How can anyone without previous experiences make quality craft ramen with consistency?
Bowls of ramen, especially ones that capture and turn many into raving fans are tough to develop. And they are hard to create and even harder to keep making and serving with consistency. In order for you to serve a bowl of ramen that is at the same quality as one you served last week, you’d need to have a solid system. You would have to have a factory where everything is made to certain specifications. And anybody can follow sets of instructions to operate the factory. This production system is what needs to be built to produce and serve consistent quality bowls of ramen from day to day. The capability to serve bowls of ramen as intended to every customer is what you’d to build your own ramen brand. But can you go about building it?
Every aspect of ramen operation should be quantifiable.
We have conducted our Yamato Noodle School for the past 20 years, and every student learn how to develop and make noodle dishes in certain ways. All our teachings are based on this concept, we call “Digital Cooking”. This method is evident in every aspect of our teachings because it allows anyone to reproduce the same bowls of ramen over and over. This reproducibility is the key and reason why all of our teachings are based on this method. We quantify all the variables that affect cooking of ramen. Weight of ingredients. Cooking time of certain things. Temperature of cooking certain ingredients. Ratio of certain ingredient to certain ingredient. There are so many things we need to manage in ramen cooking, but having clearly defined numbers in cooking anything, you can make the management very easy. And by controlling these variables, you can have consistency in your ramen production and operations.
You can actually see the density of your ramen soup
One variable we have in controlling the quality of our ramen soup is the density of base stocks. We spend hours making base stocks, (e.g.: tonkotsu, chicken cloudy broth, etc.), and how can we tell if they are finished? By tasting the stocks? Because our taste buds are subjective and may be biased with varying conditions, we may sometimes fail to taste certain things correctly.
Instead, we use some tools to measure base stocks’ densities. Refactometers are such tools we use to check base stocks we cook during school. During our Ramen School, we usually cook more than 10 types of base stocks from scratch. They all have target densities that indicate when they are complete. The refractometer can tell us a density of a particular base stock at a certain point of cooking. It also helps us to see the progress and how fast the density is increasing or umami are being extracted.
At Yamato Ramen School, recipes are constructed with clear numbers
Each bowl that’s assembled has certain components to it, and each component is made to its specifications every time. Each components carries its recipes with sets of instructions and numbers. Ingredients. Their weights. Ratios of ingredients used. Cooking time. Cooking temperature. These recipes allow anyone to reproduce a bowl of ramen at the same quality over and over. At Yamato Ramen School, there are more than 1,000 recipes accumulated in our database. As each student who enrolls brings in unique interests to make their own bowls of ramen, we keep developing and accumulating new recipes of ramen. Each ramen recipe also works as a module, which can be used with other bowls of ramen. Having recipes with clear instructions help you develop an infinite number and types of ramen by combining them.
A tiny difference makes a big difference in noodles texture
When making noodles, we also focus on certain variables for quality control. Among them are the temperature and humidity of a noodle making room, mixing and resting time, hydration, ingredients used, blending ratios, and noodle size. Noodle size is a great factor that affects the noodle texture. Because noodle texture is almost equivalent of noodle quality, getting the right noodle size every time is critical in maintaining your noodle quality. Only a 0.1mm difference in noodle size (thickness or width) can create a completely different noodle texture.
For this reason, we use a measuring tool such as a caliper to make ramen noodles that are cut to the same specifications every time. This helps create consistent dining experiences at your ramen restaurant.
Digital Cooking Method is essential for Online Ramen School
We can control our ramen cooking and operations with Digital Cooking method. And especially when teaching how to make bowls of authentic ramen online, this method becomes an essential part of the course.
You can control your ramen production with numbers and more precision and consistency. Because we are teaching ramen online, we cannot use some vague wording or concept. We need to use clear sets of variables anyone around the world can understand and actually make their own ramen, following them. That is why we use Digital Cooking, and it is why you will be able to develop and make your own craft ramen from scratch with consistency, which will build your own strong brand with ramen. And you can start learning and building your own ramen brand today by enrolling our Online Ramen School.
