Improve Your Ramen

Do you enjoy Ramen? Chef Masa Hamaya is helping you make the best ramen for dinner. Follow these five steps next time you open one of your many flavors of Ramen. You can learn more at Apartment Therapy.


Even though chef David Chang proclaimed that ramen is dead, I have to beg to differ. With the proliferation of ramen restaurants cropping up near me in San Francisco, it's hard to escape this complicated but soul-satisfying Japanese comfort food. To put it bluntly, everyone's serving it!

If you're brave enough to attempt making ramen (and not the instant kind) at home, here are five tips from chef Masa Hamaya to help you put together the perfect slurp-worthy bowl.

5 Expert Tips for Making the Perfect Bowl of Ramen

1. It's all about the noodles and broth.

Hamaya said that if the noodles and broth are perfect, toppings are pretty much unnecessary. Focus on getting your broth full of flavor and richness, and take your time doing it. If you're not making noodles from scratch, source the best possible ones you can find and buy them fresh.

2. Flavor and body in the broth come from lots of ingredients.

A lot of bones (and vegetables if you want to do a vegetarian broth) need to go into the stockpot, and he means a lot. You can't get good flavor and a thick broth without lots of ingredients and time to extract all the flavors. The stockpot should be packed full of ingredients before water is added, and a few gallons of water should reduce to only a few liters of broth when it's ready.

3. Never season your broth.

The broth is never seasoned because it is combined with a seasoned base (tare in Japanese) when individual bowls of ramen are composed. The base can be the braising liquid from meat, soy sauce, tamari, dashi, or countless other things, but salt is never added to the broth itself so that the seasoning in the final bowl of ramen comes from only one source.

4. Never salt the ramen noodle cooking water.

For the same reasoning as why the broth is never salted, Hamaya says that ramen noodles are never cooked in salted water. This is a departure from the Italian pasta cooking technique, but he was emphatic that again, the soup base seasons both the broth and the noodles when everything is combined together.

5. Cook the noodles properly.

Ramen noodles should be just cooked through, similar to cooking Italian pasta al dente. Undercooked noodles will be floury and tough, but overcooked noodles will be soggy and pasty. Cook your noodles at the last second when everything else is ready, keep a watchful eye on the time, and make sure you keep tasting the noodles so that the second they are ready, they come out of the water.

Clean Out Your Old Food

Is your pantry too full? Cleaning out your pantry can give you more room for fresh food and new ingredients. However, if you do not clean your pantry regularly, you are taking up room with duplicate items or expired food. Keep reading and you can learn more at Apartment Therapy.



1. Stale or Expired Food: Just because it’s a dry good or non-refrigerated item doesn’t mean that it won’t go bad. Inspect any containers or packaging left open, and toss anything that is no longer fresh. Nuts and oils especially have a tendency to turn.

2. Duplicate Items: Take a second to consolidate all those diced tomatoes, and get rid of anything that you have excessive amounts of. Donate to a food bank, or swap with a neighbor for something you don’t already have, and free up a lot of space.

3. Anything Unappealing: Everyone has random consumable gifts that linger, and that you have no desire to eat. It’s okay if you don’t like that vanilla jam you get from Aunt Edna every year. Again, donate to a food bank if you don’t see yourself using it at any time in the future.

4. Infested Dry Goods: This is the time to check out your bulk foods and flours for pantry moths and/or other kitchen pests, and throw away anything you suspect might be infested.

5. Old Spices: I tend to think that powdered spices have a longer life than Rip Van Winkle, but I’m also totally wrong; they definitely don't last forever. If you’ve had that cinnamon since before Y2K, it’s time to toss it and give yourself the gift of actual fresh flavor.

6. Random Non-Food Items: Pantry space can quickly become general storage, and is often overrun by cleaning supplies, ladders, and all the detritus that accumulates in our lives. Find another spot to stick this stuff, and make it easier to access what you really need. That broom will no longer hit you on the head when you reach for the pinto beans, and you’ll have free rein to find your nori sheets.

Ten Easy Meals in Ten Minutes

Are you in a time crunch between all of your priorities? Check out these ten great meals that you can make in under ten minutes. You can learn more about quick easy meals at The Kitchn.





1. Quick and Easy Fried Rice: Fried rice can come together even faster than 10 minutes if you happen to have a good selection of leftovers floating around. It's the end-all recipe to using up leftover rice and is tasty enough to eat for any meal of the day — yes even breakfast.

2. Apple-Arugula Salad Wraps: Although wraps seem more like a lunch food, for a quick dinner they can contain actual food groups and even do away with dishes if needs be. Perfect, no clean up!

3. Thai Crab Salad with Chili, Ginger, and Coconut: Since this meal merely needs to be chopped and tossed, it's quick to throw together and has big bold flavors that will satisfy without a laundry list of ingredients.

4. Miso Soup: Miso soup is perfect for those worried about over cooking tofu as it simply warms in this rich broth and suddenly, dinner is served! Check out this version with a poached egg — extra tasty!

5.The BEST Pancakes Ever: Pancakes might traditionally be breakfast food, but they're perfect for any meal in fact... we want some right now!

6. Egyptian Tomato Soup: This recipe just barely passes the 10 minute mark, but it can be made entirely from your pantry so there's minimal chopping or prep — making it a winner in our book!

7. Friday Night Slow-Cooked Brisket and Onions: So technically speaking this meal takes 5-8 hours to make, but there's really only 10 minutes of prep work involved. Make it before you head out the door to work and when you return dinner is already done for you!

8. Spicy Grilled Shrimp: These shrimp get a quick brine before hitting the grill, but since they cook up so quick, we're willing to overlook the extra brining time (only 30 minutes). Just make sure to drop them in the brine the second you come home from work or possibly lessen the salt and brine them while you're away (so they don't get too salty) to make things extra easy.

9. Thai-Style Omelet (Kai Jeow): This recipe comes together in less than 10 minutes which might even leave you time to walk the dog or check your email before dinner!

10. Scrambled Eggs with Fresh Corn, Goat Cheese, and Oven-Roasted Tomatoes: This meal is labeled as a 10 minute dish and mixes up with many things that you probably already have on hand.

What are your favorite no-time, extra-quick weeknight meals?