Noodles ── Ramen
Yaki Ramen
Yaki Ramen — pork-bone ramen noodles grilled with sauce on an iron plate
Boiled ramen noodles tossed with pork-bone broth and a house sauce, then seared on an iron plate. Credited to Kokin-chan, a food stall founded in 1968 in Fukuoka's Tenjin district, and eaten both as a late-night dish and a drinking companion.
- Origin: Fukuoka Fukuoka (Tenjin, Chuo Ward)
- Tonkotsu — pork bone
- About 890 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
It looks close to yakisoba, but the noodles are genuine ramen noodles rather than the springier yakisoba kind. Boiled noodles are tossed with pork-bone broth and a house sauce, then seared hard on an iron plate with cabbage and bean sprouts. Some shops finish it with scallion, red pickled ginger, or a raw egg, so the char, the sweet-savory sauce, and the pork-bone depth all arrive at once. Unlike ramen in broth, it can be eaten start to finish with chopsticks alone.
How it's made
At a stall or small shop, boiled noodles, pork-bone broth, and sauce are stir-fried fast on an iron plate, letting the liquid cook off as the noodle surface picks up a char. One account holds that in 1968 the owner of the Tenjin stall Kokin-chan devised this iron-plate treatment for ramen noodles and broth for summer customers who found the hot soup hard to drink. Sauce blends and how hard the noodles are seared vary shop by shop, giving each its own signature.
Why it took this shape
Food stalls were cramped, late-night places full of drinkers. Searing the noodles with sauce until fragrant suited a glass of beer or shochu better than serving them in broth as usual. A stall-born workaround for a dish that stayed appetizing even in the heat is said to have turned ramen noodles into a griddle dish, one prized both as a closing course and as a companion to drinking.
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
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Fukuoka
- Abutte KamoSmall damselfish are salted overnight, then grilled whole, scales and innards left on — a bony fish often passed over elsewhere, but said to have caught on in Hakata Bay after a Meiji-era glut led someone to salt and grill the excess.
- Achara ZukeWhite melon, eggplant, and lotus root are pickled in a sweet vinegar spiked with red chili — the name is said to trace to the Portuguese 'achar', carried in through Hakata Bay's old trade, and an odd number of vegetables is used for Obon hospitality.
- Amagi no KawatakeA rare wild freshwater algae, found only in the Kogane River in Asakura, is dressed with sweet or three-flavor vinegar — said to have once been presented to the shogun, and now conservation efforts continue as it's listed as endangered.
- Beta MochiWheat dough is flattened, steamed, and topped with soybean flour or sweet red bean paste — named, it's said, for its resemblance to a flat local sole called 'beta', and tied to the feast marking the end of rice planting.
- Kabocha no Dango JiruA giant local pumpkin from Buzen's Mikkado district is simmered soft, then torn wheat dumplings are dropped in — the pumpkin, said to trace some 450 years back to Portuguese traders, was once a lifeline in leaner years.
- ChanraaA noodle dish said to have started at a diner in Moji, Kitakyushu. Chanpon-style noodles go into a Japanese dried-sardine broth closer to udon than to the original pork-and-seafood soup, devised, it's said, for a student who wanted Nagasaki champon but couldn't afford it.