Ramen

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Image:Ramen-packet2.jpg

This article discusses Japanese food. For other meanings, refer to Ramen (disambiguation).

Ramen (ラーメン or らーめん or 拉麺, rahmen Template:IPA) is a Japanese dish of noodles and broth, with a variety of toppings such as sliced pork, seaweed, naruto, green onions and even corn. Almost every locality or prefecture in Japan has its own variation of ramen, from the tonkotsu ramen of Kyushu to the miso ramen of Hokkaido.

Outside of Japan, "ramen" most commonly refers to instant ramen (see picture at right), some well-known brands of which include Sapporo Ichiban, Maruchan and Nissin. A number of North American supermarkets also have their own generic ramen. Despite some health concerns detailed below, instant ramen is a diet staple of university students as well individuals on a budget -- as of 2006, one packet could be bought for as little as 5-15 cents. Instant ramen is resistant to spoilage and can be easily prepared with boiling water, making it a favorite of backpackers and travelers in conditions offering few technological conveniences.

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History

Ramen is a newcomer in Japanese cuisine. While Tokugawa Mitsukuni reportedly ate ramen in the late 17th century, it was only during the Meiji period that ramen became widely known -- perhaps because, for most of its history, the Japanese diet consisted mostly of vegetables and seafood rather than meat. The introduction of American and European cuisine, which demanded increased production of meat products, played a large role in ramen becoming popular.

Though of Chinese origin, it is unclear when, from where and by whom ramen was introduced to Japan. Even the etymology of the term "ramen" is a topic of debate. The generally accepted hypothesis is that "ramen" is the Japanese pronunciation of 拉麺 (lamian), meaning "hand-pulled noodles." A second hypothesis proposes 老麺 (laomian, old noodles) as the original form, while yet another states that ramen was initialy 鹵麺 (lumian), noodles cooked a thick, starchy sauce. Finally, others peg 撈麵 (Cantonese: Lo mein, Mandarin: lāo miàn) in Chinese, meaning "stirred noodles," as the origin of "ramen."

(There are also anecdotal origins: one story purports that the name was originally 柳麺 (liumian), meaning "Liu's noodle," with Liu being the cook who onstensibly popularized the dish).

In the early Meiji period, ramen was called shina soba (支那そば), literally "Chinese soba," but today chūka soba (中華そば, also meaning "Chinese soba") is its more politically correct alternative. Ramen is a popular dish in Yokohama Chinatown. In 1900, restaurants serving Chinese cuisine from Canton and Shanghai sold a simple ramen dish of noodles, a few toppings, and a broth flavored with salt and pork bones. The noodles were cut rather than hand pulled. In 1899, Japan and China signed a new treaty that allowed their respective citizens to move freely between the two nations. Many Chinese pulled portable food stalls and sold ramen and gyōza dumplings to workers. By the mid 1900s, these stalls were using a type of a musical horn called a charumera (チャルメラ) to advertise their presence (a practice some vendors still retain via a loudspeaker and a looped recording). By the early Shōwa period, ramen had become a popular dish when going out to eat.

After World War II, cheap flour imported from the U.S. swept the Japanese market. At the same time, millions of Japanese troops had returned from China and continental East Asia. Many of these returnees had become familiar with Chinese cuisine, and subsequently set up Chinese restaurants all across Japan. Eating ramen, while popular, was still a special occasion that required going out. In 1958, instant noodles were invented by Momofuku Ando, the founder and chairman of Nissin Foods. Named the greatest Japanese invention of the 20th century in a Japanese poll, instant ramen allowed anyone to create this noodle dish simply by boiling water. Beginning in the 1980s, ramen became a Japanese cultural icon and was studied from many perspectives. At the same time, many local varieties of ramen hit the national market and ramen could be ordered by their geographical names.

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Types

A wide variety of ramen exists, differing from location to location even when sold under the same name. They can be categorized by the type of ingredients: noodle, soup, and topping.

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Noodle

Image:Fresh ramen noodle 001.jpg Most ramen noodles are made from four basic ingredients: wheat flour, salt, water, and kansui (かんすい). Originally, Kansui was water from Lake Kan in Inner Mongolia that contains a high amount of potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate as well as a small amount of phosphoric acid. It gives ramen a yellowish color and a particular flavor to the noodle. For a brief time after World War II, low quality kansui that was tainted or thinned with water was sold and kansui is now manufactured according to JAS standards. Ramen noodles may also be made with eggs instead of kansui. Some ramen noodles are made with neither eggs nor kansui, and should only be used for yakisoba.

