November 3, 2017 • 40 mins
From a Chinese side dish to a Japanese staple to an international phenomenon, we slurp through the history and science of ramen.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Annie Rees and
I'm Lauren vocal Bomb, and today we're talking about ramen. Yes,
ramen noodles and they're way more than those forty nine
cent dry noodle packs are kind of soup things that
you can get at grocery stores. Of a lot of us,
we included, uh used to survive college and my post
college era certainly. Yeah. Um, raman of the non droid
(00:32):
and package variety is currently kind of a food trend
in the US and and in other places around the globe,
and it's becoming more and more commonplace. And it's also
food you probably associate with Japan, probably for good reason. Um.
But buckle up, friends, this is another one of those
episodes in which we talk about really depressing stuff in
the middle of something that you love. So yeah, yeah,
(00:54):
it's gonna be okay, We're gonna get through this together.
It will be. Let's begin, Yes, So, first, big shout
out to George Salts The Untold History of Ramen as
an excellent book and source for this episode. Very helpful. Also,
basically all of it is available for free to read
on Google Books, so check that out. Yeah, there are
so so so many takes on ramen. Almost every city
(01:15):
in Japan has their own insert city name style, and
then all the versions outside of Japan is just a lot.
So keep that in mind as we talk about ramen.
Japan's Ramen Museum and yes that exists, and yes we
will be talking about it. Further recognizes officially nineteen regional varieties. Okay,
but at its most basic, what is it? It's noodles
(01:38):
stock tear, which is the sauce that is used for flavor. Well,
there's no accent over that, and that is my bad.
And the toppings if anny. Ramen noodles are a specific
type of noodle that's generally been alkalized. Changing the peach
levels in a wheat flower dough affect its properties, including
(01:58):
the texture and color because it affects some of the dose,
chemical compounds and gluten interactions. And the noodles are made
with a combination of flour, salt, and water that has
often been infused with con sway Kent City. See I
even write out the pronunciations and it's like my brain goes, no, no,
this way. I'm not I'm not a total expert. I
(02:21):
took a little bit of Japanese linguistics in college. But um,
so I might be screwing it up to There's also
regional accents. Cool well. Feel free to correct me at
any time, Lauren, Okay, no, you're trying. I usually just
toss French words to you. So I, this is totally fair,
absolutely okay. Kind sue anyway is an alkaline mineral water.
It's solution with potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate or bicarbonate.
(02:46):
It's a brownish liquid that's hard to find outside of
Asia sometimes but can be substituted for with regular old
sodium bicarbonate a k A baking soda. That alkalinity gives
the noodles the hint of yellow, and there's slipperiness and cheeriness,
and as you go further south or west. In Japan,
the less consuit is used in ramen, which impacts the color.
(03:06):
In the north, where the baking sida makes up about
of the water, the ramen will have more color to
it than the south. The alkalinity also affects the rate
of broth absorption of the noodles. Um and other noodles
that may be served at Raman shops can include udon,
which are a thicker softer white wheat noodles, and soba,
which are usually thinner um kind of nutty buck wheat noodles.
(03:28):
Sometimes ramen noodles are served without broth. Also, but if
you are going to broth, If you're going to broth
you chefs you or chefs uh. Summer seafood primarily clams
or dried fish meat usually chicken or pork, or vegetables
typically garlic onionscallions are ginger or a combination of those things.
(03:48):
For quite a long time, quite quite a long time.
All kinds of stuff I didn't mention can be using
the broth though, like apples or potatoes, and the broth
can be a clear consume style thing, or like cloudy
jellaty and rich stock that you get from cooking down bones.
And the seasoning sauce atari is most often a choice
of soy sauce show you fermented soybean paste, mitso are
(04:11):
salt shio, but that also can vary in a small
amount of ramans. Don't use any torre. Are you seeing
a pattern here? Very customizable As far as toppings go,
You're most likely to run across Chinese style roasted pork
called chas shoe and slice green onions. But you can
find us about anything on there if you peruse enough menus. Yeah.
(04:32):
Other most common items include mushrooms, soft boiled egg slices
of spongy fish cake, seaweed slices, butter, bunito flakes which
are fish flakes, garlic, chips, and corn. And you can
find raminin over eighty thousand restaurants, and thirty five thousand
of those are Roman specialty shops in Japan, just in Japan,
(04:52):
Just in Japan. Eight of these are small businesses in
a similar way to vegemite. Raminans sort of tied to
Japan in Japanese culture and sometimes described as a symbol
of Japanese soft power. In a survey of two thousand
Tokyo area residents, the Fuji Research Institute found that the
Japanese consider instant noodles to be Japan's greatest invention of
(05:14):
the twentieth century. Oh and that instant stuff eighty seven
point five billion packets a year sold in two thousand
five about three billion dollars. By twelve, that was over
a hundred billion servings per year, enough for fourteen packets
for every single person on the face of this planet.
That is a lot of instant moment, it is. But
(05:38):
how did we get here? How did we create this
ramen craze, I mean, not us personally like humanity. Unfortunately. Yes,
we're gonna tell you, but first we're going to take
a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
(06:01):
we're back, Thank you sponsor. So there are three competing
stories about the origin of ramen, but one thing they
all have in common. Raman is from China, not Japan.
Oh yeah, okay. So Japan has borrowed lots of culture
from China over the centuries. Their their system of writing, calendar,
and Buddhist practices, for example, all originated in China. And
(06:21):
those other two types of noodles frequently found in Japanese cuisine,
soba and udan, also came from China. But those things
all date back at least a millennium or so. Raman
is more recent though, And speaking of language, you can
tell partially based on the way that the word is written.
In Japanese. The modern Japanese language has two alphabets, one
for native words called uraga and one for foreign words
(06:42):
called katakana. Provides the phonetic spellings for kanji, which are
those conceptual characters. But yeah, okay, so Raman is still
not written with native hourigana or kanji, but in that
foreign Loan word alphabet, so it hasn't been kicking around
all that long. One story claims that scholar Shoes shun
(07:04):
Sway fled Mante rule and China, bringing with him the
recipe for Chinese stitle noodle soups. Sometime in the sixteen hundreds.
A companion to the feudal lord Tokugawa mitsu Kuni Shoe
supposedly gave out lots of useful advice, including how to
improve the local udon noodle soup and dashy roth with
stuff like carli, green onions and ginger. Some food historians
(07:27):
credit this is the beginning of Roman and Japan. Mm hmm,
but there's not a lot of written evidence of this. Yeah, well,
and it's and it didn't really develop further from there,
kind of like stopped. Yeah, that was sort of it. Yeah.
The second tale of Roman's arrival to Japan involves the
country becoming more open to foreigners in the nineteenth century.
(07:50):
This was due to Japan's kind of Western driven Imperial
restoration in the mid eighteen hundreds that they had been
basically closed to Eastern immigrants and certainly the Western mimigrants
at even merchants for about two hundred and fifty years,
and at first Chinese people migrated to Japan looking for
work opportunities, especially in helping the Japanese interact with with
the new influx of westerners, and the Chinese coming to
(08:13):
Japan brought with them a chicken broth and handmade noodle
combo called lamien. The Japanese referred to this noodle soup
as non consoba none noodles, named for China's capital. Interestingly,
non consoba wasn't viewed as a whole meal, but rather
a closing act you had after your main meal was consumed.
An ad for non consoba appeared in a print ad
(08:35):
in eighteen eighty four, and it was more simple than
what ramen would become. It didn't contain that the toppings
are the sauces. To get those, we have to turn
to the third and most likely a series of events
that brought Rama to Japan, which is a bit more
specific take on the second version we just talked about
in the eighteen eighties, Chinese migrants started settling in Yokohama
(08:57):
and opening restaurants with dishes from home include noodle soup
dishes targeted primarily to foreigners. Yokohama is a port city.
A couple of decades past, bringing us to nineteen ten,
when Tokyo's first Japanese owned and run Chinese restaurant, Rara Ken,
whipped up a dish of noodles submerged in a soy
sauce season broth that they called shina soba. The restaurant
(09:20):
employed Chinese chefs and was popular for putting Japanese twists
on Chinese staples, and Shinna was the then imperialist Japanese
phonetic word for China, and soba of course refers to noodles. However,
the noodles being used in shinnasba were made with wheat flour,
not butt wheat, so basically the translation is Chinese noodles.
