Ramen is a Japanese dish with Chinese roots. It began as the wheat noodle soup cooked in the Chinese quarters of Japan's port cities in the late nineteenth century, where it was sold as shina soba, "Chinese noodles". It became a Japanese national food during the twentieth century, above all after the Second World War. Then instant noodles, invented near Osaka in 1958, carried it around the rest of the world. Its name, its broth and even the spring in its noodles all tell the story of that journey.
Noodles in the port towns
When Japan opened its ports to foreign trade in the 1850s and 1860s, Chinese merchants, cooks and workers settled in Yokohama, Kobe and Nagasaki. Their small restaurants served the food of home, including wheat noodles in hot broth. Many of the early arrivals came from southern China, and Japanese customers who ventured in called the dish nankin soba or shina soba, using the words of the day for China.
Those noodles carried a secret that ramen still depends on. They were made with alkaline mineral water, called kansui in Japanese, an old Chinese technique that turns wheat noodles yellowish, firm and springy, and helps them survive a hot broth without going limp. A Japanese soba noodle of buckwheat behaves nothing like it.
Rairaiken and the first Tokyo bowls
The move from Chinatown dish to Japanese favourite is often dated to 1910, when a restaurant called Rairaiken opened in Asakusa, Tokyo's busy entertainment district. It is often named as the first shop to sell the dish to ordinary Japanese customers in large numbers. Its owner was Japanese, it hired cooks from Yokohama's Chinatown, and it served noodles in a soy-seasoned broth. That bowl is an ancestor of Tokyo's shoyu ramen, still the style many Japanese think of as the original.
What's in a name?
Nobody agrees on where the word "ramen" comes from. The most popular theory links it to the Chinese lamian, "pulled noodles", the hand-stretched noodles famous in Lanzhou and elsewhere. Other theories point to different Chinese words, or to a shopkeeper's invention, and none of them can be proved. What we do know is that "shina" came to be seen as offensive after the war, and the dish became chūka soba, "Chinese-style noodles". The word "ramen" won out in the decades that followed, helped enormously by instant noodles.
After the war
Post-war Japan was hungry, rice was scarce, and wheat flour, much of it shipped from the United States during the occupation years, was easier to find. Noodle stalls, many of them on the black market, sold cheap, filling bowls to people who badly needed them. Soldiers and settlers returning from China brought back a taste for noodle soups. Ramen changed from an occasional treat into everyday food.
As it spread, it put down regional roots. Sapporo became known for miso ramen, rich enough for Hokkaido winters. Hakata, in Fukuoka, is famous for tonkotsu, a milky broth of pork bones boiled for hours, with very thin noodles. Tokyo kept its clear shoyu bowls, and dozens of towns developed styles of their own. The details are argued over endlessly, and that is half the fun.
1958: the instant idea
In 1958, in the town of Ikeda near Osaka, Momofuku Andō launched Chicken Ramen: a block of pre-seasoned noodles, flash-fried so they dried out and could be revived with nothing more than boiling water. His company, Nissin, followed it in 1971 with Cup Noodles, sold in their own container. Instant noodles became one of the most widely eaten foods on earth. For many people outside Japan, they were the first taste of ramen, or at least of its idea.
Conquering the world
Back in Japan, ramen turned into a craft with a devoted following. Shops earn hours-long queues, broths are simmered for days, and in 1994 Yokohama opened a whole museum devoted to it, with a replica old-Tokyo street full of ramen counters. In the mid-2010s the Michelin guide awarded a star to a small Tokyo ramen shop, something that would once have seemed unthinkable. Abroad, specialist ramen bars spread through New York, London, Paris and beyond from the 2000s onwards. Noodles that set out from China in a cook's hands came back around the world in a Japanese bowl.
Ramen today: how to cook it and how to eat it
A bowl of ramen has four parts, and it helps to think of them separately:
- The broth, clear or cloudy, gives body. Keep it unsalted.
- The tare, a small spoonful of concentrated seasoning in the bottom of the bowl, carries the salt and gives the ramen its name: shoyu, miso or shio (salt).
- The noodles are springy alkaline wheat noodles. Fresh or frozen ones from an Asian grocer are excellent.
- The toppings might be sliced pork, a marinated soft egg, bamboo shoots, nori or spring onion. Three or four are plenty.
Then eat like you mean it. In Japan, slurping ramen is normal and not rude. It cools the noodles on the way in and carries the aroma of the broth. Eat quickly while the noodles are firm. In Hakata you can even order a second portion of noodles, called kaedama, to drop into your leftover broth.
You can cook the whole journey from one book. The Japan and Korea chapter of Soups of the World has all three classic styles, Shoyu Ramen, Miso Ramen and an eight-hour Tonkotsu Ramen. Its Chinese pages hold ramen's relatives, including Cantonese Wonton Noodle Soup and Lanzhou Beef Noodle Soup with its hand-pulled noodles. The recipe finder gathers every ramen across our books, and our round-up of 15 soups every cook should know puts ramen next to pho and laksa.
Questions people ask
Is ramen Chinese or Japanese?
Both, in a way. It grew from Chinese wheat noodle soups served in Japan's port cities, but the dish as we know it, with its tare, regional broths and toppings, was shaped in Japan during the twentieth century.
What does the word "ramen" mean?
Its origin is uncertain. The most common theory links it to the Chinese lamian, meaning pulled noodles, but historians have proposed several other sources and none is proven.
Who invented instant ramen?
Momofuku Andō, the founder of Nissin, who launched Chicken Ramen in Japan in 1958. Cup Noodles followed in 1971.
Is it rude to slurp ramen?
Not in Japan, where slurping noodles is normal and shows you are enjoying them. It also cools the noodles as you eat them.