Brought some stuff to work and tested it out on the coworkers.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BpqjNvLFzQ0/
I finally shut up and put up and had someone else try this tonkotsu lemongrass shio that I've been working on for a few weeks in my freetime from work. Brought it in and offered it to coworkers as their staff meal.
Has a few kinks to work out, and I brought too few seafood mushrooms to go around (so I supplemented with a little bit of boring old kikurage). Should be half an egg but this person didn't want one. I'm just kind of happy to be able to turn the page on this dish, mostly, and move on to other recipe testing. Lots more ramen to try, and thank GOD I got the broth to where I want it to be; I have no more 4qt cambros, no more 1gal fermenting jars, and no more refrigerated space whatsoever. I needed to stop making batch after batch after batch of broth!
Final tally is Lemongrass Shio: smokey Tonkotsu broth, seafood mushroom, sous vide chashu, baby corn menma, scallion oil chimichurri, and beni shoga.
EDIT: Oh, and if anyone cares to follow that Instagram account, it's just a chronicle of various recipe testing for an as of yet hypothetical but sorta-kinda-in-the-works noodle bar. I'm intentionally not spending time making things look good or instagrammable or whatever, so it's not going to be too food porn-ey, but it might be interesting to some.
Posted Nov 2, 2018, 6:59 AM UTC · edited
Let me share my chashu with you. You have to buy a slab of pork belly, and roll it, held together by twine. I salt mine, and the fat side is on the outside. I sou vide at 140F for 2-3 days, and after the sou vide I put the whole thing in the fridge. After its cool you can remove it, cut the twine, trim out the outer layer then slice the whole thing like ham.
I honestly was just doing it sous vide to see how it tasted without the sugars caramelizing at all. If in the future these recipes get used in a kitchen, I doubt I’ll have the space to do enough pork belly sous vide; I’ll have to braise in large batches.