(09:41):
Over the next couple of years, this early precursor to
Raman spread and became localized. At first, mostly available at
food carts and strangely Western style restaurants, It was a
popular item for blue collar workers who didn't have much
in the way of extra time or cash. Urbanization and
industrialization meant more people were king in cities, which only
helped with Roman's popularity, and even by the nineteen tens,
(10:04):
a mechanical noodle making device existed. At the time, Japan
was in its aggressive colonialism stage of its imperial renewal.
It was waging war with its neighbors, eventually taking over Korea, Taiwan,
and parts of the South Pacific and China. This added
financial strain to the urbanization that was already going on,
and thus a need for inexpensive and filling food m hmm.
(10:29):
And plus there was a sense of power that came
with enjoying this foreign dish. In her book Modern Japanese Cuisine, Food,
Power and National Identity, Katzrina Joanna Swertka sorry if I
butcher Jr. Name wrote, by physically interacting with China through
the ingestion of Chinese food and drink, the Japanese masses
(10:52):
were brought closer to the idea of empire who imperialism
and cannibalism a little bit. In that little bit, yeah uh.
The wars also drove rice shortages, and thus wheat based
products like ramen became more popular, and as it did
with so much. World War two, and specifically Japan's defeat
(11:16):
in that war, changed everything. Firstly, during the war, rationing
meant that not too many people were making or eating
shinnan noodles. After the war's end, the Chinese government and
press protested the use of the word shinna due to
its imperialist connotation, and since it was tied up with
the Japanese aggression and the atrocities that resulted in the
(11:37):
death of twenty million Chinese, it was viewed as racist
and the use of it was mostly discontinued. Chuckasba became
the new name for Chinese noodles. Food shortages and widespread
hunger plagued Japan the worst of it from nineteen to
nineteen forty seven. Restaurants and food carts weren't permitted to
(11:59):
earn a profit until nineteen nine, and during the US
occupation of Japan from nine to nineteen fifty two, Japan
relied heavily on US imports for food, the primary of
those being lard and wheat. Uh. This was this was
kind of on purpose by the US government. Yeah, a
little bit more on that in a second um. Consequently,
(12:21):
stuff made with wheat as an ingredient grew in popularity,
including chickasaba, slash raman oka raman, and this in turn
really shaped the Japanese diet. Lard and wheat became building blocks,
and a lot of things we associate with Japanese cuisine,
like okonomiaki and gyoza that were labeled stanum of food,
(12:43):
stanum of food, she says, stamina food. I didn't even notice.
I was like, yeah, I know that's the word. That's
absolutely sure. Yeah, sounds good food that this So this
meant food that was filling and kept the hunger away
for longer, and that term is still in used day.
And we should mention, oh, back to the extra depressing
(13:05):
now yet. Yeah, but during this time, the US kept
food rationing and a ban on outside food vendors in place,
which meant that much of this shuka soba was made
with black black market wheat. I forgot about this fact
and at black market food stands translation, it was illegal.
People went to jail for it. Oh no, m And
(13:27):
another thing we should mention is that the US was
kind of sort of using the import of wheat and
other foods to contain communism. Uh huh, Yeah, the US
hope to prevent any uprisings from breaking out in response
to frustrations about the city's poor management when it came
to the distribution of food, and this way the U
(13:48):
S would be viewed as a charitable force at a
time of need in the Japanese government, as functioning when
the Communist Party was claiming very loudly that it wasn't. Yeah,
And depending on which side of the generation gap you
fell on, ramen was either viewed as a food for
poor people to be embarrassed by you didn't want to
eat it in public, or a food that served as
(14:10):
a savior during a time of starvation that was mostly
felt by people who came into adulthood after the war. Yea.
Once the U S occupation came to an end and
Japan's economy started turning around, we come to a huge
milestone in the history of ramen. In ninety What was it?
You ask, what what could possibly be? I don't know.
You probably know, but here me. It was packaged instant
(14:34):
ram and brought to you by the founder of Nissan
Foods Corporation, Ando Momofuku. As it was chicken flavored, it
was called chicken ramen. Ramen from the Chinese word law
meaning pull and mien meaning noodle. When it first debuted,
it was marketed as something for women and children in
the middle class, as nourishing and healthy food for nuclear families,
(14:55):
easily acquired at the grocery store. Although it was a
little expensive at first, certainly pricier than going to a
raman shop. The convenience of being able to make raman
at home, though, made it gain popularity quickly and on.
The story is just about as heartwarming as corporate stories
really get. He was born in Japanese occupied Taiwan and
studied in Japan, later becoming a citizen. He worked as
(15:18):
the chairman of a credit association after World War Two,
but they went bankrupt in ninety seven. Looking for a
new life purpose and kind of wanting to apologize for
this failure of this credit union, he remembered a moment
from the day that Japan surrendered where he saw people
lining up at this makeshift raman restaurant among the wreckage
of Osaka, and decided that what people needed was a
(15:41):
food that was tasty, non perishable, inexpensive, safe filling, and
could be ready in less than three minutes, and he
reportedly believed that peace will come to the world when
all its people have enough to eat, and he wanted
to help achieve that peace. That's lovely. We used to
a show called Stuff of Genius, and almost everybody here
(16:03):
kind of had a hand in it at one point.
It's like an animated video series and I believe we
did one Yeah, yeah, on raman. It was about inventors
and like how they invented their products. And I'm sure
you can still find it if you're interested. Yeah, it's
on that internet thing, that that thing. Yeah, so anyway,
um Raman once again gained popularity among workers in cities
(16:24):
like Tokyo and Osak in the sixties, and as Japan's
economy improved and more standalone restaurants were built, more and
more restaurants, as opposed to food carts that were previously
making and selling raman, started to sell Roman more restaurants did.
It was becoming less of a food associated with the poor.
In other words, Simultaneously, as European and American foods poured
(16:47):
into Japan, Japanese people clung to ramen as a Japanese
food that was now perceived with some nostalgia as a
national dish. Yeah, and in many ways, it's fitting that
we did rice before the US, as wheat became a
rice substitute when rice was scarce, and also because of
this interesting claim making the rounds at the time, Yeah, yeah,
(17:10):
the Ministry of Health and Welfare actively promoted Western food
as the healthier food, a proposition backed by some nutritionists
and pointed to as the reason for Western superiority. Yeah.
The character for rice was described as suggesting that people
eat because they exist, and that these people were thus
(17:32):
resigned and passive, and the character for wheat suggested that
people exist because they eat, and thus they are progressive
and active. So, according to this, people who ate rice
lost the will to be active, and people who ate
wheat had initiative and were motivated because you wanted to
improve the wheat by combining it with other things. So
the logic went, yeah, worse, worse. Here's an actual quote
(17:57):
from a nutritionist. Parents who feed their children solely white
rice are dooming them to a life of idiocy. When
one eats rice, one's brain gets worse. When one compares
Japanese to Westerners, one finds that the former has an
approximately weaker mind than the latter. This is evident from
the fact that few Japanese have received the Nobel Prize.
(18:21):
Japan ought to completely abolish its rice patties and aim
for a full bread diet. What that that is desterrible,
The most racist thing that I've actually heard in a minute.
And I mean that's really bad. I can't believe. And
it's like the complete opposite of what we think now
(18:44):
in a less racist way, but just that that the
Western diet is so unhealthy. The title of the pamphlet
this came from, by the way, was called eating Rice
makes You Stupid. Yeah, it's awful. So moving on from
that racist nonsense. Yeah, and though developed cup Ramen packaged
(19:08):
in a styrofoam cup that serves as a bowl in
the late nineteen sixties, as supposedly when he saw American
supermarket executives using a styrofoam coffee cup as a as
a makeshift ramen bowl during product demonstrations in n Cup
ramen became commercially available and it got lots of free
publicity thanks to the nineteen seventy two A Samasanzo incident,
(19:32):
when the wife of an innkeeper and gan and Nagano
was taken to hostage by members of the United Red Army.
A Japanese tactical assault team responded and during the resulting
televised ten day siege, all parties involved lived off of
cup Ramen. Cup of Noodles arrived in the US in
(19:52):
nineteen seventy three. I just did like a weird gesture
when I said that, I feel like you have to
kind of do this armed thing when use noodles. Yeah, uh,
like it's cock noodles away. Lauren appreciated it when, Yeah,
when I brought it to attention, Otherwise you wouldn't have noticed.
Also during this decade, we see some of the first
(20:14):
seeds for craft Ramen with quote salary men are men
who successfully escaped their jobs to become self employed, maybe
making Roman. And then comes the fabulous eighties, and they
were indeed fabulous for Ramen. It was trending, it was fashionable.
