Ramen, What types of Ramen Exist?

Ramen is one of famous cuisine from Japan.  One bowl of ramen consists of Chinese style noodles served with fish or meat based broth and uses toppings such as menma, nori (seaweed), chasiu (pork), negi (green and white onion), and a half- boiled egg. The locals usually eat ramen during winter because it is the best season to serve hot ramen because of the cold weather. However, ramen is a popular food throughout the year in Japan. Ramen is also a popular late evening and night food after all when you have had a couple of drinks ramen tastes blissful. Since Japanese do not prefer spicy foods, you will not have to worry that most ramens would be too spicy for your taste.

You can find different kind of ramen shops all around Japan, in bigger cities you might find more than few ramen places almost next to each other to give you a good choice on the type of ramen you want and on the price you are willing to pay, the prices chaning a lot starting from around 400 yen usual price is around 800 yen depending on your order. Ramen can be categorized by its two main ingredients: noodles and broth below I will be telling bit about the most popular ramen types and what they usually have in them.

Noodles 

Noodles are usually made from wheat flour, salt, water and kansui (alkaline mineral water). Noodles come in many different shapes and sizes some are thin some thick some straight and other wrinkled.

Broth and Flavor

The broth in ramen is usually based from pork or chicken and other ingredients such as kelp, tuna flakes, dried baby sardines, pig bones, beef bones, shitakes or onions are mixed in to bring out a different flavor.

The five main types of broth mixes are shoyu (soy sauce), shio (salt), tonkotsu (pork-bone), miso (fermented soybean) and curry. However, all over Japan there are different kind of variation of ramen and they rarely taste the same.

Shoyu Ramen (soy sauce ramen)

It is the oldest type of ramen. The broth is clear brown and usually from chicken, fish, or vegetables. Shoyu ramen usually has curly noodles rather than straight and toppings such as menma (bamboo shoots), nori (sea weed), onion, boiled eggs. Some shop serves it with a slice of beef rather than chasyu (BBQ pork).

Shio Ramen (salt ramen)

Shio ramen is clear, salty, yellowish and it is made with plenty of salt and combination of chicken, fish, vegetables or pork bone, but the pork is not boiled as long as in other types of ramen, so that the soup remains light and clear. Noodle thickness varies for shio ramen but usually long straight noodles are used.

Tonkotsu Ramen (pork bone)

Pork bone ramen usually has cloudy, thick and white colored broth. The broth that is made by boiling pork bone, collagen and fat for hours to make the broth nice, thick and almost creamy.

Miso Ramen (fermented soybean) 

Miso ramen originates from Hokkaido. The broth consists of miso and fish broth, oily chicken or Pork. The flavor tends to be tangy, so it stands up to a variety flavor of toppings: butter corn, spicy bean paste, cabbage, and others. Miso ramen has usually Thick curly noodles in it.

Curry ramen

Like the miso ramen, the curry ramen also originally comes from Hokkaido. The usual version of this Ramens soup is made with pork bone and vegetables with curry added in it as the name suggests. The preferred toppings are charsiu (bbq pork), bean sprout and wakame. Just as in the miso ramen the curry ramen also usually uses thick curly noodles.

Let's try these variations of ramen in Japan!