Holy moly what a week last week! As you saw with my last post, Kieran and I were on vacation, which meant eating out…. a lot.
Boy oh BOY did we feast like Kings pigs. We ate pizza, wiener schnitzel, pastries, ice cream, Thai food, Indian food, seafood, salad, ect. You name it, we put that delicious shit in our mouths! Mind you, I’m still counting calories so I ate smaller portions of everything we ate, but still, vacation means splurging on food, and that splurge was fucking delicious!
However, after a week of eating the majority of our meals out, I was CRAVING a home cooked meal. We all know home cooked meals are better for you (unless you cook with a tub of butter and a shit load of salt) because you control exactly what goes into the recipe. Calorie counting is tremendously easier when cooking at home too. My “Lose It!” app has a wide range of foods to pick from, when eating out, but the food listed on the app is generally from fast food places. The app doesn’t feature a list of Portland restaurants, so I’m merely guessing when I pick “wiener schnitzel” calories on the app. But hey, it’s better than nothing!
So after a week of rich and delicious foods, I was ready to whip up a healthier, yet tasty, meal. And whip up a healthier, yet tasty, meal I did folks. This week’s Ramen recipe is killer!!!
I’ve been tinkering around with this recipe for a few weeks and finally got it Shock Munch worthy.
You’ll seriously start reminiscing about all the crazy shit you did in college, as you nosh down on these nummy noodles!
I started the recipe by using vegetable broth, which tastes great, so Vegans, you can make this recipe without beef broth. However, the broth didn’t taste rich enough for me. Once I switched and used beef broth, I was able to accomplish the level of depth of flavor I was shooting for.
Another ingredient I added, in my final attempt at the soup, was miso paste. I adore miso soup, but admittedly, I’ve never purchased miso paste before this recipe. What is miso paste you ask? Good question, let’s consult the Google machine to find out…
Miso is a paste made from soybeans, sea salt, and koji (a mold starter), and often mixed with rice, barley or other grains. The mixture is allowed to ferment for 3 months to 3 years, which produces an enzyme-rich food.
According to www.thestonesoup.com, Miso does a tremendous job adding additional savory flavors, to vegetarian food. Miso adds dimension and body so it’s a super useful ingredient to add extra flavor.
Not only does miso provide depth to your meals, it’s healthy as fuck! Let’s get all scientific-y with it, read about THIS.
- Contains all essential amino acids, making it a complete protein.
- Stimulates the secretion of digestive fluids in the stomach.
- Restores beneficial probiotics to the intestines.
- Aids in the digestion and assimilation of other foods in the intestines.
- Is a good vegetable-quality source of B vitamins (especially B12).
- Strengthens the quality of blood and lymph fluid.
- Reduces risk for breast, prostate, lung and colon cancers.
- Protects against radiation due to dipilocolonic acid, an alkaloid that chelates heavy metals and discharges them from the body.
- Strengthens the immune system and helps to lower LDL cholesterol.
- Is high in antioxidants that protect against free radicals.
I read when cooking with miso, it’s best to add the paste at the end of the recipe (like I did for the ramen). If you add miso paste at the beginning of the cooking process, you’re likely to kill off some antioxidants and enzymes that help your stomach with digestion.
At my local Safeway (my local grocery store for those of you who thought, “What the hell is Safeway”) I found two bags of miso paste. One was light, the other was dark. My understanding is the lighter the color, the milder the taste. If you’re a first time miso paste buyer, you may want the lighter kind. What does miso paste taste like you ask? It’s kinda like soy sauce and beans, mashed up into a paste. It’s fairly salty, but delicious!
At this time you may be thinking to yourself, “Screw you, I’m not buying a big bag of miso paste when I only need a couple of teaspoons for your recipe! I’m not wasting money on an ingredient I’m never going to use to be all fancy-pants like you!”
- Touche.
- Thanks for calling me fancy pants, I feel like people should call each other fancy pants more often. I take that shit as a compliment.
- Miso paste is optional, don’t buy anything you don’t want.