It was all over Japan. The number of specially Ramen
shops increased drastically as the price point rose. Blue collar
(20:38):
Roman customers were replaced with younger city folks who were
dubbed the new breede. Yeah. In nine two, the small
city of Kitakata started doing ramen tours. People waited in
line for hours to get a taste of a special
local ramen, and this practice was well known enough to
have a name for the people that engaged in it,
(20:59):
Ramen Yo Retsu Yeah Awesome. Ramen's popularity explosion only continued
into the nineties, with ramen chef's becoming celebrities. Raman video
games in a Roman Museum, which is really more of
a food court, opened in nine Later an instant Roman
museum opened too. In two thousand four, chef David Chang
(21:21):
opened Mamafuku Noodle Bar in New York City, which became
so trendy that it would cement ramen as as a
destination worthy food in the minds of Americans. And then
in two thousand five, Raman went to space. Ah Yeah.
Undo developed it for the Japanese astronauts so Echi Noguchi's
space shuttle trip. It came, of course, in a vacuum
(21:43):
sealed bag, and the noodles were skinnier so that they
could be cooked in hot not boiling water, and and
the broth was more like a sauce kind of so
it would stick to the noodles when Umdo would pass
away in two thousand and seven, Nogucci eulogized him to
a full stadium of mourners. Wow m uh yeah, and
(22:04):
a nine seat ram Raman restaurant in Tokyo called Sua
became the first ramen joint to earn a Michelin star.
And that brings us to today, when ramen has become
this fashionable hip food that we see as a representation
of Japan, and you can find it in cities around
the world. New York Times food critic Pete Wells once
(22:25):
wrote that Roman's popularity represents a kind of greater shift
in what's trendy in restaurants today. You know, it's got
these these bold and heavy flavors, and it can be fancy,
but it's not fussy. It's a very homey and comforting
kind of dish man. And I really want some ramen now.
I buckled and bought some from downstairs. I might too.
(22:47):
It's like fifteen dollars, but it's really good. That was
some of one of my favorite things I had Japan
was a bowl of ramen. It was so good. All right,
So that's the history. Yeah, let's talk about some of
this nitty gritty stuff. Yeah, but first let's take another
quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
(23:17):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. So. Traditionally speaking, yes, Ramen,
noodle making has been a labor intensive process, because all right,
you've got to need your water, flour, salt and and
can sue you together to hydrate the flour to give
the gluten molecules in its access to each other. In
the videos that I've seen, this is accomplished by by
(23:37):
rolling out the dough with this huge wide shaft of bamboo.
Then you have to rest the dough to let the
gluten all link up, and then either hand pull the
dough into noodles or more often tediously like stretch and
roll the dough out super thin and flat. Then you
roll it up like a tube of tinfoil. You roll
the dough along along a bar and then remove the
(23:59):
bar and lice the dough into noodles, which if you
want curlier noodles, you can kind of hand scrunch. Gluten science.
By the way, it's topic for a whole other episode, y'all.
That was the super short version of how gluten works
in a noodle. I got tired. I had to. I
had to go research lambas Okay, it was very important.
It was okay. These days, um, some chefs do still
(24:22):
prepare noodles by hand, but it is more common for
a Raman restaurant to order fresh or even dried Rama
noodles from manufacturer. Um. These producers use electric machines to
need rollout, slice, and scrunch the dough. Although for the
best of both worlds, there are a few Raman joints
in China and Japan that employ scare quotes employ robots
(24:43):
to make their noodles. And this isn't quite like if
you're picturing like Rosy from the Jetsons was doing that
kind of thing. It's not quite Rosy. Um. They're they're
just these robotic arms that do this repetitive work of
noodle making, sort of the same way that we're used
to seeing like robot arms do the work of car making. Yeah. Uh, simply,
(25:04):
that's just that it's easy. I could I could create
a robot that does that. Now, I'm technological innovation is
really incredible anyway. But so that's traditional ramen. If we're
going to talk about instant ramen, let's talk about the
cooking times of all of these products for a second.
Let's do that, and he seems dubious, I promise you
(25:27):
this is going places. Okay. So fresh noodles are delicious
and they cook super fast, which is an important factor
for busy folks who just want to be able to
order food at a ramanna and like start eating within
like three to five minutes. The downside is a fresh
noodles only last a couple of days, and that's only
if you keep them cool and dry. The big draw
of dry packaged noodles is that their shelf stable for
(25:49):
a couple of years, um because and that's because just
about all the moisture that would let micro organisms grow
has been removed. But dry noodles take a bunch longer
to cook. So how do dry instant ramen noodles cook
so dang fast? Have no idea. The key to this
is also the reason why instant ramen has traditionally been
(26:11):
so disproportionately fatty for something that's just effing noodles and salt. Uh.
They're flash fried during manufacturing. Ah. The process goes like this.
First you create your dough, uh, make it into noodles,
cook the noodles, then air dry them just a little
bit so that they're not like soggy, and then take
these noodles and deep fry them at above the boiling
(26:33):
point of water like a hundred and sixty degrees celsius
a k a like three twenty fahrenheit, and the remaining
molecules of water inside these noodles evaporate so quickly in
the heat that they leave tiny pockets of air behind
in the finished noodles. This both gets rid of that
germ friendly water content for shelf stability and also leaves
(26:54):
you with a craggy noodle micro structure that vastly increases
each noodles face area. So when you drop your blocko
instant noodles into hot water, the water gets just all
up into those tiny air pockets and cooks the noodles
way faster than regular dried needles can cook. That's so
cool these I know, right, I never even thought about it.
(27:15):
I kind of freaked out. I love it. Um. These
crags are also what uncooked rama noodles have a sort
of like cracker like texture, whereas uncooked dry spaghetti certainly
does not. I don't know if anyone else has eaten
both of those things. But I have. Yeah, I actually
really embarrassing story about it. But we will move on.
(27:36):
Maybe I can get you to talk about that in
your favorite bowl of rama after after the rest of this. Okay,
all right, um, Thanks to technology, some instant rama noodles
are made by non frying methods. Um. These generally fall
into the category of like baking and or air drying
and and the idea here is that you again take
cooked noodles, then you cook them in just a very
(27:57):
thin layer of oil and expose them too hot, fast
moving air. The heat is at least a hundred and
forty five degrees celsius a k a three fahrenheit. The
heat and air flow are enough to create the crags
that you want in the noodles with much, much, much
less cooking fat. This is how those home air fryers
basically work. Yeah, and all of this brings us to nutrition.
(28:22):
Oh boy, I'm sure it's very healthy and I should
be eating it every day every day. Yeah. No, that's yeah,
that's that's nutrition. Sec been over okay, great, No, well, okay,
so the nutrition of fresh cooked ramen, of course, depends
heavily on the recipe. And as we spent this entire
episode talking about there are infinite recipes for ramen um. Generally,
(28:42):
I would say that if you're going to add any
of the extras that any ramgna offer, go for the
extra meat or extra vege, not extra noodles, that that
will help you keep feeling more stated, more longer. Yeah,
which was the best. It was the best phrasing phrasing
I've ever used. I do not need to tell you
that instant ramen into and of itself is not a
(29:05):
health food. It's mostly carbohydrates and salt and contains almost
twice as much fat as protein, and the fat is
typically palm oil, which is a bad fat. Instant ramen
also has a smattering of vitamins and minerals other than salt,
but it's proteins are of the types that you you
really need to compliment with stuff from other foods in
order to give your body all the stuff it needs
(29:27):
to to just get work done. So overall, instant ramen
will make you feel full for a little while, but
it won't really keep you going strong, you know. Yeah,
when I was in college, I didn't use the flavor
packet and I would add hot sauce soy sauce and
mushrooms and finished that was mine, so I like kind
(29:47):
of improved it. Yeah, I mean the oil is really
all in the noodles, not in the seasoning packet. So
so if you were looking for fat food, but but
the fat will keep you. The fat is part of
what makes it feeling so okay. Yeah, but you but
you missed out on some of the salt of uh.
And strangely enough, mushrooms and corn, which are two classic
Raman toppings, are basically the two vegetables that will help
(30:10):
your body make the best use of that protein. And
those Ramen noodles, so you're doing even knowing, uh, if
you're gonna eat it and look y'all like to this day,
I just love I love imported instant Raman's. They're so good. Um,
And you know, and like it's quick and it's easy
(30:30):
and it's relatively inexpensive to just add some frozen vege
to the pot. I like, I like spinach as well. Um.
You can also stir in a whole egg after you
turn the heat off at the end of the cooking process,
so that the residual heat will kind of cook the
white for an egg drop soup. Type effect, and the
yolk wol sort of thicken the broth, so it's tasty. Um.
