Vegan Ramen

This summer amid the pandemic, my college-age daughter was stranded at home like many of her generation. An internship was not in the cards, so she kept busy with a small, online, used clothing business she created. Likewise, her friend from Brooklyn wanted to get out of the hot, sweaty city and came to live with us for a month or so. She was the perfect guest; cleaning up after herself, helping out when needed, giving everyone their space while we were all home 24 hours a day. The only issue was that her friend is vegan.

I am decidedly not a vegan, and I don’t purposely cook vegan food. All summer, I cooked for my family, including Small Plates Saturday Night every weekend. While I was under no pressure or obligation to make vegan fare – her friend never once asked me to gear a meal in her direction – I saw it as a challenge. Was there a way I could modify meals I was cooking to make them vegan for her friend? Some substitutions were easy. Use olive oil instead of butter. Give her antipasto without the meat or cheese. Leave the fresh mozzarella off of her bruschetta. Make a small separate pot of tomato sauce for her pasta, while ours simmered away with meatballs and sausage. None of this was any trouble at all. But some recipes I could not prepare without animal products, and on those nights she happily took care of her own dinner, maybe along with the salad that I made as a side.

One night I decided to make big steaming bowls of Spicy Asian Noodle Soup for dinner. I was unwilling to forgo the chicken stock and small amount of ground pork with chili sauce added just before serving that contributes so much to the flavor base of this soup to make it spicy enough that your nose runs as you slurp the noodles. But I was willing to try creating a flavorful vegan broth, while using a vegan ground meat substitute in place of the pork.

Replacing the ground meat was easy, and I was confident it would work well. But designing a vegan broth with enough flavor to make a whole meal in a bowl would be a bit of a challenge. I started by thinking about how I could build layers of flavor. Slowly cooked onions are a base of many a broth, and they would be a good place to start. Adding sliced ginger would add Asian notes, as would the sweet, slightly licorice flavor of star anise. But my broth would need umami, the fifth taste (along with sweet, salty, bitter, and sour), roughly translated from Japanese as savoriness. This taste is found in lots of foods, many not vegan – fish sauces and anchovies, meats, some cheeses. But I would need to find vegan foods with lots of umami. I figured soy sauce and dried shitake mushrooms would work because they are not derived from animals, they are always in my pantry, and they fit the Asian-influenced profile of this dish.

The vegan broth simmered away in one pot while our chicken stock warmed up in another. As dinner time neared, I stir fried the ground pork in one wok with garlic, ginger, scallions, and chili sauce as the spicy flavor bomb to be added to each bowl of broth. In another wok I gave the same treatment to the vegan ground meat. I tasted the vegan broth one last time before I irreversibly changed it with the addition of the spicy fake meat and I realized it was delicious on its own. Warm and savory from the mushrooms and soy sauce, but not overpowered by the flavor of either. Slightly sweet and full from the star anise. This was a broth that could stand on its own to make a tasty bowl of noodle soup without the heat of the chili-infused meat, whether real or vegan. Our summer guest slurped down a hearty bowl of the soup, noting that one would never know that it was vegan.

Vegan Ramen

This is my recipe for non-spicy, vegan, Asian-influenced broth. It makes a great bowl of ramen. If you prefer your noodle soup with a kick, use this as a soup base and see my recipe for Spicy Asian Noodle Soup, where you can use vegan ground meat in place of pork.

You can use almost any kind of noodles in this soup, but fresh from an Asian grocery store are best and add a sense of authenticity. Top the ramen with anything you like; I list some vegan suggestions below.

Serves 2, about 1 hour

1½ oz. dried shitake mushrooms, about 7 depending on size

1 Tbsp. olive oil

1 large onion, thinly sliced

5 quarter-size slices fresh ginger, peeled, from a piece about 1 to 1½ inches long

7 star anise pods

½ tsp. kosher salt

¼ tsp. white pepper

2 Tbsp. soy sauce

½ lb. noodles, preferably fresh from an Asian grocery, cooked according to package directions

2 scallions, thinly sliced

Possible toppings:

Stir fried shitake mushrooms

Vegan dumplings

Choy sum, baby bok choy, spinach, or other greens

Sliced snow or sugar snap peas

Sliced watermelon radish

Bean sprouts

Slices of marinated pressed tofu (five spice tofu)

1. Place dried mushrooms in a heat-proof bowl and cover with 3 cups boiling water. Allow to reconstitute for about a half hour, then slice into ½-inch strips. Place back in water and set aside.
2. While the mushrooms are soaking, heat oil on low in a 4 quart or larger, heavy bottom pot. Add the thinly sliced onions and ginger and allow to cook slowly, stirring frequently. After about 10 minutes, stir in the star anise and salt. Cook until the onions are very soft and golden, about a half hour total. You do not want them to brown, crisp up, or burn. Add the white pepper and soy sauce and cook for an additional five minutes.
3. Raise heat to medium-low and toss in mushroom pieces, reserving soaking liquid. Stir and cook mushrooms for about 5 minutes to allow their flavor to bloom.
4. Add mushroom soaking water (minus any sediment that may have settled to the bottom) and an additional 6 cups warm water to the pot. Raise heat to high, bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer to allow the flavors to meld, at least 20 minutes.
5. Before serving, strain the solids from the broth using a fine-mesh sieve, picking out and reserving mushroom pieces if desired.
6. Divide the broth between two large bowls. Add cooked noodles, scallions, and other toppings. Serve steaming hot.

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