Ramen noodles may come in any shape and length. They may be fat, thin, or even ribbon-like, as well as straight or wrinkled. Thin and straight noodles are used in ramen with thick broth as they catch less broth and thus prevent the flavor from being too salty or fatty. Wrinkled ramen noodles are used in ramen with thinner soup as they catch more soup, yielding a fuller flavor.

According to Nissin, there are five traditional types of noodles: "hand-stretched noodle," "oiled and stick stretched noodle," "cut noodle," "pushed noodle" and "rice noodle."

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Soup

Image:Soy ramen.jpg Ramen soup is generally divided into four flavors (though these are sometimes mixed together to produce a new, original flavor): miso, shio (salt), shoyu (soy sauce), and tonkotsu (pork broth). The shio, or salt flavor, is probably the oldest of the four flavors and, like the Chinese maotan (毛湯), it is a simple chicken broth. The tonkotsu flavor is similar to the Chinese baitan (白湯), a thick broth made by boiling crushed pork bones for hours. The shoyu flavor is similar to salt flavor, but instead of chicken broth, the stock may be made from konbu (kelp), katsuobushi (fish flakes) and niboshi (dried baby sardines).

Some seasonings commonly added to soup are black pepper, butter, chile pepper, five-spice powder, garlic, gochujang (from Korean cuisine), sake, vinegar and wine. Soup recipes and methods of preparation are a closely guarded in many restaurants.

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Toppings

Ramen can be topped with any number of ingredients, such as a raw or boiled egg, menma (fermented and pickled young bamboo), naruto kamaboko, nori, spinach, negi (welsh onion), shiitake or chāshū (char siu, 叉焼 or 焼豚: traditionally a barbecued pork but usually a thinly sliced boiled pork when used as a ramen topping). In most cases, toppings are added after having been already boiled or fried so as to not change the flavor of the soup.

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Related dishes

Many ramen restaurants also serve gyoza, fried rice, shumai and similar Chinese-derived dishes, which customers frequently order along with ramen. Combinations such as ramen and rice and even kimchi ramen are quite popular.

Related (though distinctly) different noodle dishes include Nagasaki champon and Okinawa soba, both made with a wheat-flour noodle resembling those used in ramen. Champon is topped with a variety of ingredients, mostly seafood, and covered in a starchy sauce, while Okinawa soba has chunks of boiled pork, which in some cases have been marinated in awamori liquor.

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Health concerns of instant ramen

Instant ramen has often been criticized for its potential health risks. Some of these claims are justified, while others could be made against any diet that contains too much of a particular food.

A single serving of instant ramen is high in carbohydrates and low in fiber, vitamins and minerals. Instant ramen is typically fried, which makes it high in saturated fat. A popular college urban legend states that a student gave himself scurvy by living on nothing but ramen for an entire year. [1].

Ramen broth, especially that of instant ramen, contains monosodium glutamate (MSG) and a high amount of sodium, usually in excess of 60% of the U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowance. The noodles themselves contain little sodium, so one can avoid drinking the soup if a low-sodium diet is recommended for health reasons. The fact that instant ramen noodles are usually fried (sometimes in hydrogenated vegetable fat, i.e., trans fat) and thus have a high fat content is another concern.

The most recent controversy surrounds dioxin and other hormone-like substances that could theoretically be extracted from the packaging and glues used to pack the instant noodles. As hot water is added, it was reasoned that harmful substances could seep into the soup. After a series of studies were conducted, this concern was found to be baseless, unless the packaging had been cooked in a pressure cooker for an extended period of time.

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Ramen worldwide

Ramen has become a popular food in many parts of the world, though it has undergone changes in flavor to fit local tastes. In many countries, "ramen" refers to instant ramen and not the fresh variety that is popular in Japan. Outside Japan, China is the largest consumer of ramen, with Indonesia coming in second.

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In South Korea

South Korean ramen (or ramyun, 라면) typically has a hot flavor, and only instant ramen is known. Shin (辛, 매울 신) (literally, "hot") is one of the most popular brands in Korea, and has also become popular in China and the United States. The leading manufacturer of ramen in Korea is the Nong Shim company, which exports many of its products overseas. In the 1960s, instant ramen was introduced to South Korea from Japan and its quick and easy preparation, as well as its cheap price, caught on. Most South Korean food stalls make instant ramen and add toppings for their customers. Instant ramen is often added to budaejjigae (literally "boot camp stew"), a stew made with assorted ingredients, which was invented in the vicinity of U.S. military camps stationed in South Korea in the 1950s.