(30:50):
But but hey, all this being said, like, we we
never want to slam a food that's inexpensive and tasty
and can be prepared easily, especially like so easily that
in emergency situations it's a pretty common thing to to
to ship out to people. Um. Anthropologists who have studied
Raman's worldwide youth say that overall, raman does more good
(31:10):
than harm nutrition wise, especially in cities with food desserts
where the urban poor really don't have access to anything
more nutritious than instant raman. Yeah, good for you instant ramen. Yeah.
But back to Annie's earlier point about the salt, what
about SG? What about it? Okay? So, monosodium glutamate is
(31:35):
a flavoring that helps add like savory salty tastes to foods,
and it got a lot of undeserved bad press starting
in nineteen sixty eight, when a doctor got a letter
published in the New England Journal of Medicine pondering why
he often felt ill after eating at American Chinese restaurants.
His his concepts that he throughout in this in this
(31:56):
letter where maybe it's the soy sauce, maybe it's the
cooking wine, and or maybe it's MSG. And for some reason,
the press and the public just kind of went wild
with the MSG thing. They were calling it Chinese restaurant syndrome.
UM research published in two dozen six that reviewed almost
forty years of research studies found no serious side effects
(32:19):
or sensitivities in humans to the amount of m SG
that you would consume through food. Maybe like headache or
dry mouth if you're eating on an empty stomach and
you're not properly hydrated, but that's it. The really bad
effects that researchers found only happened when they injected MSG
under the skin of baby mice. So don't inject MSG
under your skin and you you'll you'll be fine. Yeah,
(32:40):
I just don't do that. Yeah. Um. Also, side note
of referring to a problem with a widely used chemical
compound is specifically Chinese related as pretty racist, So so
don't do that either. Well, it's news to me that
it was just one dude, Like, hey, like I wonder, okay, Yeah,
(33:01):
that's certainly something we'll have to look into. Absolutely, Yeah,
that the whole story of how it was derived by
some Japanese scientists. It's super fascinating. So cool. Well, here
is our random portion random. I just wanted to mention
ramen burgers, just in case you didn't know they were
a thing. I actually, what, what on what on earth
(33:21):
is a ramen burger? Oh it's a burger or two
like um, instant packages like the instead of buns. Yeah,
and they're kind of cooked and you eat it. I mean, yeah,
that's how I've had it. But I think you can
get like a burger with buns and the two blocks
of ramen noodles. I My face is going through this
(33:42):
number of confused contortions. I have twitching. Nothing to say
about that. Uh, because restaurateurs will put gold leaf on
anything to make a headline. Um, you could at one
point buy a one and eighty dollar bowl of ramen
from Manhattan restaurants cola. Um. It all took in with
like la goo beef and shaved truffle. Now your face
(34:03):
is doing the same thing that my face was. Just
is I'd better be really full for a long time
after that. I get hungry an hour. I'm gonna be
so mad, like I'm going to eat this, but just hypothetically.
Also the restaurant closed, so well, okay um, But if
you are eating ramen out at a ramen shop, cultural
(34:25):
notes on doing that, it is, in fact, okay even
preferred to kind of angle your head over the bowl
and slurp your noodles, like make a slurpy sound. Um
that the heat of the broth will start over cooking
the noodles within just eight minutes, so you have to
you have to do it fast, and the slipping will
help cool and aerate the broth, bringing the scent to
your nose. Um, and the sound is actually considered a
(34:46):
compliment to the chef. Also, when and if you put
your chopsticks down, do not stick them upright in the bowl.
That's a reminiscent of of a Japanese funerary practice. So
don't stick chopsticks into bowls, lay them across the top right. Yeah, totally.
When I was having my delicious bowl of ramen in Japan,
everywhere it was the sound of slurping. It's like for
(35:08):
when I first walked in, I didn't know what was
going on? What what what is it? Yeah? Oh that's
beautiful though it was, and it was delicious. If you
want to make ramen at home, but A don't want
to use instant noodles, and be can't find regular rama noodles.
Can you make your own chewy perfect noodles out of
regular non alkalized pasta? I don't know. Well you can't really,
(35:32):
but if you add two or three teaspoons of baking
soda per quart of water that you boil your pasta in,
they'll come out yellower and spring here. Okay, so little, yeah, sure,
kind of sort of m and uh, okay, tell us,
tell us about your bowl of ramen? What what was it?
(35:52):
I need to I need to hear. It's actually funny
because in Japan a lot of the raman restaurants. Actually
I went to two and both of them were this way.
It's like a vending machine. I thought you were going
to get raman out of a vending machine, but it's
like just how you order. Yeah, that's how you order. Yeah,
there's a machine with like pictures. Yes. So I'm like
this bumbling tourists, trying to figure it out. And the
(36:15):
I accidentally went to apparently a really famous place. It's
I think you guys probably heard of it. But you
go in and you're like in a booth. Oh yeah, yeah,
it's like a little there's like little partitions, like in
a voting booth or like a like a phone booth.
And then the there's like a little window and there's
a kind of a bamboo thing hanging out front of
(36:35):
you and they'll roll it up in the food slide
down you like never interact with the human No, you're there.
But my favorite was I was in Kyoto station. So
I was in a train station and there's a whole
full or dedicated to rama and it's every restaurant on
the I think the eleventh floor or eleventh raman yeah,
and so I just went into one and I got
(36:57):
one with um chicken in like a chicken base um
and it was just like the most wonderful and comforting
chicken soup Roman mixture I've ever had. It was so kind.
Oh man, Yeah, that's that's wonderful. It was Thank you
was huge. Oh oh, I know it was so big.
(37:21):
Yeah you did, no way it was I leaving any
of that mine. I think. Thank you. Thank you for
sharing your Robin story. Oh yes, thank you for asking.
Yeah time. Speaking of stories, this brings us to our
listener mail. Yes, Sandra wrote in response to a pumpkin episode.
I live in Nova Scotia, Canada, and a town here
(37:43):
called Windsor host an annual pumpkin regatta. What this means
is they find grow massive pumpkins, hauled them out and
use them as boats. I kid you, not boats. I'm
including the link with some pictures for you as this
amazingly quirky event and you all needed to know that
pumpkins are not only amazing to eat, but you can
also use them as modes of transportation. And the link
(38:06):
was amazing, the pictures were amazing. A lot of people
wrote us about this and I want to see it
in person so much. Yeah, the people like like dress
up like in costumes for this, for this pumpkin boat race.
It's I mean, pumpkin boat race alone just rings a
smile to my face. I want to see it so badly.
(38:28):
Field Trip list Um About cinnamon, Angela wrote a while back,
I had also learned that cinnamon was a natural de
turrent to ants. The reason I needed to know this
is because our cat is a messy eater and leaves
crumbles of kibbles on the floor near her food bowl.
I feel you there, uh. In summer, we would find
little black ants coming in and trying to make off
with the kibble crumbs. I had previously tried sprinkling cinnamon
(38:50):
in the areas I suspected they entered the house, but
they kept thwarting me. This year, when they returned, I
decided to show them I was serious and use cinnamon
leaf oil. I added some drops of the oil to
a cotton ball and swiped it along the baseboards the
likely entrance areas and could watch them turn tail and run.
I had to reapply the oil about twice a week
for a few weeks, but so far they seem to
(39:12):
have gotten the picture. It's amazing how quickly our kitchen
smelled like the holidays. Another fun side story is that
when I worked in a production bakery, we would order
ten to fifteen pound boxes of cinnamon at a time,
would fill smaller containers with cinnamon and have to scoop
it from the larger box. When the cinnamon would shift
in the box, it had a fluidity to it that
was mesmerizing. It looked like slashing water. Pretty cool. I agree,
(39:36):
that is pretty cool. The fluid dynamics of substances like
cinnamon and actually ants super fascinating. Fire ants move like fluid.
It's oh, it's so cool. That is cool a lot
of us. Many people wrote us that the um cinnamon
thing worked for them in getting rid of as So
you've got an ant problem, maybe give it a trip. Yeah, yeah,
I'm gonna you got you got the with the kibbles
(40:01):
and ants thing going on as well. I've got some
fire ants that just started camp camping there like staking
out my house. So no, and I'm getting increasingly I'm
having increasing allergic reactions to It's time for cinnamon. It's
apparently time for cinnamon. Get serious. Well, if you have
any other tips similar to that, or any other food
(40:21):
or drink related thing you'd like to write us about,
you can do so. Our email is food Stuff at
how stuff works dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Facebook and Twitter at food
Stuff hs W. We're on Instagram at food stuff Thanks
so much to our producer Dylan Fagan for doing everything
that he does. We hope that we'll hear from you,
(40:41):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Annie Rees and
I'm Lauren vocal Bomb, and today we're talking about ramen. Yes,
ramen noodles and they're way more than those forty nine
cent dry noodle packs are kind of soup things that
you can get at grocery stores. Of a lot of us,
we included, uh used to survive college and my post
college era certainly. Yeah. Um, raman of the non droid
(00:32):
and package variety is currently kind of a food trend
in the US and and in other places around the globe,
and it's becoming more and more commonplace. And it's also
food you probably associate with Japan, probably for good reason. Um.
