Rotisserie Chicken Ramen

With the temperature is dropping, this is the perfect weather to spend an evening slurping on some delicious ramen noodles to help warm you from the inside out. So, instead of leaving the house to find your perfect bowl of ramen, stay home and follow this recipe!

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients:
1 rotisserie chicken
4 scallions
1 piece (1”) fresh ginger, thinly sliced 1 small carrot (optional)
1 dried shiitake mushroom 3 slices bacon
12 cups water
4 portions ramen noodles 8 tsp soy sauce
2 cooked eggs (optional)

Directions:

1. Pull or slice the meat into bite-size pieces and reserve in the fridge while you make the broth. Save the carcass to flavor the soup.
2. Break the chicken carcass into pieces and put in a stockpot. Trim scallions and add to pot; thinly slice the white and tender green parts and reserve to garnish the soup. Add ginger, carrot, shiitake, and bacon. Add water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat from a rolling boil to a rollicking simmer, and skim any froth that collects on the surface during the first 10 minutes of simmering.
3. Cook until the liquid is reduced by one-third, about 2hours. Strain. Save shiitake, slice and use as garnish. The broth can be used immediately or refrigerated for up to 2 days.
4. To serve:bring the broth to a strong simmer and cook the ramen noodles according to the package. Drain noodles very well, and portion them out among 4 soup bowls. Top with broth. Season each bowl with 2 teaspoons of soy sauce, a portion of the reserved chicken meat, scallions, half an egg, and any other additional ingredients. Eat!

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This comes from our first cookbook, 101 Easy Asian Recipes, out now. Order our exclusive holiday bundle, which includes a copy of the book and a one-year subscription to the magazine.

Here are some questions you may have when making this recipe:

Do I really have to cook this for TWO HOURS??

We don’t want to make you do anything you’re not comfortable with. But we found that 2 hours is the sweet spot for flavor extraction and reduction. Also, you don’t really do anything during that time except for maybe cook an egg or two—plenty of time to watch an old Eddie Murphy movie or stare endlessly into the antisocial abyss that is your smartphone!

BUT BUT BUT Why do I have to skim it?

Skimming the broth during the first 10 minutes will force you to pay attention to the hardness of the simmer, observe the water level in the pot, and get to know the broth. Also, we found that with rotisserie chicken (unlike plain old raw chicken), there is some rendered grease that can emulsify in a muddy way. Our early stabs at this broth went unskimmed; they came out murky and tasted sort of flat. This approach yields a cleaner-tasting and clearer soup—and a better bowl of ramen.

Read the full recipe here.