- Click here for additional ways to use miso paste, to make other recipes delicious.
OH!! Before I forget, I have some fun news to share. Hopefully, going forward, I will be sharing cooking videos along with my posts! Kieran and I are working on editing the video we shot for the ramen recipe as we speak! We’re hopeful I can share the video early next week. I specifically said “hopefully going forward” because neither Kieran or I know right now, how much of a pain in the ass, shooting cooking video’s will be. The videos won’t feature myself (trust me, I’m doing you a favor, I have what they call “a face for radio”), instead I’ll be focused on the food, so you can see the ingredients in different stages of the cooking process.
Making cooking videos is a new venture I know absolutely nothing about, so I may crash and burn during the process. But you know what? Fuck it. I mean, who cares if I fail? I would rather try and fail then regret not trying at all. I’m assuming my beginning video’s will suck balls, but as long as each video improves, I’ll be happy.
Also, you might have noticed (the 1 or 2 of you who read this far in the post) I’ve added 2 new categories to the Shock Munch menu named 10 (or 5) ingredients are less, for a couple reasons.
Just about everyone has a day job and kids, so coming home to prep a fuck ton of ingredients is tough. I mean, aint nobody got time for that. So I wanted to make sure I’m developing recipes with shorter grocery lists, so you don’t spend your entire paycheck at your local grocer.
A lot of times less is more and the tastiest dishes have the fewest ingredients. I want to challenge myself.
I want to point out when I post 5/10 ingredients for less, you may actually count MORE ingredients listed, like: salt, pepper, soy sauce, milk, olive oil, water, eggs, garlic, ect. When I add the ingredients up, I’ll be omitting common every day staple ingredients most people already have stocked in their refrigerator, pantry, or kitchen faucet. I promise I won’t be a snob about it either, I’m not going to MAKE you stock miso paste, you’ve already told me how you feel about it.
So, read and cook along with me as I expand my foodie parameters and have fun experimenting with new visions for Shock Munch.
For those of you who subscribe to my site, I sincerely thank you!
Easy Ramen Noodle Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon of sesame oil
- 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon of fresh, grated ginger, minced
- ¾ cups onion, chopped
- 1 carrot, shredded (I used my vegetable peeler to make thick carrot strips)
- 8 oz crimini mushrooms, sliced
- 2 cups beef broth
- 4 cups of water
- 3-4 tablespoons of soy sauce
- 2 packages of ramen noodles (seasoning packet discarded)
- 1 bok choy (cleaned, greens leaves cut into long strips, you can discard the white part)
- 1 egg per person, I used 2 (optional)
- 1-2 teaspoons of miso paste (optional)
- Cilantro (optional)
Instructions
- Heat a soup pot over medium high heat, then add the sesame oil.
- After the oil heats up, add the garlic and ginger. Stir until the garlic/ginger becomes fragrant, approx 30 second.
- Toss in the onion and carrot, along with a big pinch of salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables start to soften, approx 5 minutes. Now it's time to add the mushrooms with another pinch of salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms start to sweat and shrink approx 5-7 minutes.
- Pour in the beef broth, water, and soy sauce. Stir everything together. Bring the contents of the soup to a boil, then turn the heat on low/medium low, to bring the liquid to a simmer. Simmer for 20 minutes for the flavors to intensify.
- After 20 minutes, turn up the heat on your stove a little bit, then add the ramen noodles and cook until they're at the "el dente" your desire. Note, approx 3 minutes before the noodles are done add the bok choy. It will only take a minute or so for the bok choy to wilt down. After that, stir in the miso pasta (if using) and drop in an egg per person eating the ramen (also optional). Cook until the egg is cooked to your liking.
- Taste for additional soy sauce, salt, or pepper if needed. Note, if you add miso paste, do that before you add additional salt. Miso is salty AF so you probably won't need more salt.
- I used tongs to grab the noodles from the pot into my bowls, then ladle in the liquid, followed by the cooked egg. Garnish the ramen with cilantro (unless you think that shit's nasty) and eat!