How to make TANTAN MEN (spicy Ramen noodle) 〜坦々麺〜 | easy Japanese home cooking recipe

Welcome to Taijun's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make tantanmei. So tantanmei is a type of ramen noodle where you have the soup which is a little bit spicy and with sesame paste. Tantanmei is a very typical ramen variation in Japan. And today I'm going to show you a version where you don't have to cook the soup for like 5 hours, but instead you can make the soup with the ingredients all together in one bowl and this will take no more than like 15-20 minutes. So I hope you give this a try. Then, let's get started. Here I have the ingredients for tantanmei. I have here minced pork meat. If you can't eat pork for religious reasons, then you can of course substitute this with beef. Or if you're vegetarian, then you can use minced fake meat. Then you can make strictly vegan tantanmei. Then for the soup I have garlic, ginger, scallion, and I also have here tahini which is sesame paste. And I also have roasted sesame seeds which I'll grate later. It is very important that it is roasted. If you can't get hold of roasted sesame seeds, then I'll put up a link here where you can look up how to roast the sesame seeds. And sesame oil, soy sauce, sugar, miso, I also have here tobanjan or chili bean sauce which I use for moabo tofu. But if you don't have this, then you can also substitute this with cilantro sauce or some other kind of chili sauce. Then I have here soy milk for the soup. For the noodle I have here capellini which I'll be boiling with baking soda to imitate the flavor of ramen noodle. But if you can't get hold of ramen noodle, then you can of course use that. I also have a bok choy for the green at the end. But if you don't have bok choy, then you can use any kind of leafy vegetable like spinach or napa cabbage. Then let's start cutting the ingredients. So for the scallion, I'm going to cut this up in two different ways. One, I'm going to use the bottom part for shiraganegi, which means grey hair scallion that you put in as a garnish at the end. I'm going to make a couple cuts like this, about the same size. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut this in half and then open this up and then use this kind of layer part. And then what I'm going to do with these is that I'm going to slice it thin like this. You don't necessarily have to do this, you can just cut the scallion in the regular way. But if you cut it this way, it just looks nice like this. I actually didn't need to cut all these, so I'm just going to cut the rest in small pieces. So I'm going to cut this in half. Then I'm going to prepare the ginger and the garlic. Ginger I'm going to put the bottom part off. Then you can actually put the garlic with skin on in a garlic smasher like this. And then when you squeeze them out, the skin will stay inside and you get the smashed garlic. It's sometimes a little bit difficult to peel the skin off, so this is much easier I think. Like this. Very easy. And then for the ginger, I'm going to cut off the dried part off like this. And then peel the skin off. So you can decide if you want to use this fibery part of the ginger. I personally don't like to waste these fibery parts, so I'm just going to put this back in here. But if you don't like the fiber eating this, then you can just of course throw that away. Then I'm going to grate the sesame seeds. If you have a food processor it's much easier, you can just blend this in a food processor. But I don't have one, so I'm just going to grate it like this with a grater. So this is looking good. Then lastly I'm going to cut up the bok choy. So the bok choy I'm just going to cut into half like this. And then just in quarters like this. Then that's that. Let's start cooking. Then let's start making the soup. So the beginning is actually exactly the same as you would make a mapo tofu. I'm going to turn the heat to medium. In a medium sized pot I'm going to put in about one tablespoon of sesame oil. Then in here I'm going to put in the grated garlic and ginger together. Oh it smells so good. So once this is getting fried I'm going to put in all the scallion. And we're going to fry like this until the volume of the scallion is less than a half of this. Then here I'm going to put in about two teaspoons of chili bean sauce. And then once the chili sauce has gotten mixed well, here I'm going to put in the meat. So once the meat has gotten good fried, I'm going to put in here a cup of soy milk. And also another cup of water. Then we're going to turn the heat to high and bring this to boil. So once this has come to a boil, I'm going to turn the heat to low. So in here I'm going to put in two tablespoons of tahini. So when you have tahini, make sure you mix first because usually tahini will separate into the oil part and the solid part and you want a really good mix. So like this. I'm going to put two teaspoons of this. Try not to waste