 302: Kumamoto Spicy Ramen

New Year, New... Noodz?

It's time for me to tell you about some tasty ramen from Umai Crate!

That's right, the first thing I've made up for the blog this year isn't some sort of scratch-made treat or easy access meal, it's another random pack of noodles shipped from Japan. If you're studying abroad, live in Japan, or have access to a proper Asian market here in the US, however, you may be able to find this Kumamoto Spicy Ramen, which, spoilers, is delicious.

Here's the handsome package!

Ideally, you'd have some fried meat, some veggies, and an onsen egg to go with this delicious, thick-brothed ramen, but I was feeling lazy and hungry and just wanted to stuff my face with delicious noodles and spicy flavor!

A slightly blurry picture of what was in the package

In this sleeve of noodles, you get a robust handful of noodles (which are slightly salty when dry and are addictive to snack on while you wait for the water to boil), a powder flavor packet (the red one), and a packet of hot oil - probably hot sesame oil, if I had to guess.

The instructions from Umai Crate!

I looked up the conversion for 500ml because I didn't know if I'd have access to a measuring cup with ml instead of "cups" (thanks US Imperial system...), and it turns out that 500ml is about 2 cups (2.11 to be more accurate...).

Lucky me, the kitchen I was using had a multi-measure cup that I used to pour about 450ml of water into the pan, since my partner's not really a broth person and I was in the mood for some extra-thick soup. You can, of course, cook your noodles how you like.

I let the water boil on the stovetop in a fairly small pot (I figured that since it was a simple packet of noodles I wouldn't need much of a pot, and I was right). Once the water was bubbling around, I put the noodles in.

I don't break my noodles when I put them in the pot. I know some people do that as a space-and-time-saving method (shorter noodles cook faster, I guess?), but I'm more of a naturalist and allow the noodles to slowly wilt into the pot like a grumpy toddler slipping into dreamland.

Except I don't want to eat a toddler, and I really, really wanted to eat these noodles.

And once the noodles had been in their spa for a couple of minutes, I grabbed the red packet.

Opening the soup base on one of these Umai Crate packs is always exciting. It's basically a party every time, and you never know what you're going to smell, really. This time, the rich umami flavor came across in the scent of soy sauce and some meaty undertones. It smelled salty and savory and delightful, and I made sure to sample some of the powder that was left behind on the packet when I dumped it in the noodles. It was absolute heaven.

Salty, faintly sweet from the small amount of sugar in the soy sauce, meaty, soy sauce-y... perfection.

I turned off the heat and stirred in the flavors.

The water was almost completely opaque once I added the broth packet.

By now, the kitchen was filled with the wonderful smells of cooked noodles and rich broth, so I dumped the whole thing in a large bowl.

Look at that glossy, oily sheen!
Gorgeous!

Of course, there was one more step to add to this wonderful ramen - the spicy oil!

I tore open the sachet of oil very carefully, because that stuff is no joke to get in your eye, man. I promise, chili oil is a nightmare that you'll never forget when it's in your eyes.

Thankfully, though, it cooperated perfectly and drizzled into the bowl without fighting me at all.

Beautiful.

The oil itself has a very neutral flavor, since it only exists to lend spice, but once it combined with the actual noodles and broth? Call Guy Fieri, because that's a one-way-trip to Flavortown.

Oh god. Why did I write that...

But seriously, that's some addictively spicy, perfectly rounded deliciousness right there. If I could, I'd eat that once a week. It's the flavor equivalent of a sweater that, yeah, can sometimes be a little too warm, but it's so comforting to wear that you can't stop putting it on, even though it's mid-April and you might get heat stroke!

Mind, this isn't crazy hot. It's spicy, don't get me wrong, and if you get it down the wrong pipe, you're going to feel it for a while, but this isn't Shin Cup spicy in any way. It's not even as spicy as a Tijuana Mama sausage. It's just... comfortably spicy. It's the kind of spicy you keep going back for.

If you do live somewhere that carries this Kumamoto Spicy Ramen, then please do pick it up. Even if it's just to shoot a pack my way...

mmm....

noodles...

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 229: Oden Again

Remember how I've made oden before? I made it again! This time, I used more water, less powdered oden base, and slightly different ingredients!

To make this oden, I used:

• A small "Graffiti" eggplant
• Much more daikon
• hot dogs
• green onion/scallion
• frozen corn
• generic store-brand frozen shaved steak product
• firm tofu

I brought the hotdogs and scallions from my house in a cooler, which is why they're
in sandwich bags and full of condensation!

