Ichiran Ramen with Meat Balls
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:
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)
Ichiran Ramen with Meat Balls Recipe
This recipe uses Ichiran Ramen instant noodles. You can buy it from Don Don Donki or online (Shopee, Lazada or Amazon).
The chilli powder that comes with each serving is hot! If this is your first time, I don’t recommend adding the chilli powder to the soup. I prefer to enjoy the original flavour of the soup first. Halfway through eating, I will stir in some chilli powder to enjoy a second taste – hot and spicy this time.
Check out the ingredients and step-by-step photos on the previous page.
Ingredients:
- 1 serving of instant Ichiran Ramen (1 bundle noodle + 1 soup base + 1 chilli powder)
- 400 water for soup base; add more water, 50ml at a time, to taste
- 50g cabbage leaves cut to bite-sized pieces
- 4 or more meat balls for large balls, make a cross slit on the balls or cut into halves
- boiled egg or ramen egg optional
Directions:
- Cook noodles. Bring a pot of water to boil. Add noodles and cook according to desired doneness – 2 minutes for firm, 2 1/2 minutes for normal and up to 3 minutes for soft. Take out the noodles, drain and transfer to a ramen serving bowl.
- Cook cabbage and meat balls. Reboil the pot of water. Add cabbage and meat balls. Cook cabbage for 2 minutes and transfer to the same serving bowl. Continue cooking the meat balls until they are done, then transfer to the serving bowl as well.
- Make soup broth. Rinse out the pan and measure 400ml water. Add soup base and bring to a boil. Add more water, 50ml at a time, to adjust your desired richness of the soup. You can also use a heat-safe measuring jug and fresh boiling water to make the soup.
- Serve. Pour the hot soup over the ramen bowl, garnish with egg (optional) and serve immediately with a saucer of chilli powder at the side.
Cooking Note(s):
- The timings for the noodles texture are 2 minutes for firm, 2 1/2 minutes for normal and 3 minutes for soft.
- The amount of water needed for the soup broth is 400ml for rich (salty), 450ml for normal and up to 500ml for light. You can start with 400ml and adjust to taste, 50ml at a time.