Kyl Haselbauer has 20 years of experience working in fine-dining and modernist kitchens, including Bar Cotto and Anchovies &amp; Olives in Seattle. He is also the owner of Bright Spot, a café and coffee shop in Seattle.

Kyl Haselbauer

If you want near-instant ramen that’s way better than anything out of a packet (and comparable to what you can buy at a good local shop), then this recipe is for you. After developing the recipe for <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pork-bouillon-cubes">pork bouillon cubes</a>, I immediately thought of using them to make a riff on instant ramen. And while I’m most familiar with tonkotsu ramen—the kind of ramen that uses a milky, emulsified pork stock as its base—I knew there are clear-soup styles of ramen, and I figured that my pork stock could be used to make one of those.I turned to my colleague Sho Spaeth, our lead writer and editor, for advice—Sho loves chintan (clear-broth) ramen, and he’s currently working on a ramen cookbook. He suggested doing a soy sauce-flavored soup, and that I should play around with adding some gyofun—a powder made from a variety of Japanese dried fish products—to the soup. He also noted that ramen shops will typically season their soup in each serving bowl, using a set amount of seasoning (called “tare”) and fat for a set amount of broth. With that advice, a bunch of frozen noodles, and the beautiful broth my pork bouillon cubes produce, I went to work, trying different ratios of ingredients for the tare and gyofun. With a little sweetness from mirin, some inosinic acid from fish sauce, and a sufficient amount of soy sauce, the tare is well-rounded and soy sauce-forward with a ton of umami. For the gyofun, I settled on a mix of katsuobushi (shavings of cured and dried skipjack tuna; also known as bonito flakes), niboshi (boiled and dried baby sardines; often labeled as dried anchovies), and sababushi (flakes of dried mackerel), which gives the soup an incredible depth of flavor. Don’t worry: It doesn’t taste “fishy” so much as it just tastes amazing. The dried mackerel is a little hard to find, and if you can’t find it, you can omit it or sub in an equal amount of niboshi (the niboshi and katsuobushi are relatively easy to find online or at Japanese and Asian markets).Putting a bowl together is super simple: Reconstitute the pork broth, add it along with the tare, the gyofun, a spoonful of melted lard, some fresh grated ginger and garlic, and a drop or two of sesame oil (for that classic instant ramen flavor profile) to a bowl, slide in some cooked noodles, add some toppings—a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/cured-ramen-eggs-you-can-t-stop-eating">ramen egg</a>, some <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/char-siu-tender-cantonese-style-barbecued-pork">sous vide char siu</a>, whatever—then top it all off with some sliced scallions. It’s way-better-than-instant ramen, and it takes about the same amount of time to prepare.

Ultimate Instant Ramen