From left to right: frozen corn, firm tofu, generic shaved "steak" product

A big daikon chunk!

A very blurry photo of the awesome "Graffiti" eggplant

And, of course, the Oden Base

Prepping the corn in a separate bowl for ease of adding to the pot later.

The first thing I did was add a few cups of water (I didn't really measure this time, though I probably should have) to a pot and then toss the weird meat rectangles in. I figured they'd dissolve into the water over time, but they surprised me by holding up fairly well!

Even if they are a bit terrifying to look at...

My first major surprise of the day happened as the water grew closer and closer to a simmer - there was enough red food dye in that meat that the water turned a horrible shade of blood red

The color did not translate well.
Have you ever had a nosebleed in the shower? Yeah.
That's the color.

 Meanwhile, Z got to chopping and slicing and otherwise prepping the veggies that would go in this weird, wonderful oden:

Z did a fantastic job on the eggplant - it's exactly how I envisioned it!

I was worried that these chunks of daikon would be too big, but since they sat in the pot so long, they were great!

The next step was adding the daikon to the pot:

The meat had pretty well shredded itself into oblivion at this point,
but that was exactly what I wanted, so it worked out well.

Then I added the eggplant and frozen corn. If you live in one of the areas where they don't have "eggplant" at the supermarket, that's just what Americans call aubergines, so you'll be fine. It's not some weird local food like fiddleheads or whatever.

Everyone getting to know each other in the hot tub, lol!

The next step was, of course, the tofu!

Z cut it into these great square slabs - perfect for grabbing with chopsticks!

I took this opportunity to also cut the hotdogs into thirds. These were leftover from a cookout my folks had thrown for the family, so they were pretty good quality. I cut them, then I stabbed them gently in a few spots so they wouldn't just explode.

It was pretty pointless to poke them. They exploded anyway...

Not that exploding hotdogs are necessarily bad in an oden!
They were actually really good!

Here, you can see the oden after it has cooked for a looooooooooooong time!

This oden probably boiled together for more than a half hour before I added the seasoning packet. We added some soy sauce, some ramen pepper, and a tiny, tiny hint of delicious sesame oil.

I have a rare treat for you guys today, though:

That's right! Your old pal the Filthy Casual made a real live movie!!! I'm sorry again for the vertical aspect ratio at the beginning, but this was only my second video ever, so I hope you'll forgive me!

I've also got photos of the aftermath:

Look at all of this food!
Look at it! We had leftovers!
Actual legit leftovers!

Now, you may look at that heaping bowl of food (and bare in mind that Z had a bowl of equal size as well!) and think "there's no way that FC and Z finished off their servings!"

We did. And it was awesome.

I will say this - I used too much water. I should have had probably a cup and a half less to get more flavor out of the oden base, but it was still pretty decent. With how heavy all of the ingredients were, it would've been... inadvisable to have too strong a broth. As it was, we were in a food coma for the rest of the darn night!

If you'd like to replicate this at home but you don't have oden broth, you can make your own broth using soy sauce, soup broth (your choice of flavors!), maybe some bonito flakes if you have access, and plenty of pepper of any kind! Then you just gather whatever it is you want to eat in this hearty soup and boil them together for as long as you like. The longer the ingredients mingle, the more flavor you'll get out of them!

If I was really, really crazy, I think I'd add a raw egg straight into the bowl just after adding the oden. If the oden were still hot enough, it would cook the egg enough to be safe, but it wouldn't ruin the thickening properties of the yolk.

That might kill you, though. What with all the calories...

Still, it was a fantastic day spent making fantastic food!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 227: Oden, But Not The God

You may have noticed at this point that Z and I are absolute fiends for Asian food. Noodles, hot pots, sushi, Pad Thai, Korean BBQ... we love to eat. We also love to make our own recipes, somewhat. Last week, we went shopping together to gather the ingredients for an Oden Hot Pot from our Umai Crate. Here's how it went:

We got some hard boiled eggs, some smoked sausage...

some endive and daikon...

Some extra firm tofu, and...

The Oden broth mix!

We only vaguely followed the recipe provided in the crate...

First things first, we washed ourselves, our ingredients, and our cookware, then we began to cut things up. And by we, I mean Z, because Z is the best prep cook ever.

Here we see the endive and daikon cut together!

These are nice big cubes of tofu. Z did a great job!

The oden broth

That's how it looked inside the pouch! It smelled great, too!

