Do you have ramen restaurants in your home country? Have you ever tried shio ramen? We're going to be delving into everything shio ramen in this article!

What Broth is Used in Shio Ramen?

Soup

The typical soup used in shio ramen combines chicken stock, pork bones, and a salty sauce to create a flavorful concoction. Due to not needing to extract flavor through high-heat boiling, the color is typically white and cloudy different from most other ramen broths.

Noodles

Shio ramen when compared to other ramens is typically more refreshing and light in flavor. It's typically paired with straight and thin noodles.

Shio Ramen Toppings

Shio ramen's birthplace is often known to be Hakodate in Hokkaido, and to help bring out the light flavors in the dish is often paired with char siu pork, Japanese onion, bamboo shoots, narutomaki, and other such toppings are typical for restaurants that serve this dish. There are even some restaurants that add dried wheat gluten.

How to Make Shio Ramen

Other than chicken stock and pork bones, there are also methods of making shio ramen that consists of boiling the dish in a stockpot alongside kombu, scallops, and pot herbs. To ensure the final product is not cloudy in color, the dish must be carefully monitored over a long period of time at low heat. This creates a delicious soup with no odd tastes or colors.

What is Shio Ramen in Current-Day Japan?

The roots of Japanese ramen lie in Hokkaido, Hakodate in 1884 when the restaurant "Yowaken" released a dish known as "Chinese Soba", it is said that this dish was shio ramen. It's also said that due to this, one of Hokkaido's 3 most famous ramen dishes is Hakodate Ramen, which is a type of shio ramen.

The reason shio ramen took off and became so popular in Japan has to be thanks to Sapporo Ichiban's instant ramen. They released various flavors such as soy sauce in 1966, then miso, and finally shio, flying to the top of the instant ramen industry.

While soy sauce flavored "Chinese soba noodles" were most popular and well-known up until then, thanks to these instant ramen brands, many more flavors started to become common knowledge among the Japanese people.

While there are many different flavors of ramen to enjoy, if you're not feeling too hungry, or you've been drinking a little, shio ramen is a perfect choice.

How did you find this article? We hope you learned a little more about the characteristics and origins of shio ramen!