Tsukemen (LA-style dipping ramen)
Photo: nakashi from Chofu, Tokyo, JAPAN · CC BY-SA 2.0

History

Tsujita LA Artisan Noodle opened on Sawtelle Boulevard in 2011 as the first American branch of Tokyo's Tsujita (founded 2005) and is widely credited with bringing modern tsukemen to Los Angeles. The broth simmers pork bone with dried bonito for over sixty hours into a sauce thick enough to coat the noodle, in the lineage that Higashi-Ikebukuro Taishoken seeded across Tokyo's tsukemen scene. The Sawtelle Japantown stretch around Olympic and West LA built a cluster of ramen-yas around the same Sawtelle-Japanese template.

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Common allergens: Gluten, Soy, Fish, Egg

Make it at home

Yield 2Hands-on 45 minTotal 8 hrDifficulty Advanced

Ingredients

  • 1.5kg pork bones (mix of femur and trotter)
  • 300g pork belly, in one piece
  • 20g dried bonito flakes (katsuobushi)
  • 10g dried sardines (niboshi)
  • 20g dried kombu
  • 1 onion, halved
  • 1 head garlic, halved across
  • 1 thumb ginger, sliced
  • 5 litres water
  • For the tare: 80ml soy sauce
  • 60ml mirin
  • 2 tablespoons sake
  • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon white pepper
  • 1 teaspoon rice vinegar
  • 2 portions thick chuka soba noodles (200g each, dry weight)
  • 2 ajitsuke tamago (marinated soft-boiled eggs)
  • Sliced spring onion, bamboo shoots (menma), nori, to serve

Method

  1. Cover the pork bones in cold water, bring to a boil 5 minutes, drain, rinse off scum.
  2. Return bones to a clean pot with 5 litres fresh water, the pork belly, onion, garlic and ginger. Bring to a hard simmer.
  3. Maintain at a fast bubble (not a gentle simmer) for 6 to 8 hours, topping up with hot water as it reduces. This is the white-broth (paitan) method.
  4. Lift the pork belly out after 90 minutes, cool and slice into chashu rounds.
  5. In the last hour, add the bonito, niboshi and kombu. Steep 45 minutes, then strain the entire broth and reduce by half over high heat to thicken.
  6. Whisk the tare ingredients in a small bowl. Stir 4 tablespoons tare into each serving bowl.
  7. Cook the thick noodles 5 to 6 minutes (longer than ramen), drain, then plunge into ice water 60 seconds. Drain again.
  8. Ladle the very hot reduced broth over the tare in each bowl. Plate noodles on a separate bowl with chashu, egg, menma, spring onion and nori.
  9. Eat by lifting noodles from the cold bowl and dipping them into the hot broth a mouthful at a time.

Tip from the editors. When the dipping broth cools too far at the end, ask for soup-wari, a top-up of light dashi to thin the broth for sipping; it is the canonical tsukemen finish.

Where to eat tsukemen (la-style dipping ramen)

Tsukemen (LA-style dipping ramen) in Los Angeles

Tsujita LA Artisan Noodle ★ 4.6

$$ Japanese RamenSawtelle

Tsujita LA in Sawtelle, Los Angeles is the LA outpost of Tokyo's Tsujita, simmering tonkotsu broth for 60 hours and serving it as ramen and tsukemen.

OrderTonkotsu tsukemen at lunch only.

TipTsukemen is served exclusively before 15:00; after 15:00 the menu switches to ramen and stays open until 02:00.

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