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In North America

North American ramen comes in a variety of flavors and is usually mild, as opposed to traditional, Asian ramen, which is generally flavored with vegetables. Popular flavors in the U.S. include chicken, chicken vegetable, pork, beef, mushroom, shrimp, roast chicken, and roast pork. Asian-exclusive flavors include nori, miso and bean curd, although larger, more diverse markets in the U.S. may have these flavors as well.

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In Mexico

Ramen is gaining in popularity in Mexico, where it is often seen as an American food and enjoyed in typical "southwestern" flavors such as lime or chili, often combined with shrimp. These flavors are available in the United States, particularly in areas with Mexican and Mexican-American populations, and were probably introduced by migrant workers returning home.

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In Russia

Russia's most popular packaged ramen, the Korean brand Dosirac, is produced in Ramenskoye, which at first glance appears to mean "the ramen place." However, ramen is actually an obsolete Russian word for chamomile, and the town of Ramenskoye was so named long before ramen production started there.

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Ramen in fiction

Ramen is nearly ubiquitous in Japanese literary depictions of contemporary life in Japan. In some works, depicting characters with traits relatively infrequent in actual Japanese society, well-known characters are described as liking ramen to the point that it alone forms the bulk of their diet to the exclusion of nearly all other foods. Japanese writers often include a comedy or horror subplot where their main characters go out to eat or cook ramen. Ramen is also used as the object of comedy in many anime and manga such as Naruto, with characters typically getting splashed over the head by a bowl of ramen, or stepping on a bowl of ramen and falling, often taking down another helpless person.


  • The manga Kinnikuman features a character called Ramenman, a Chinese stereotype wrestler, who specialises in Martial Arts. He was so popular that he had his own spin-off manga series.
  • Competition in the ramen restaurant business is at the center of the 1985 Japanese film Tampopo by director Juzo Itami. This humorous yet earnest film is anchored by the protagonists' search for the perfect ramen recipe. Although they continuously bicker over what constitutes the perfect ramen, they all agree people should want to eat it every day.
  • Ramen appears in the game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which due to the mid-1960's setting is touted as the food of the future, as well as being one of the best foods in the game. Ramen also appears in Tales of Symphonia, but is not as good as in MGS3.
  • Ramen is featured in the series InuYasha, and is the favourite food of the title character, InuYasha.
  • Ramen is also featured in the series Naruto, in which it is the favourite food of the main character, Uzumaki Naruto and many of the other characters of the graphic novel. In various episodes Ramen-making is shown.
  • In Derek Kirk Kim's graphic novel Same Difference, one of the protagonists, a Korean-American, explains the finer points of eating ramen raw: "Every Korean kid grows up eating raw ramen! It's our Ritz!"
  • In the Puffing Tom Arc of the popular Manga One Piece, a Marine-Chef named Wanze uses Ramen as a weapon and body armor.
  • Stanford grad students depicted in the webcomic Piled Higher and Deeper eat mostly Ramen and whatever free food they can find.
  • In the webcomic Megatokyo, main character Largo eats his uncooked ramen with a splash or two of milk instead of cooking it in water.
  • In the anime and manga Great Teacher Onizuka (also known as GTO), the main character Onizuka practically lives off a diet of instant ramen due to being broke most of the time.
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Ramen in North American culture

Instant ramen is half-jokingly referred to as a staple food of the typical college student. As noted above, a package of ramen is incredibly cheap for the amount of food it contains. Its low cost, combined with the stereotype of it being a staple of the not-so-well-to-do, has caused instant ramen to be be referred to as "Purina student chow" or even "crackhead soup."

During the 2004 U.S. presidential election campaign, filmmaker Michael Moore visited colleges on his "Slacker Uprising Tour" and gave instant ramen and clean underwear to students who promised to vote. This resulted in a short-lived controversy, with the Republican Party accusing him of trying to buy votes.

The parody religion of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism uses the word "ramen" to end its prayers.

Long-distance backpackers, often referred to as "thru-hikers," enjoy many variations on ramen, since it is lightweight and dense in food energy. A favorite on the Appalachian Trail is an admixture of ramen and instant potatoes.

Instant ramen is also well known in the North American otaku culture as the most commonly consumed food, alongside ramune, for convention-goers. This is especially true for cup ramen, as all that is needed to prepare it is hot water.

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See also

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External links

Template:Commons

  • [3] (miso-ramen with a lot of sesame seeds)
  • [6] (salt-ramen: translucent soup)
  • [12] (mini cup instant-ramen. click photo)
  • [13] (many photos. making soup)

es:Ramen fr:Rāmen gl:Ramen ko:라면 ia:Ramen it:Ramen ja:ラーメン no:Ramen sv:Ramen eo:Rameno zh:日本拉面

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