Noodles ── Ramen
White Gaura Ramen
White Gaura Ramen — a milk-based white broth from Sodegaura's dairy country
Born in Sodegaura, a city known for dairy farming, this ramen runs on a white broth made with milk. Ginger tempers the milk's smell, and the name Gaura is a coined word for Sodegaura that also names the city's mascot.
- Origin: Chiba Sodegaura
- Besides shoyu, miso, shio and tonkotsu
- About 30 km southeast of Tokyo
What it's made of
The broth is a milk-based, cloudy white, closer in look to a potage than a ramen broth. Ginger is worked in firmly, so the milk's sweetness arrives first and the ginger's bite follows up through the nose. Built on Chinese noodles yet led by the roundness of dairy, it stands apart from ramen from most other regions. Scooped with a spoon, its thick texture feels closer to stew than ramen, and that white color filling the bowl is exactly where the name comes from.
How it's made
The milk is kept from boiling down too far, and grated ginger is added to soften its characteristic smell. Sodegaura is known as a dairy-farming area, and the idea is said to have started with a local Chinese restaurant owner wondering how to put that milk to use. The amount of milk and how far it's reduced are said to differ shop to shop, with balancing the milk's sweetness against the ginger's bite said to be where a cook's skill shows. "White" in the name points to the milk's color, and "Gaura" is a coined word for Sodegaura that also serves as the city mascot's name.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that around 2011, a local Chinese restaurant devised a milk-based ramen as part of a local revitalization effort. Sitting on Tokyo Bay while also being dairy country, Sodegaura's double character is thought to have pushed the idea toward milk rather than seafood as the thing to build a ramen around. Despite facing the water, the choice to look inland toward dairy farming instead is what produced a white ramen unlike any other.
Before You Go
- How to read a ticket machineShops that use a ticket machine (shokken-ki) often place their most popular items in a similar spot.
- Cash-only shops are commonEspecially at ramen shops, it's common to find places that only accept cash — often through a ticket machine.
- Foods to look for in summerA guide to foods often seen in Japan around summer — eel on the Day of the Ox, hiyashi chuka, somen, shaved ice, edamame with beer, and hamo — with rough pointers for finding them.
Dishes in the same style
- Abura SobaNo broth is poured at all — noodles are tossed in a soy-and-sesame-oil tare pooled at the bottom of the bowl, said to have started at shops in the Musashino area in the late 1950s, with vinegar and chili oil stirred in partway through.
- Betokon RamenA garlic-and-chili stamina ramen said to have originated in Ichinomiya, Aichi, devised from a repatriate's memories of Manchurian cooking. Its name is said to come directly from what customers started calling it.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Chiba
- Barappa ManjuFreshly milled wheat dough is wrapped around red bean paste and steamed on a leaf of catbrier, called barappa locally — a bun said to be made in Chiba's Hokuso area when people gathered for summer festivals or Obon, each bringing ingredients to share.
- Iwashi no Unohana-zukeSalt-and-vinegar-cured sardines are packed into sweet-vinegared tofu lees with carrot and ginger — the pale lees are likened to unohana blossoms in the name, and are also said to keep the fish from breaking apart or oxidizing; eaten at New Year's and as an everyday pantry food.
- Rakkasei MisoPeanuts too small or misshapen to sell are stirred into miso and sugar and toasted into a pantry relish — said to have started as a way for farm households to use up peanuts the market wouldn't take, in leaner years.
- SumitsukareDaikon and carrot, coarsely grated with a rough-toothed oni-oroshi grater, are simmered with leftover setsubun soybeans and sake lees — said to have traveled from Tochigi into Chiba's Higashikatsushika area, offered to the local inari shrine on the year's first Day of the Horse before being eaten. Ibaraki and Saitama carry dishes of the same name.
- Yude RakkaseiFreshly dug peanuts, still in their shells, are boiled whole in salted water — a taste unique to the growing region, since raw peanuts start hardening the moment they're pulled from the ground and need to be boiled almost immediately.