But buckle up, friends, this is another one of those
episodes in which we talk about really depressing stuff in
the middle of something that you love. So yeah, yeah,
(00:54):
it's gonna be okay, We're gonna get through this together.
It will be. Let's begin, Yes, So, first, big shout
out to George Salts The Untold History of Ramen as
an excellent book and source for this episode. Very helpful. Also,
basically all of it is available for free to read
on Google Books, so check that out. Yeah, there are
so so so many takes on ramen. Almost every city
(01:15):
in Japan has their own insert city name style, and
then all the versions outside of Japan is just a lot.
So keep that in mind as we talk about ramen.
Japan's Ramen Museum and yes that exists, and yes we
will be talking about it. Further recognizes officially nineteen regional varieties. Okay,
but at its most basic, what is it? It's noodles
(01:38):
stock tear, which is the sauce that is used for flavor. Well,
there's no accent over that, and that is my bad.
And the toppings if anny. Ramen noodles are a specific
type of noodle that's generally been alkalized. Changing the peach
levels in a wheat flower dough affect its properties, including
(01:58):
the texture and color because it affects some of the dose,
chemical compounds and gluten interactions. And the noodles are made
with a combination of flour, salt, and water that has
often been infused with con sway Kent City. See I
even write out the pronunciations and it's like my brain goes, no, no,
this way. I'm not I'm not a total expert. I
(02:21):
took a little bit of Japanese linguistics in college. But um,
so I might be screwing it up to There's also
regional accents. Cool well. Feel free to correct me at
any time, Lauren, Okay, no, you're trying. I usually just
toss French words to you. So I, this is totally fair,
absolutely okay. Kind sue anyway is an alkaline mineral water.
It's solution with potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate or bicarbonate.
(02:46):
It's a brownish liquid that's hard to find outside of
Asia sometimes but can be substituted for with regular old
sodium bicarbonate a k A baking soda. That alkalinity gives
the noodles the hint of yellow, and there's slipperiness and cheeriness,
and as you go further south or west. In Japan,
the less consuit is used in ramen, which impacts the color.
(03:06):
In the north, where the baking sida makes up about
of the water, the ramen will have more color to
it than the south. The alkalinity also affects the rate
of broth absorption of the noodles. Um and other noodles
that may be served at Raman shops can include udon,
which are a thicker softer white wheat noodles, and soba,
which are usually thinner um kind of nutty buck wheat noodles.
(03:28):
Sometimes ramen noodles are served without broth. Also, but if
you are going to broth, If you're going to broth
you chefs you or chefs uh. Summer seafood primarily clams
or dried fish meat usually chicken or pork, or vegetables
typically garlic onionscallions are ginger or a combination of those things.
(03:48):
For quite a long time, quite quite a long time.
All kinds of stuff I didn't mention can be using
the broth though, like apples or potatoes, and the broth
can be a clear consume style thing, or like cloudy
jellaty and rich stock that you get from cooking down bones.
And the seasoning sauce atari is most often a choice
of soy sauce show you fermented soybean paste, mitso are
(04:11):
salt shio, but that also can vary in a small
amount of ramans. Don't use any torre. Are you seeing
a pattern here? Very customizable As far as toppings go,
You're most likely to run across Chinese style roasted pork
called chas shoe and slice green onions. But you can
find us about anything on there if you peruse enough menus. Yeah.
(04:32):
Other most common items include mushrooms, soft boiled egg slices
of spongy fish cake, seaweed slices, butter, bunito flakes which
are fish flakes, garlic, chips, and corn. And you can
find raminin over eighty thousand restaurants, and thirty five thousand
of those are Roman specialty shops in Japan, just in Japan,
(04:52):
Just in Japan. Eight of these are small businesses in
a similar way to vegemite. Raminans sort of tied to
Japan in Japanese culture and sometimes described as a symbol
of Japanese soft power. In a survey of two thousand
Tokyo area residents, the Fuji Research Institute found that the
Japanese consider instant noodles to be Japan's greatest invention of
(05:14):
the twentieth century. Oh and that instant stuff eighty seven
point five billion packets a year sold in two thousand
five about three billion dollars. By twelve, that was over
a hundred billion servings per year, enough for fourteen packets
for every single person on the face of this planet.
That is a lot of instant moment, it is. But
(05:38):
how did we get here? How did we create this
ramen craze, I mean, not us personally like humanity. Unfortunately. Yes,
we're gonna tell you, but first we're going to take
a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
(06:01):
we're back, Thank you sponsor. So there are three competing
stories about the origin of ramen, but one thing they
all have in common. Raman is from China, not Japan.
Oh yeah, okay. So Japan has borrowed lots of culture
from China over the centuries. Their their system of writing, calendar,
and Buddhist practices, for example, all originated in China. And
(06:21):
those other two types of noodles frequently found in Japanese cuisine,
soba and udan, also came from China. But those things
all date back at least a millennium or so. Raman
is more recent though, And speaking of language, you can
tell partially based on the way that the word is written.
In Japanese. The modern Japanese language has two alphabets, one
for native words called uraga and one for foreign words
(06:42):
called katakana. Provides the phonetic spellings for kanji, which are
those conceptual characters. But yeah, okay, so Raman is still
not written with native hourigana or kanji, but in that
foreign Loan word alphabet, so it hasn't been kicking around
all that long. One story claims that scholar Shoes shun
(07:04):
Sway fled Mante rule and China, bringing with him the
recipe for Chinese stitle noodle soups. Sometime in the sixteen hundreds.
A companion to the feudal lord Tokugawa mitsu Kuni Shoe
supposedly gave out lots of useful advice, including how to
improve the local udon noodle soup and dashy roth with
stuff like carli, green onions and ginger. Some food historians
(07:27):
credit this is the beginning of Roman and Japan. Mm hmm,
but there's not a lot of written evidence of this. Yeah, well,
and it's and it didn't really develop further from there,
kind of like stopped. Yeah, that was sort of it. Yeah.
The second tale of Roman's arrival to Japan involves the
country becoming more open to foreigners in the nineteenth century.
(07:50):
This was due to Japan's kind of Western driven Imperial
restoration in the mid eighteen hundreds that they had been
basically closed to Eastern immigrants and certainly the Western mimigrants
at even merchants for about two hundred and fifty years,
and at first Chinese people migrated to Japan looking for
work opportunities, especially in helping the Japanese interact with with
the new influx of westerners, and the Chinese coming to
(08:13):
Japan brought with them a chicken broth and handmade noodle
combo called lamien. The Japanese referred to this noodle soup
as non consoba none noodles, named for China's capital. Interestingly,
non consoba wasn't viewed as a whole meal, but rather
a closing act you had after your main meal was consumed.
An ad for non consoba appeared in a print ad
(08:35):
in eighteen eighty four, and it was more simple than
what ramen would become. It didn't contain that the toppings
are the sauces. To get those, we have to turn
to the third and most likely a series of events
that brought Rama to Japan, which is a bit more
specific take on the second version we just talked about
in the eighteen eighties, Chinese migrants started settling in Yokohama
(08:57):
and opening restaurants with dishes from home include noodle soup
dishes targeted primarily to foreigners. Yokohama is a port city.
A couple of decades past, bringing us to nineteen ten,
when Tokyo's first Japanese owned and run Chinese restaurant, Rara Ken,
whipped up a dish of noodles submerged in a soy
sauce season broth that they called shina soba. The restaurant
(09:20):
employed Chinese chefs and was popular for putting Japanese twists
on Chinese staples, and Shinna was the then imperialist Japanese
phonetic word for China, and soba of course refers to noodles. However,
the noodles being used in shinnasba were made with wheat flour,
not butt wheat, so basically the translation is Chinese noodles.
(09:41):
Over the next couple of years, this early precursor to
Raman spread and became localized. At first, mostly available at
food carts and strangely Western style restaurants, It was a
popular item for blue collar workers who didn't have much
in the way of extra time or cash. Urbanization and
industrialization meant more people were king in cities, which only
helped with Roman's popularity, and even by the nineteen tens,
(10:04):
a mechanical noodle making device existed. At the time, Japan
was in its aggressive colonialism stage of its imperial renewal.
