Ichiran Ramen with Meat Balls

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This is a fast and lazy recipe for Ichiran ramen with meat balls using Ichiran Ramen’s instant noodles box kit. Ichiran Ramen is a famous restaurant chain in Japan and I best remember them for their private eating booths.

My bowl from Ichiran Ramen in Toyko in April 2019 … and then the pandemic started at the end of the same year T_T

See Also:

• 20-Minute Japanese Ramen
• Black Fungus for Ramen
• Spicy Bean Sprout Salad for Ramen

Usually, one would add ramen toppings such as Japanese char siu, black fungus & seasoned bean sprouts to their ramen. I happened to have ready-t0-cook beef balls in the freezer. To my surprise, Chinese-style beef balls do go well with Japanese ramen :p You can use any favourite ready-to-cook meat balls for this recipe. Donki sells large Japanese-style meat balls which I think will go well with the ramen.

INSTANT ICHIRAN RAMEN NOODLES

This is my box of instant Ichiran Ramen. Each box comes in 5 servings. Each serving contains 1 bundle of noodles, a packet of rich soup base and a sachet of hot chilli powder. You can find this kit at Don Don Donki. I bought mine from Japanese sellers at Shopee (or Lazada) as they are cheaper with a longer expiry date than Donki’s (provided you don’t mind waiting a few weeks for shipping).

Prepare the ingredients

The ingredients are simple – just 1 bundle of dried noodles and a soup pouch from the kit.

For fresh ingredients, I have some cut napa cabbage and 4 large ready-to-cook beef balls.

How I cook the ramen

• You can just dump everything into the pot and cook. However, I personally prefer to cook the soup separately from the rest of the ingredients.
• Bring a pot of water to boil. Add noodles, cabbage and meat balls. Take them out in the order they are done (noodles, cabbage and lastly the meat balls).
• Place noodles in a ramen serving bowl, and top it with cabbage, meatballs and an egg (optional).
• Rinse the pot and measure the water required for the ramen soup according to the package instructions. Add the soup base and bring to a boil. Alternatively, dissolve the soup paste using a heat-safe measurement jug and fresh boiling water.
• Make sure the soup is piping hot before pouring into the serving bowl. Serve immediately

BONUS VEGETABLE SOUP FOR NEXT DAY

This was unplanned, but I had a some  leftoverconcentrated ramen soup which was enough to make a personal bowl of soup. So the next day, I made vegetable soup with cabbage, konjac, mushrooms, tofu puffs, baby bok choy and carrots (everything was in very small amounts). The vegetable soup was rich and utterly enjoyable! It stretched my dollar since the box of noodles was not cheap (by my standard :P)