Ingredients

  • 1 l unseasoned duck broth

Tare

  • 100 g soy sauce
  • 10 g mirin
  • 10 g dried shitake
  • 5 g salt

Dashi powder

  • 10 g kombu
  • 10 g benito flakes
  • 10 g dried anchovies

Aromatic oil

  • Duck fat
  • 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
  • 2 spring onion, thinly sliced white part

Directions

Good ramen is essentially layered umami. Here, those umami layers come from the duck, dashi powder, and tare.

For the duck broth, simply simmer a duck carcass in just enough water to cover for 2-4 hours. There should be no seasoning or other ingredients here.

The dashi powder is made by blending the ingredients. This works well with a spice or chutney blender. Note that often times preserved anchovies are extremely salty. Before blending, quickly rinse the anchovies under water and then pat dry.

For the tare, simply mix the ingredients and bring them to heat on a pan, then turn off heat once the alcohol smell starts to diminish. Set tare aside in a bowl.

Now, put 1 l of duck broth into a new pot and add dashi powder to taste. You want to add enough powder so you taste a good balance of both the duck and the seafood. When tasting, pour out a small amount of broth and mix with a little tare. Its important to taste with some tare, as without salt it’ll be difficult to distinguish the potency of the broth.

Next, add tare to soup broth. Add it until it’s seasoned to your taste (its better to under- than over-season here). You can serve the tare as a side, so anyone can add more seasoning if they prefer.

Finally, prepare the aromatic oil. Simply fry garlic and spring onions in duck fat (or oil of your choice) until garlic is beginning to brown. Take off heat, sieve the oil, then set aside.

For serving, add some aromatic oil to the bottom of each bowl along with soba noodles. Next, strain 500 ml of broth into the bowl (to remove the dashi powder solids). Season with additional tare to taste. Sliced duck breast and a boiled egg marinated for a few hours in the tare sauce are great toppings for the dish.

If the duck broth is made ahead of time and frozen, the recipe is extremely fast to prepare. Note that its also imporant to keep the seasoned broth quite hot until serving, as the soba noodles and toppings will cool the broth quite a bit when served.