It was waging war with its neighbors, eventually taking over Korea, Taiwan,
and parts of the South Pacific and China. This added
financial strain to the urbanization that was already going on,
and thus a need for inexpensive and filling food m hmm.
(10:29):
And plus there was a sense of power that came
with enjoying this foreign dish. In her book Modern Japanese Cuisine, Food,
Power and National Identity, Katzrina Joanna Swertka sorry if I
butcher Jr. Name wrote, by physically interacting with China through
the ingestion of Chinese food and drink, the Japanese masses
(10:52):
were brought closer to the idea of empire who imperialism
and cannibalism a little bit. In that little bit, yeah uh.
The wars also drove rice shortages, and thus wheat based
products like ramen became more popular, and as it did
with so much. World War two, and specifically Japan's defeat
(11:16):
in that war, changed everything. Firstly, during the war, rationing
meant that not too many people were making or eating
shinnan noodles. After the war's end, the Chinese government and
press protested the use of the word shinna due to
its imperialist connotation, and since it was tied up with
the Japanese aggression and the atrocities that resulted in the
(11:37):
death of twenty million Chinese, it was viewed as racist
and the use of it was mostly discontinued. Chuckasba became
the new name for Chinese noodles. Food shortages and widespread
hunger plagued Japan the worst of it from nineteen to
nineteen forty seven. Restaurants and food carts weren't permitted to
(11:59):
earn a profit until nineteen nine, and during the US
occupation of Japan from nine to nineteen fifty two, Japan
relied heavily on US imports for food, the primary of
those being lard and wheat. Uh. This was this was
kind of on purpose by the US government. Yeah, a
little bit more on that in a second um. Consequently,
(12:21):
stuff made with wheat as an ingredient grew in popularity,
including chickasaba, slash raman oka raman, and this in turn
really shaped the Japanese diet. Lard and wheat became building blocks,
and a lot of things we associate with Japanese cuisine,
like okonomiaki and gyoza that were labeled stanum of food,
(12:43):
stanum of food, she says, stamina food. I didn't even notice.
I was like, yeah, I know that's the word. That's
absolutely sure. Yeah, sounds good food that this So this
meant food that was filling and kept the hunger away
for longer, and that term is still in used day.
And we should mention, oh, back to the extra depressing
(13:05):
now yet. Yeah, but during this time, the US kept
food rationing and a ban on outside food vendors in place,
which meant that much of this shuka soba was made
with black black market wheat. I forgot about this fact
and at black market food stands translation, it was illegal.
People went to jail for it. Oh no, m And
(13:27):
another thing we should mention is that the US was
kind of sort of using the import of wheat and
other foods to contain communism. Uh huh, Yeah, the US
hope to prevent any uprisings from breaking out in response
to frustrations about the city's poor management when it came
to the distribution of food, and this way the U
(13:48):
S would be viewed as a charitable force at a
time of need in the Japanese government, as functioning when
the Communist Party was claiming very loudly that it wasn't. Yeah,
And depending on which side of the generation gap you
fell on, ramen was either viewed as a food for
poor people to be embarrassed by you didn't want to
eat it in public, or a food that served as
(14:10):
a savior during a time of starvation that was mostly
felt by people who came into adulthood after the war. Yea.
Once the U S occupation came to an end and
Japan's economy started turning around, we come to a huge
milestone in the history of ramen. In ninety What was it?
You ask, what what could possibly be? I don't know.
You probably know, but here me. It was packaged instant
(14:34):
ram and brought to you by the founder of Nissan
Foods Corporation, Ando Momofuku. As it was chicken flavored, it
was called chicken ramen. Ramen from the Chinese word law
meaning pull and mien meaning noodle. When it first debuted,
it was marketed as something for women and children in
the middle class, as nourishing and healthy food for nuclear families,
(14:55):
easily acquired at the grocery store. Although it was a
little expensive at first, certainly pricier than going to a
raman shop. The convenience of being able to make raman
at home, though, made it gain popularity quickly and on.
The story is just about as heartwarming as corporate stories
really get. He was born in Japanese occupied Taiwan and
studied in Japan, later becoming a citizen. He worked as
(15:18):
the chairman of a credit association after World War Two,
but they went bankrupt in ninety seven. Looking for a
new life purpose and kind of wanting to apologize for
this failure of this credit union, he remembered a moment
from the day that Japan surrendered where he saw people
lining up at this makeshift raman restaurant among the wreckage
of Osaka, and decided that what people needed was a
(15:41):
food that was tasty, non perishable, inexpensive, safe filling, and
could be ready in less than three minutes, and he
reportedly believed that peace will come to the world when
all its people have enough to eat, and he wanted
to help achieve that peace. That's lovely. We used to
a show called Stuff of Genius, and almost everybody here
(16:03):
kind of had a hand in it at one point.
It's like an animated video series and I believe we
did one Yeah, yeah, on raman. It was about inventors
and like how they invented their products. And I'm sure
you can still find it if you're interested. Yeah, it's
on that internet thing, that that thing. Yeah, so anyway,
um Raman once again gained popularity among workers in cities
(16:24):
like Tokyo and Osak in the sixties, and as Japan's
economy improved and more standalone restaurants were built, more and
more restaurants, as opposed to food carts that were previously
making and selling raman, started to sell Roman more restaurants did.
It was becoming less of a food associated with the poor.
In other words, Simultaneously, as European and American foods poured
(16:47):
into Japan, Japanese people clung to ramen as a Japanese
food that was now perceived with some nostalgia as a
national dish. Yeah, and in many ways, it's fitting that
we did rice before the US, as wheat became a
rice substitute when rice was scarce, and also because of
this interesting claim making the rounds at the time, Yeah, yeah,
(17:10):
the Ministry of Health and Welfare actively promoted Western food
as the healthier food, a proposition backed by some nutritionists
and pointed to as the reason for Western superiority. Yeah.
The character for rice was described as suggesting that people
eat because they exist, and that these people were thus
(17:32):
resigned and passive, and the character for wheat suggested that
people exist because they eat, and thus they are progressive
and active. So, according to this, people who ate rice
lost the will to be active, and people who ate
wheat had initiative and were motivated because you wanted to
improve the wheat by combining it with other things. So
the logic went, yeah, worse, worse. Here's an actual quote
(17:57):
from a nutritionist. Parents who feed their children solely white
rice are dooming them to a life of idiocy. When
one eats rice, one's brain gets worse. When one compares
Japanese to Westerners, one finds that the former has an
approximately weaker mind than the latter. This is evident from
the fact that few Japanese have received the Nobel Prize.
(18:21):
Japan ought to completely abolish its rice patties and aim
for a full bread diet. What that that is desterrible,
The most racist thing that I've actually heard in a minute.
And I mean that's really bad. I can't believe. And
it's like the complete opposite of what we think now
(18:44):
in a less racist way, but just that that the
Western diet is so unhealthy. The title of the pamphlet
this came from, by the way, was called eating Rice
makes You Stupid. Yeah, it's awful. So moving on from
that racist nonsense. Yeah, and though developed cup Ramen packaged
(19:08):
in a styrofoam cup that serves as a bowl in
the late nineteen sixties, as supposedly when he saw American
supermarket executives using a styrofoam coffee cup as a as
a makeshift ramen bowl during product demonstrations in n Cup
ramen became commercially available and it got lots of free
publicity thanks to the nineteen seventy two A Samasanzo incident,
(19:32):
when the wife of an innkeeper and gan and Nagano
was taken to hostage by members of the United Red Army.
A Japanese tactical assault team responded and during the resulting
televised ten day siege, all parties involved lived off of
cup Ramen. Cup of Noodles arrived in the US in
(19:52):
nineteen seventy three. I just did like a weird gesture
when I said that, I feel like you have to
kind of do this armed thing when use noodles. Yeah, uh,
like it's cock noodles away. Lauren appreciated it when, Yeah,
when I brought it to attention, Otherwise you wouldn't have noticed.
Also during this decade, we see some of the first
(20:14):
seeds for craft Ramen with quote salary men are men
who successfully escaped their jobs to become self employed, maybe
making Roman. And then comes the fabulous eighties, and they
were indeed fabulous for Ramen. It was trending, it was fashionable.
