Pheasant Ramen Recipe
This tradition Japanese inspired pheasant soup recipe is not your college ramen.
For many Americans, our love for ramen likely began in college. This pantry staple lined our shelves because they were affordable yet enjoyable and ready in minutes. Salty and savory, Maruchan’s Ramen Noodle Soup was something I craved the morning after a late night out. Then we all graduated, literally and figuratively. It all becomes apparent the moment one sits down at a Japanese restaurant and tastes real ramen for the first time: there’s so much more to this dish.
That authentic, irreplicable flavor that features so many layers and complexities is the result of many hours of preparation, not three minutes in the microwave. It starts with homemade broth or stock. I covered how to make pheasant stock a while ago. Reference that piece for further instructions on how to turn pheasant meat into something special. Your own wild bird stock takes this homemade ramen recipe to the next level.
Once you have your stock down, ramen is what you make it. Add in those tradition noodles. Directions are listed below for sous vide-ing pheasant sealed with saké, a Japanese rice wine. If you don’t have a sous vide, you can cook your pheasant (or any upland bird) however you like. Just make sure to add 12-16 ounces of liquid to this recipe. From there, additional ingredients are up to you. I am partial to soft-boiled eggs along with some other ingredients I list here.
All the hours are worth the effort, I promise.
Pheasant Ramen Soup
Equipment
- Sous vide cooker
Ingredients
Sous vide cooked pheasant
- 1 Rooster Breasts and thighs
- Saké wine
- Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper
- 4 large Garlic cloves smashed
Ramen
- 1 Sous vide cooked pheasant
- 16 oz ramen noodles
- 4 stalks lemongrass
- 5 whole anise stars
- 4 large cloves garlic smashed
- 3-4 oz fresh ginger smashed
- 1 bunch green onions sliced
- Salt to taste
- 48 oz pheasant stock
Recommended Toppings
- Sliced jalapeño
- Chopped cilantro
- Soft-boiled egg
- Thinly sliced radishes
- Bean sprouts
- Bok choy blanched
- Turnip leaves blanched
- Roasted seaweed sheets
Instructions
- For directions on how to make pheasant stock or broth, check out this recipe.
- To sous vide cook pheasant, heat the sous vide container to 150 degrees Fahrenheit using the sous vide cooker. Lightly salt and pepper thighs and seal with a little bit of saké wine and two cloves of freshly crushed garlic. Sous vide for 10 hours. For breasts, do the exact same thing, but sous vide for two hours. Add the breasts to the same sous vide container as the thighs when there are two hours remaining on thighs’ sous vide timer.
- In a large soup or stock pot, add your pheasant stock and the lemongrass stalks, whole anise stars, sliced green onions, smashed garlic cloves, and smashed fresh ginger.
- Bring the broth to barely a simmer. Allow it to simmer for one hour. Fish out all the ingredients other than sliced green onions after the hour has passed.
- Taste test your broth. If it’s bland, add a little bit of kosher salt, stir in, then test again until it’s not bland. Add your ramen noodles.
- Dice your sous vide pheasant and add it to your ramen broth. I recommend adding all the liquids from the sous vide bag into your soup. Once the ramen noodles are soft, your ramen is ready to serve. Add a soft boiled egg if you’d like; directions are below.
- To soft boil eggs, bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat for a gentle boil. Gently add eggs and boil for 5.5 to 6 minutes then immediately add eggs to an ice-water bath to shock them and cool for 3 minutes. After 3 minutes, peel the shell off your eggs, slice them, and serve them on top of your ramen.
- Add other desired ingredients and enjoy!
Notes