the ingredients that's on the spoon. Then in this one teaspoon of miso, then one teaspoon of sugar, and then two teaspoons of soy sauce. And then about one tablespoon of roasted and grated sesame seeds. So you may ask why I'm adding extra grated sesame seeds when you're adding tahini. That's because usually tahini is made with non-roasted sesame seeds. Here I want to put in the roasted sesame seeds and grate it so that it'll give this smoky flavor to it. Then I'm going to give this a good mix. Then I'm going to have a little taste. Mmm. Very good. If you'd like it a little saltier, then you can also add a little more soy sauce to this. So then this is finished for the soup. So I'm just going to scoop out a little bit of meat so that I can put this at the very end as a topping. So I'm going to leave it like that. I'm going to turn the heat off and then let's boil the noodle. So the water's boiling. In this I'm going to boil first the bok choy. So the thing about the bok choy, you want to cook the bottom part first because it takes a little longer time to cook the bottom part. So once the bottom part's been cooked, then I'm going to put in all the rest like this. And then this is ready. Then this is finished as a garnish. Then in this I'm going to put in about 10 gram of baking soda. And then in this I'm going to put in about 100 gram of angel hair pasta. In the package it says about 3 minutes, so I'm going to cook about 2 and a half minutes or so because I want to have a little bit of al dente, not too overcooked. The key for the flaring, what you want to do is you want to kind of twist the noodle like this a little bit and then in, and then it flares. I'm going to turn the heat high and cook this for about 2 and a half minutes. And then during that time I'm going to heat up also the soup. So this has come to a boil, I'm going to turn the heat off. And then in a bowl I'm going to put the soup. So it has been about 2 and a half minutes, I'm going to turn the heat off. And drain this out of the colander. And then here I'm going to put the noodle in, and then I'm going to put the meat on the top, and a little bit of green on the side, and the shiraganegi. Then this is finished, let's eat. Oh it smells so good. Itadakimasu! Oh it's looking so amazing. Totally great. Um, please excuse me for the slurping, if you don't like the sound of slurping then please skip to the end. Itadakimasu! Mmm, very good. Oh this tastes so amazing. So the shiraganegi or the grey hair scallion gives really good freshness to it. So good. So for those who have been to Japan, may already know that when you go into a Japanese restaurant almost all the places have rice. So it's quite common in Japan to eat rice with the noodle. Because the soup matches the rice so perfectly. So let's eat it with the bok choy. So the stem part of the bok choy has a little sweetness when it's cooked, and the leaf has a little bit of bitterness. So this just kind of gives another layer to this ramen noodle. So tantanmen is a little bit difficult to eat with the meat, so I recommend getting a spoon like this. So good. Something that you also can do when you eat tantanmen or any kind of ramen noodle is that you put in a little bit of vinegar. I have here rice wine vinegar, but you can also use other kinds of vinegar such as like apple vinegar. So what we do is that you can pour in like a teaspoon of vinegar. Like this. Let's just kind of change up the flavor of the soup. Gives a little more, kind of like freshness to it, and then you have a little bit difference in the flavor. Oh, this is so delicious. Oh, this soup is so amazing, and it just matches rice so perfectly. So by ramen noodle, you don't have to drink up all the soup, you could, but mostly they tend to be a bit too salty, of course. So what you can do is that you can save this up and then put another set of ramen noodle or any kind of other noodle like a glass noodle or udon noodle, that's going to match good as well. Another thing where you can do is that heat this up, put some rice in here and drop in beaten egg and a little bit of scallion, and then you can also make another variation of zousui, which is Japanese porridge. So that's also possible. So in Japanese cuisine, we try not to waste any good food. So I hope you do that as well. Oh, but anyhow, that was so delicious. Gochisosamadeshita! Oh, that was totally filling, it was so delicious. So as you saw, making tantanmen does require quite a lot of ingredients, but most of them you can find in pretty much any supermarket, except for the tobanjan, the chili bean sauce. Or you could even make this without it, just put regular chili instead. So I hope you give this a try. If you like what you saw, please hit the like button, and also please feel free to write anything in the comments below, your question, your request, or even a critique, I'm always open for your feedbacks. Then, I look forward to see you in the next video. Bye!