It was all over Japan. The number of specially Ramen
shops increased drastically as the price point rose. Blue collar
(20:38):
Roman customers were replaced with younger city folks who were
dubbed the new breede. Yeah. In nine two, the small
city of Kitakata started doing ramen tours. People waited in
line for hours to get a taste of a special
local ramen, and this practice was well known enough to
have a name for the people that engaged in it,
(20:59):
Ramen Yo Retsu Yeah Awesome. Ramen's popularity explosion only continued
into the nineties, with ramen chef's becoming celebrities. Raman video
games in a Roman Museum, which is really more of
a food court, opened in nine Later an instant Roman
museum opened too. In two thousand four, chef David Chang
(21:21):
opened Mamafuku Noodle Bar in New York City, which became
so trendy that it would cement ramen as as a
destination worthy food in the minds of Americans. And then
in two thousand five, Raman went to space. Ah Yeah.
Undo developed it for the Japanese astronauts so Echi Noguchi's
space shuttle trip. It came, of course, in a vacuum
(21:43):
sealed bag, and the noodles were skinnier so that they
could be cooked in hot not boiling water, and and
the broth was more like a sauce kind of so
it would stick to the noodles when Umdo would pass
away in two thousand and seven, Nogucci eulogized him to
a full stadium of mourners. Wow m uh yeah, and
(22:04):
a nine seat ram Raman restaurant in Tokyo called Sua
became the first ramen joint to earn a Michelin star.
And that brings us to today, when ramen has become
this fashionable hip food that we see as a representation
of Japan, and you can find it in cities around
the world. New York Times food critic Pete Wells once
(22:25):
wrote that Roman's popularity represents a kind of greater shift
in what's trendy in restaurants today. You know, it's got
these these bold and heavy flavors, and it can be fancy,
but it's not fussy. It's a very homey and comforting
kind of dish man. And I really want some ramen now.
I buckled and bought some from downstairs. I might too.
(22:47):
It's like fifteen dollars, but it's really good. That was
some of one of my favorite things I had Japan
was a bowl of ramen. It was so good. All right,
So that's the history. Yeah, let's talk about some of
this nitty gritty stuff. Yeah, but first let's take another
quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
(23:17):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. So. Traditionally speaking, yes, Ramen,
noodle making has been a labor intensive process, because all right,
you've got to need your water, flour, salt and and
can sue you together to hydrate the flour to give
the gluten molecules in its access to each other. In
the videos that I've seen, this is accomplished by by
(23:37):
rolling out the dough with this huge wide shaft of bamboo.
Then you have to rest the dough to let the
gluten all link up, and then either hand pull the
dough into noodles or more often tediously like stretch and
roll the dough out super thin and flat. Then you
roll it up like a tube of tinfoil. You roll
the dough along along a bar and then remove the
(23:59):
bar and lice the dough into noodles, which if you
want curlier noodles, you can kind of hand scrunch. Gluten science.
By the way, it's topic for a whole other episode, y'all.
That was the super short version of how gluten works
in a noodle. I got tired. I had to. I
had to go research lambas Okay, it was very important.
It was okay. These days, um, some chefs do still
(24:22):
prepare noodles by hand, but it is more common for
a Raman restaurant to order fresh or even dried Rama
noodles from manufacturer. Um. These producers use electric machines to
need rollout, slice, and scrunch the dough. Although for the
best of both worlds, there are a few Raman joints
in China and Japan that employ scare quotes employ robots
(24:43):
to make their noodles. And this isn't quite like if
you're picturing like Rosy from the Jetsons was doing that
kind of thing. It's not quite Rosy. Um. They're they're
just these robotic arms that do this repetitive work of
noodle making, sort of the same way that we're used
to seeing like robot arms do the work of car making. Yeah. Uh, simply,
(25:04):
that's just that it's easy. I could I could create
a robot that does that. Now, I'm technological innovation is
really incredible anyway. But so that's traditional ramen. If we're
going to talk about instant ramen, let's talk about the
cooking times of all of these products for a second.
Let's do that, and he seems dubious, I promise you
(25:27):
this is going places. Okay. So fresh noodles are delicious
and they cook super fast, which is an important factor
for busy folks who just want to be able to
order food at a ramanna and like start eating within
like three to five minutes. The downside is a fresh
noodles only last a couple of days, and that's only
if you keep them cool and dry. The big draw
of dry packaged noodles is that their shelf stable for
(25:49):
a couple of years, um because and that's because just
about all the moisture that would let micro organisms grow
has been removed. But dry noodles take a bunch longer
to cook. So how do dry instant ramen noodles cook
so dang fast? Have no idea. The key to this
is also the reason why instant ramen has traditionally been
(26:11):
so disproportionately fatty for something that's just effing noodles and salt. Uh.
They're flash fried during manufacturing. Ah. The process goes like this.
First you create your dough, uh, make it into noodles,
cook the noodles, then air dry them just a little
bit so that they're not like soggy, and then take
these noodles and deep fry them at above the boiling
(26:33):
point of water like a hundred and sixty degrees celsius
a k a like three twenty fahrenheit, and the remaining
molecules of water inside these noodles evaporate so quickly in
the heat that they leave tiny pockets of air behind
in the finished noodles. This both gets rid of that
germ friendly water content for shelf stability and also leaves
(26:54):
you with a craggy noodle micro structure that vastly increases
each noodles face area. So when you drop your blocko
instant noodles into hot water, the water gets just all
up into those tiny air pockets and cooks the noodles
way faster than regular dried needles can cook. That's so
cool these I know, right, I never even thought about it.
(27:15):
I kind of freaked out. I love it. Um. These
crags are also what uncooked rama noodles have a sort
of like cracker like texture, whereas uncooked dry spaghetti certainly
does not. I don't know if anyone else has eaten
both of those things. But I have. Yeah, I actually
really embarrassing story about it. But we will move on.
(27:36):
Maybe I can get you to talk about that in
your favorite bowl of rama after after the rest of this. Okay,
all right, um, Thanks to technology, some instant rama noodles
are made by non frying methods. Um. These generally fall
into the category of like baking and or air drying
and and the idea here is that you again take
cooked noodles, then you cook them in just a very
(27:57):
thin layer of oil and expose them too hot, fast
moving air. The heat is at least a hundred and
forty five degrees celsius a k a three fahrenheit. The
heat and air flow are enough to create the crags
that you want in the noodles with much, much, much
less cooking fat. This is how those home air fryers
basically work. Yeah, and all of this brings us to nutrition.
(28:22):
Oh boy, I'm sure it's very healthy and I should
be eating it every day every day. Yeah. No, that's yeah,
that's that's nutrition. Sec been over okay, great, No, well, okay,
so the nutrition of fresh cooked ramen, of course, depends
heavily on the recipe. And as we spent this entire
episode talking about there are infinite recipes for ramen um. Generally,
(28:42):
I would say that if you're going to add any
of the extras that any ramgna offer, go for the
extra meat or extra vege, not extra noodles, that that
will help you keep feeling more stated, more longer. Yeah,
which was the best. It was the best phrasing phrasing
I've ever used. I do not need to tell you
that instant ramen into and of itself is not a
(29:05):
health food. It's mostly carbohydrates and salt and contains almost
twice as much fat as protein, and the fat is
typically palm oil, which is a bad fat. Instant ramen
also has a smattering of vitamins and minerals other than salt,
but it's proteins are of the types that you you
really need to compliment with stuff from other foods in
order to give your body all the stuff it needs
(29:27):
to to just get work done. So overall, instant ramen
will make you feel full for a little while, but
it won't really keep you going strong, you know. Yeah,
when I was in college, I didn't use the flavor
packet and I would add hot sauce soy sauce and
mushrooms and finished that was mine, so I like kind
(29:47):
of improved it. Yeah, I mean the oil is really
all in the noodles, not in the seasoning packet. So
so if you were looking for fat food, but but
the fat will keep you. The fat is part of
what makes it feeling so okay. Yeah, but you but
you missed out on some of the salt of uh.
And strangely enough, mushrooms and corn, which are two classic
Raman toppings, are basically the two vegetables that will help
(30:10):
your body make the best use of that protein. And
those Ramen noodles, so you're doing even knowing, uh, if
you're gonna eat it and look y'all like to this day,
I just love I love imported instant Raman's. They're so good. Um,
And you know, and like it's quick and it's easy
(30:30):
and it's relatively inexpensive to just add some frozen vege
to the pot. I like, I like spinach as well. Um.
You can also stir in a whole egg after you
turn the heat off at the end of the cooking process,
so that the residual heat will kind of cook the
white for an egg drop soup. Type effect, and the
yolk wol sort of thicken the broth, so it's tasty. Um.