Next, I put some water in the pot (I kinda couldn't figure out if they really meant only 1 cup of water per pouch, or if we'd want more so I added 2 cups or so). I got that up to a light simmer and added the daikon and endive to (eventually) boil. We wanted everything to go along with each other, so we started our veggies early. In the future, I'll probably add the endive with the meats & tofu, but here I added it early.

Veggies in a hot tub!

Next, we needed to get our proteins together to chuck into the pot - summer sausage and tofu may not sound like a fantastic combo, but they were amazing together!

These were nice, hefty chunks of sausage!

Once everything was prepped, I dumped it into the pot with the water, sprinkled in the Oden packets and let it simmer away!

I wasn't sure how all of this would work, but I was hopeful as I hunted down a lid.

The lid I grabbed was... maybe a size too big.
It worked, though, and the condensation only hit the burner a few times!

I hope this video A) works, and B) illustrates just how cool this was!

Wait... guys... is that... is that a FILTHY CASUAL YOUTUBE CHANNEL?!

YOU KNOW IT! I finally bit the bullet, since the upload was taking a million years on the blog, so I set up a YouTube for it! Now, there may not always be new videos, since I'm not a YouTuber, really, I'm a blogger, but I might throw a video or two up on there every so often ;)

But how did this food come out?

I mean, look at it!
It's beautiful!

I would change very little about this - all of the veggies and meats went together beautifully, the eggs maybe got a little overdone, so maybe I'd actually hard boil the eggs in the broth rather than place pre-boiled ones on top, the tofu was perfect, the daikon was boiled down to a really soft, turnip-like texture that I really dug, and everything was wonderful. I'd maybe add a little more water, since the broth was super salty, and I think it'd taste great with something bitter and something very sweet - like umeboshi and a nice sweet carrot or some sweet corn... and maybe I'd add those konjac noodles, too, for a weird, almost crunchy texture, but overall...

I loved this and would 100% make it again.

If you have proteins, veggies, and broth (of any kind), you, too, can make one heck of a meal! Just keep in mind the order of operations for optimal ingredient cooking: Crunchy but needs to get softer goes first, then soft but needs to heat through, then crunchy but needs to stay crunchy, and finally garnishes! You can add spices as you go, but the basic rule of thumb for that is to consider whether or not you want it to dissolve. If it needs to dissolve into the liquid (like a bouillon or a curry powder or salt) then it goes in early. If it's okay as-is or if you might add more at the table, it can go in later (like pepper or something like that).

Now Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 226: Hakata Style Part 2

Well, Z and I are maybe a little obsessed with Hakata-Style Tonkotsu. We got a second package of "animal free" Hakata-style Tonkotsu (which, again, is supposed to be an animal-free pork bone broth), and we kinda went... nuts.

So, the first thing we did, we dumped a bunch of frozen corn in a pot to heat up

It's usually pretty wise to add your veggies first while cooking. Veggies tend to heat slowly, especially when they're completely frozen like this corn was.

I used this picture in a previous recipe...

Eggs are a great source of extra protein in these kinds of dishes. You may notice I use eggs a lot in noodle dishes. That's because they're easy to prepare (especially alongside our meals as they cook).

And where would a noodle dish be without the noodles?
These are the Hakata-Style "Animal-Free" Tonkotsu  we've been loving from Umai Crate.

I feel like I did well with this egg.

We cooked the noodles in the usual way, boiling them until they're just soft enough to eat without stabbing ourselves in the gums. Which is to say, too soft for Z, who would rather eat noodles dry. What a butt. :P But seriously, we both like nice, firm noodles. They're really good that way!

We also got some sea lettuce furikake!
Sea Lettuce is a sort of green, flappy seaweed that proliferates the oceans.
It's tasty, it's useful, and it makes awesome furikake!

I like to throw my eggs in around the same time as my noodles if I'm "poaching" them. This is for two reasons: one is that the yolks don't overcook if I take them out with the noodles, and the other is that the noodles can sometimes hold the eggs off of the bottom of the pan, which can keep them from burning.

Trust me, cleaning burned-on egg out of a pan you're borrowing is always a harrowing experience, regardless of how little egg there is.

But you cannot argue with results.

 I love these noodles. They're thin, firm, slippery, and they really just bring out all of the good parts of the rich, creamy broth!

As you can see, that's one creamy, creamy broth!

I leave you with one last glamour shot of this delicious meal:

And yes, this was plenty for two people.
That's right.
The Hakata-style is so filling that you can feed two big people with it.

If you've got the option for Hakata-Style Tonkotsu at any point in the future, take it.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC