Yakibuta and Ramen - It's what's for lunch today!

[minbo]

Ever go to a Raman shop, sit down with a bowl of noodles topped with a couple thin slices of meat and think "God dayum, that's good food, but why are these mutherfuckers so damn stingy with the meat?" I know that I do. Besides, sometimes after a really good shag, you just want to tuck into a bowl of Raman at home with an ice cold Sapporo, and nipping out for a bite covered in sweat, saliva and other juices is not what you want to do.

The answer is to keep some Yakibuta in the freezer, next to the soup stock and the 5 pounds of pork belly. If you are rich, lucky and you have a price gouging Japanese market near you, you might be able to find it already prepared for $14.00 a pound. If you are a poor bastard like me, then you have to just make it yourself.

What you will need is:

1. Pork Loin - I buy 2 to 4 pound tenderloins already trussed by the butcher
2. Shoyu (Soy Sauce), 2-3 tbsp
3. Sake (use cheap cooking sake if you can find it), 1/3 cup
4. Mirin, 3 tbsp
5. Sugar, Honey maple syrup or molasses, 1 tsp
6. Scallion, 1-2 shoots
7. Ginger, several slices
8. Garlic, 1 clove
9. Star anise, 1-2
10. Dried Kombu (Seaweed)
11. Whole cloves, 1-2
12. Bonito flakes
13. Dried Shitake Mushrooms with stems
14. Dried Tree Ears

Get your Pork loin as fresh as possible. You are going to marinade the sucker, so that means to me that it's going to be sitting in your fridge for 24 to 48 hours.

Take all the wet ingredients, the sweetner and mix them in a bowl. Make sure you incorporate the sweetner well into the liquids. Put the loin into a plastic zip lock bag with the dry ingredients arranged around the loin. Pour the wet ingredients into the zip lock bag. Squeeze out all the air from the bag, which will cause the liquid to creap up the plastic to the seal. If you do this well, then you won't have the liquid pooling at the bottom of the bag, and you won't have to fondle the meat as much during the marinating process, having to turn it over every so often. Take your baggie and toss it into the fridge for at least 1 hour. I marinade it for 24 to 48 hours, and I do not think it too much.

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When the moment of reckoning arrives, get out a large chefs pot. It has to be large enough to fit the loin and deep enough to cover.

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Heat the pot up, then carefully brown the loin on all sides. Some people say that it helps seal the meat to prevent the purity and essence of our natural fluids from leaking out. I do it because I like the smell of searing meat and soy sauce in the morning air and the sound of sizzling flesh. Burn baby burn! Actually, you don't want to sear the meat or cook it through at this point, just a quick 10 to 20 seconds per side.

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Then lay the piggy down to rest in the pot, and fill the pot with water till the loin is half submerged. Pour the marinading fluid into the pot. I also transfer the bonito flakes, kombu, ginger and mushrooms into the pot, leaving behind the rest. Bring the liquid up to a boil, then put the heat on low, a lot of nasty crusty stuff will bubble to the surface.

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Remove the spooge with a spoon till you have a nice mahogany liquid burbling quietly around the loin. Flip the loin on the other side and remove whatever more spooge comes out.

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Once that is done, just cover the pot and walk away. Every half hour, come back to flip the loin and check the level of the liquid, adding more water if needed to bring it back to the halfway mark. After a 1.5 to 2 hours it should be done.

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Remove the loin from the water and let it rest for a few minutes on the cut board.

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Cut the loin into manageable serving sizes, I usually quarter it.

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Then I wrap it up in freezer paper, stick it into a ziplock back and freeze whatever I am not going to consume immediately.

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I actually prefer the taste of the Yakibuta better after it has been frozen and thawed, rather than fresh out of the pot, I don't know why.

When using the Yakibuta, take a quarter, defrost it in the fridge and take it out and slice off thin slabs.

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Gather the rest of your ingredients and prepare them for use. I use, fresh ramen, broth pouch (yes, I should make my own, but it's hard to make single servings sometimes) shitake mushrooms, pickled bamboo shoots, pickled and spicy cucumber, scallions and Nori.

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Quickly boil the fresh ramen for 1 minute

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Combine the ingredients in your bowl and enjoy.

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Speaking of the broth, that liquid you broiled the Loin in? Waste not, want not. Get a sieve and filter the liquid into a bowl.

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You will see that the top half a millimeter is just oil from all the fat you melted out of the loin.

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Just pour the liquid into plastic containers and stick them into the fridge. After a few hours, the oil will congeal into fat and you can easily remove it with a spoon. I use it as a base for the soup in a Shoyu Ramen.

[ellencho]

Hey! I thought I was the only one who did that!!! I keep pre-sliced char siu frozen in my freezer for the same purpose :) Nicely done!

[vsoy]

Besides, sometimes after a really good shag, you just want to tuck into a bowl of Raman at home with an ice cold Sapporo, and nipping out for a bite covered in sweat, saliva and other juices is not what you want to do.

you won't have to fondle the meat as much during the marinating process

Some people say that it helps seal the meat to prevent the purity and essence of our natural fluids from leaking out. I do it because I like the smell of searing meat and soy sauce in the morning air and the sound of sizzling flesh. Burn baby burn!

Remove the spooge with a spoon till you have a nice mahogany liquid burbling quietly around the loin. Flip the loin on the other side and remove whatever more spooge comes out.
Minbo, you dirty, dirty man. Heh, it screams, successful Food Network/Travel Channel host on the rise. Watch out Bourdain!

I'll have to try out your recipe minbo, I've never been a fan of package ramen because it's too salty but if I use your recipe, I can control the dish's saltiness. Great tutorial!

[minbo]

I decided to buy my pork tenderloin from Trader Joe's the other day instead of my regular butcher this weekend. They were not any cheaper, but they are a lot more convenient as my butcher is 2 miles away and Trader Joe's is a few blocks away. Something that Trader Joe's neglects to tell you, and that you cannot tell through their packaging is that they split their loins lengthwise in half. Not even a butterfly cut which you can use to stuff or roll back up, totally cut through into two independent pieces. Needless to say, I am very disappointed in them. I can't think of a single normal use for a lengthwise half of a pork loin. If it was a beef loin and they were cutting out the fillet for the customer, I could understand.

Oh the humanity! Won't someone think of the children?!

[ellencho]

I see what you're saying, but TJ's is actually right. Tenderloin is different from loin. What you have in your tutorial up there is actually just plain pork loin. That's different from tenderloin. It's sort of the equivalent of what you'd find in a t-bone steak. There's the NY strip part of the t-bone steak, which is equivalent to a pork loin, only in a cow. And the tenderloin/fillet part of the t-bone steak is the same as the tenderloin on pork.

Tenderloin/mignon is more tender than loin/ny strip, which is why it's more expensive than just plain loin/ny strip. In general, I can find plain loin for $3-4 a lb and tenderloin costs $5-7.

[minbo]

Sorry, I know that I used the two terms interchangeably for tenderloin end boneless pork sirloin roasts when they are not truly tenderloins, I am at fault for that. I have on occasion done the same with beef top sirloin roasts as well.

I do purchase whole beef tenderloin PSMOs and butcher them myself. The item that was sold in TJ's looked like a pork version of a tenderloin PSMO and was labled as a pork tenderloin. While I did not expect a true tenderloin PSMO as it was far too small, unless it was from a piglet, I did expect a sirloin roast, which is why I was annoyed that it was split in two.

[ellencho]

I can see how the sirloin would work really well to stand up to the strong flavors of the marinade. A lot of times instead of using loin or tenderloin I'll use sirloin for tonkatsu or for siu mai because I feel like it has a stronger flavor in general, and it stays moist better.