The Road to Ramen - Chāsū Pork

On the 27th of February, @aimeludick will be turning 14. In our household, we have dispensed with the regular big birthday parties with a cake, decorations, and other food followed by a 2-3 hour long sugar-fueled activity.

Instead, the family generally goes for outings or other events that happen at home. These are done with smaller amounts of people and often for longer periods of time.

Because @aimeludick is such a weeb, she requested this year for us to do a ramen eating thing. Doing some research I realized that I would need to make the ramen myself for three reasons. One is that the only place that seems to be doing decent Japanese ramen is a bit pricy(for a group of kids as Aime wants to invite). The second reason is that Aime loves the idea of having the ramen from the Naruto anime series, which is tonkotsu ramen with Chasu pork.

The restaurant in Cape Town does not do tonkotsu broth or Chasu because both contain pork. The Restaurant serves only beef, chicken or vegetarian ramen, both meat dishes are served on a chicken stock broth.

The third reason is that this ramen shop is far from home and transporting that amount of kids is difficult and often leads to more guests flaking out.

So I determined to assess whether or not I would be able to make this dish at home. I watched a bunch of videos about making ramen and read some recipes and determined that I should be able to make this dish.

I would, however, need to practice so I got to work.

One thing that I learned is that in a true-to-Japanese culture, you needed to take your time and ensure good quality. If you do, the reward will be great!

When making ramen like tonkotsu, you may begin preparing 3 days before you intend to plate your dish. Different parts of the ramen are prepared separately and they are combined and plated together just before consumption... otherwise, everything would turn to mush!

So in this post, I will focus on one of the main toppings of the ramen: The Chasu Pork.

Essentially what you need to do is buy yourself a pork belly with a lot of meat on it. The fat layer is good but try to get a belly where there is about 3/4 meat on it. I bought and prepared two of them here. Seems expensive but we ended up using each of them for a meal for 5 people! So together these two bellies fed the family twice.

With a sharp knife, you need to slice off the tough fat layer on the top of the belly, be sure to cut carefully and away from yourself. Then you will need to roll the belly with the fat layer on the outside.

Here I tried two styles of rolling: One from the short end and one from the long end. If you fold along the long end you end up with a thin roll of Chasu, you get to plate lots of little discs. If you roll from the short end, you get a more authentic-looking spiral Chasu, but often you will only be able to plate it with 2 slices per bowl. They do look good though!

Once rolled you need to tie that think up with twine like you would do a roast in the oven. The first step is to braise the pork in a pan with a small amount of oil until the fat outside is cooked and has a light brown tinge. The inside of the roll can still be quite raw at this point.

Not all of the traditional ingredients were available to me, but I improvised.

Once your braising is done you add to the pan a marinade you prepare separately. Soy Sauce, brown vinegar, sugar, and garlic is used and the pan is filled up till about half the pork is still sticking out.

Once this new mixture starts bubbling, lower the heat and just slow-cook that pork, turning the roll every 30mins. I did mine for at least 2 hours like this and I think you need to use your discretion here.

Once you are done, take the pork out of that is left in the pan - but don't throw away this sauce! It is Liquid Gold and you can use it afterward in a variety of ways!

The Chasu roll is then put on a plate and put in the fridge. My first roll, the longways rolled one, was taken out about an hour later and served with the rest of the ramen while the thicker roll was only used the next day. I feel that Chasu needs to be made the day before.

The result after leaving the Chasu in the fridge overnight was that those large discs did not come apart while plating them and they just looked amazing. You can heat them up in a pan before serving and they still keep their shape! The other Chasu roll, even being small pieces easily fell apart when handled wrong and I needed to be careful.

I would say that Chasu is a dish all on its own and could be prepared for sandwiches and other dishes as the main meat of the meal. Now that I have learned how to make Chasu, I will probably make them again for other kinds of catering, as the need arises.

Let me know in the comments below what you think of my Chasu. I am going to be making more soon for Aime's actual birthday party so advice and input would be appreciated!

Cheers
@zakludick!