(30:50):
But but hey, all this being said, like, we we
never want to slam a food that's inexpensive and tasty
and can be prepared easily, especially like so easily that
in emergency situations it's a pretty common thing to to
to ship out to people. Um. Anthropologists who have studied
Raman's worldwide youth say that overall, raman does more good
(31:10):
than harm nutrition wise, especially in cities with food desserts
where the urban poor really don't have access to anything
more nutritious than instant raman. Yeah, good for you instant ramen. Yeah.
But back to Annie's earlier point about the salt, what
about SG? What about it? Okay? So, monosodium glutamate is
(31:35):
a flavoring that helps add like savory salty tastes to foods,
and it got a lot of undeserved bad press starting
in nineteen sixty eight, when a doctor got a letter
published in the New England Journal of Medicine pondering why
he often felt ill after eating at American Chinese restaurants.
His his concepts that he throughout in this in this
(31:56):
letter where maybe it's the soy sauce, maybe it's the
cooking wine, and or maybe it's MSG. And for some reason,
the press and the public just kind of went wild
with the MSG thing. They were calling it Chinese restaurant syndrome.
UM research published in two dozen six that reviewed almost
forty years of research studies found no serious side effects
(32:19):
or sensitivities in humans to the amount of m SG
that you would consume through food. Maybe like headache or
dry mouth if you're eating on an empty stomach and
you're not properly hydrated, but that's it. The really bad
effects that researchers found only happened when they injected MSG
under the skin of baby mice. So don't inject MSG
under your skin and you you'll you'll be fine. Yeah,
(32:40):
I just don't do that. Yeah. Um. Also, side note
of referring to a problem with a widely used chemical
compound is specifically Chinese related as pretty racist, So so
don't do that either. Well, it's news to me that
it was just one dude, Like, hey, like I wonder, okay, Yeah,
(33:01):
that's certainly something we'll have to look into. Absolutely, Yeah,
that the whole story of how it was derived by
some Japanese scientists. It's super fascinating. So cool. Well, here
is our random portion random. I just wanted to mention
ramen burgers, just in case you didn't know they were
a thing. I actually, what, what on what on earth
(33:21):
is a ramen burger? Oh it's a burger or two
like um, instant packages like the instead of buns. Yeah,
and they're kind of cooked and you eat it. I mean, yeah,
that's how I've had it. But I think you can
get like a burger with buns and the two blocks
of ramen noodles. I My face is going through this
(33:42):
number of confused contortions. I have twitching. Nothing to say
about that. Uh, because restaurateurs will put gold leaf on
anything to make a headline. Um, you could at one
point buy a one and eighty dollar bowl of ramen
from Manhattan restaurants cola. Um. It all took in with
like la goo beef and shaved truffle. Now your face
(34:03):
is doing the same thing that my face was. Just
is I'd better be really full for a long time
after that. I get hungry an hour. I'm gonna be
so mad, like I'm going to eat this, but just hypothetically.
Also the restaurant closed, so well, okay um, But if
you are eating ramen out at a ramen shop, cultural
(34:25):
notes on doing that, it is, in fact, okay even
preferred to kind of angle your head over the bowl
and slurp your noodles, like make a slurpy sound. Um
that the heat of the broth will start over cooking
the noodles within just eight minutes, so you have to
you have to do it fast, and the slipping will
help cool and aerate the broth, bringing the scent to
your nose. Um, and the sound is actually considered a
(34:46):
compliment to the chef. Also, when and if you put
your chopsticks down, do not stick them upright in the bowl.
That's a reminiscent of of a Japanese funerary practice. So
don't stick chopsticks into bowls, lay them across the top right. Yeah, totally.
When I was having my delicious bowl of ramen in Japan,
everywhere it was the sound of slurping. It's like for
(35:08):
when I first walked in, I didn't know what was
going on? What what what is it? Yeah? Oh that's
beautiful though it was, and it was delicious. If you
want to make ramen at home, but A don't want
to use instant noodles, and be can't find regular rama noodles.
Can you make your own chewy perfect noodles out of
regular non alkalized pasta? I don't know. Well you can't really,
(35:32):
but if you add two or three teaspoons of baking
soda per quart of water that you boil your pasta in,
they'll come out yellower and spring here. Okay, so little, yeah, sure,
kind of sort of m and uh, okay, tell us,
tell us about your bowl of ramen? What what was it?
(35:52):
I need to I need to hear. It's actually funny
because in Japan a lot of the raman restaurants. Actually
I went to two and both of them were this way.
It's like a vending machine. I thought you were going
to get raman out of a vending machine, but it's
like just how you order. Yeah, that's how you order. Yeah,
there's a machine with like pictures. Yes. So I'm like
this bumbling tourists, trying to figure it out. And the
(36:15):
I accidentally went to apparently a really famous place. It's
I think you guys probably heard of it. But you
go in and you're like in a booth. Oh yeah, yeah,
it's like a little there's like little partitions, like in
a voting booth or like a like a phone booth.
And then the there's like a little window and there's
a kind of a bamboo thing hanging out front of
(36:35):
you and they'll roll it up in the food slide
down you like never interact with the human No, you're there.
But my favorite was I was in Kyoto station. So
I was in a train station and there's a whole
full or dedicated to rama and it's every restaurant on
the I think the eleventh floor or eleventh raman yeah,
and so I just went into one and I got
(36:57):
one with um chicken in like a chicken base um
and it was just like the most wonderful and comforting
chicken soup Roman mixture I've ever had. It was so kind.
Oh man, Yeah, that's that's wonderful. It was Thank you
was huge. Oh oh, I know it was so big.
(37:21):
Yeah you did, no way it was I leaving any
of that mine. I think. Thank you. Thank you for
sharing your Robin story. Oh yes, thank you for asking.
Yeah time. Speaking of stories, this brings us to our
listener mail. Yes, Sandra wrote in response to a pumpkin episode.
I live in Nova Scotia, Canada, and a town here
(37:43):
called Windsor host an annual pumpkin regatta. What this means
is they find grow massive pumpkins, hauled them out and
use them as boats. I kid you, not boats. I'm
including the link with some pictures for you as this
amazingly quirky event and you all needed to know that
pumpkins are not only amazing to eat, but you can
also use them as modes of transportation. And the link
(38:06):
was amazing, the pictures were amazing. A lot of people
wrote us about this and I want to see it
in person so much. Yeah, the people like like dress
up like in costumes for this, for this pumpkin boat race.
It's I mean, pumpkin boat race alone just rings a
smile to my face. I want to see it so badly.
(38:28):
Field Trip list Um About cinnamon, Angela wrote a while back,
I had also learned that cinnamon was a natural de
turrent to ants. The reason I needed to know this
is because our cat is a messy eater and leaves
crumbles of kibbles on the floor near her food bowl.
I feel you there, uh. In summer, we would find
little black ants coming in and trying to make off
with the kibble crumbs. I had previously tried sprinkling cinnamon
(38:50):
in the areas I suspected they entered the house, but
they kept thwarting me. This year, when they returned, I
decided to show them I was serious and use cinnamon
leaf oil. I added some drops of the oil to
a cotton ball and swiped it along the baseboards the
likely entrance areas and could watch them turn tail and run.
I had to reapply the oil about twice a week
for a few weeks, but so far they seem to
(39:12):
have gotten the picture. It's amazing how quickly our kitchen
smelled like the holidays. Another fun side story is that
when I worked in a production bakery, we would order
ten to fifteen pound boxes of cinnamon at a time,
would fill smaller containers with cinnamon and have to scoop
it from the larger box. When the cinnamon would shift
in the box, it had a fluidity to it that
was mesmerizing. It looked like slashing water. Pretty cool. I agree,
(39:36):
that is pretty cool. The fluid dynamics of substances like
cinnamon and actually ants super fascinating. Fire ants move like fluid.
It's oh, it's so cool. That is cool a lot
of us. Many people wrote us that the um cinnamon
thing worked for them in getting rid of as So
you've got an ant problem, maybe give it a trip. Yeah, yeah,
I'm gonna you got you got the with the kibbles
(40:01):
and ants thing going on as well. I've got some
fire ants that just started camp camping there like staking
out my house. So no, and I'm getting increasingly I'm
having increasing allergic reactions to It's time for cinnamon. It's
apparently time for cinnamon. Get serious. Well, if you have
any other tips similar to that, or any other food
(40:21):
or drink related thing you'd like to write us about,
you can do so. Our email is food Stuff at
how stuff works dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Facebook and Twitter at food
Stuff hs W. We're on Instagram at food stuff Thanks
so much to our producer Dylan Fagan for doing everything
that he does. We hope that we'll hear from you,
(40:41):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
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