Akamaru "Umami Dama" & Mayu Tonkotsu

Before you start

• Transform the baking soda into an alkaline salt.

  Spread one cup of baking soda on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake at 350°F for exactly one hour to create sodium carbonate, storing the highly alkaline powder in an airtight jar.

• Soak the pork bones to purge the blood.

  Submerge the cracked femurs, neck bones, and split trotters in cold water for at least one hour before cooking.

• Construct the marinated soft-boiled eggs.

  Lower cold eggs into rapidly boiling water for exactly 6 minutes and 30 seconds, immediately shock in an ice bath, peel, and submerge in a chilled marinade of equal parts water, soy sauce, and mirin for twelve hours.

• Thoroughly chill the braised pork belly.

  If you are making chashu, braise the pork belly ahead of time and chill it completely in the refrigerator overnight so the lipid structures solidify.

Ingredients

• pork femurs2 lb
• pork neck bones2 lb
• pig trotters2 lb
• baking soda1 cup
• high-protein bread flour500 g
• water160 ml
• sea salt2 tbsp
• Japanese soy sauce1/2 cup
• mirin1/4 cup
• chicken stock50 ml
• red miso3 tbsp
• toban djan1 tbsp
• sesame oil1 tbsp
• sugar1 tsp
• fresh garlic52 large cloves
• lard1/2 cup
• neutral oil1/2 cup
• braised pork belly1 lb
• eggs4 large
• dried wood ear mushrooms1/4 cup
• scallions1 bunch

Method

1. 01

   Blanch and aggressively scrub the bones.

   Cover the soaked bones with cold water and boil violently for 15 minutes to coagulate impurities, then discard the murky liquid and scrub every crevice of the bones under cold running water.

2. 02

   Execute a twelve-to-fourteen-hour rolling boil to emulsify the broth.

   Return the cleaned bones to a fresh pot of water and maintain a violent, rolling boil—not a simmer—replenishing with boiling water hourly to force the fat and gelatin into a sticky, milky-white suspension.

3. 03

   Create the five-stage black garlic oil.

   Slowly fry fifty sliced garlic cloves in a blend of lard and neutral oil, pulling a fifth of the garlic out at blond, brown, dark brown, and black stages, leaving the final fifth to fully carbonize before blending it all back into the hot oil to form a pitch-black paste.

4. 04

   Mix the spicy umami dama paste.

   Fry the minced garlic in a splash of oil until golden, then fold it off the heat into the red miso, toban djan, sugar, and sesame oil, rolling the dense mixture into small mounds.

5. 05

   Hydrate and sheet the alkaline noodles.

   Dissolve one teaspoon of your baked baking soda and a pinch of salt into 160ml of water, vigorously mix it into the bread flour until it resembles wet sand, then rest, sheet, and cut the dough into ultra-thin, straight noodles.

6. 06

   Assemble the bowls with absolute precision.

   Add two tablespoons of the soy and mirin tare to a hot, dry bowl, ladle in the furiously boiling, unseasoned tonkotsu broth, fold in the freshly boiled noodles, and crown with cold chashu, scallions, wood ear mushrooms, a drizzle of mayu, and the umami dama.

Notes

• Seasoning belongs strictly in the tare.

  The broth provides mouthfeel, fat, and aroma, while the tare provides salinity and umami, so resist the urge to salt your 14-hour pork stock directly.

• Never slice your chashu warm.

  Slicing warm pork belly results in shredded, collapsed meat; it must be sliced ice-cold, allowing the scalding broth to melt the fat right as it hits the bowl.

• Clarity expectations for this broth are explicitly zero.

  If your stock is clear, you are doing it wrong; the intense kinetic energy of the boil is necessary to shear the fat into microscopic droplets for that signature sticky, opaque texture.