Digital Cooking on ramen production - ramen soup

akira
We think of ramen production just like a manufacturing factory of different components that are assembled to build a machinery. For example, each component, base stock, motodare, and flavored oils are produced separately and combined when serving a bowl of ramen. And customers, including us, expect a ramen shop to serve a good bowl of ramen, which is same as one we had a week ago. This consistency is called quality. And consistent quality creates trust. Accumulated trust creates a good brand. So, the capability of serving bowls of ramen with consistent qualities is essential in building your ramen shop and brand. But with anything else, achieving consistent quality is sometimes difficult in ramen production.
At Yamato Ramen School with over 20 years of teaching and making ramen, we have developed ways to ensure that our students serve their ramen with consistent qualities. This method is called "Digital Cooking". Simply put, it requires us to use numbers in everything we do in production. Weight of certain ingredients, minutes spent on cooking certain things, cooking temperatures of certain ingredients, etc. By having all the procedures and recipes numbers, this method allows anyone to be able to produce good bowls of ramen with consistency, regardless of previous cooking experiences.

Checking ramen soup density with your eyes

Cooking of base stocks for ramen soup is usually the toughest job in ramen soup production. Depending on what type of ramen soup you are making, you may need to spend hours prepping, cooking, straining, and storing it away. It is a task to be done everyday, and because we cook a lot of stocks, we need to have sure ways to make sure the consistency of stock quality.
One of the indicators of quality of ramen soup is the density. How many molecules of ingredients' umami are there in one cubic centimeter of the liquid being cooked? There is a tool we can use to measure this. It is called, refractometer. By placing a drip of broth we are cooking on this device, we can literally see what the stock density is. (as seen in the picture)
This device is very easy to use, and it can tell us the density of ramen broth as well as kansui, which is an ingredient for ramen noodles. By knowing the density of the ramen broth you are cooking and what the density target you are aiming at, you know when you are done with your stock. Instead of relying on your tongue or taste buds, this device can tell you if it is done or not.

Be consistent by using available ramen tools

There are other tools available, such as measuring device that checks saltiness or sweetness of ramen soup. They come in handy when checking different ramen soups' qualities. Instead of relaying on your sensations to tell if this is the correct taste, flavor, and quality, you can use these tools to make sure your ramen is same as one you served 3 days ago.
At our ramen school, we teach everything, based on this Digital Cooking method to make sure that every single bowl of your ramen is consistent, which will eventually build your own ramen brand.
Join us at Yamato Ramen School to start making your own craft ramen with Digital Cooking method.

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