Our next Ramen Lab at Home adventure is Nakamura Ramen! You may remember our review of Nakamura back in the days when walking through the crowded streets of the lower east side was something to look forward to, rather than an existential nightmare filled with masks and hand sanitizer. Ahh, those were the days, and hopefully will be again soon! In the mean time, we were lucky enough to snag some Nakamura torigara shoyu at home.

Torigar-whaaa?

If you’re not familiar with Nakamura, you might be wondering what torigara shoyu is and how it’s different different from other shoyu ramen? Basically it’s Japanese for “chicken carcass soup” or as I affectionally call it dope chicken soup! Or more elegantly put, it’s a shoyu ramen with a 100% organic chicken base seasoned with ginger and kombu.

Boil. Pour. Top. Slurp.

Like all the other Ramen Lab at Home packs this follows the same process outlined above… You boil the bag of broth for 10 minutes, you boil the noodles (Nakamura uses very thin noodles that only take 1:10 to cook), you put it all in a bowl, top it with your favorite toppings, and slurp like there’s no tomorrow. For this bowl, we decided to top it with a soft boiled egg, menma, scallions, nori, and we decided to get a little fancy and made some charred baby corn with chili oil!

Tell us about the soup already!

Alright, fine, jeez! The soup is good. Is it as good as it is when made fresh at Nakamura? No, but considering we made it in 10 minutes in our tiny kitchen, the effort to payoff ratio can’t be beat!!

Back when we reviewed Nakamura in person, I seemed to be loosing my mind and thought that their torigara tasted like Jimmy Dean Sausage. I have to say that my first sip also reminded me of Jimmy Dean Sausage, but this time it went away after a few more sips. Jenna again thought I was insane… So if I am crazy, at least I’m consistent? Once my brain corrected it’s course, I really liked the broth. It is VERY chicken forward, in a good way! It had a very deep earthy umami (which must be from the kombu). It was also a little salty, almost too salty, but it was actually just the right amount with the noodles. We tend to drink the broth before eating the noodles, but with the salt we found we ate the noodles first like you’re supposed to…

In what may be the least shocking turn of events, the noodles were also great! I don’t think I’ve ever had a Sun Noodle that I didn’t like… Both Jenna and I generally prefer thicker noodles, we don’t know why, we just do. These thin noodles though are definitely up there! They held the broth perfectly, and while they didn’t look like a lot of noodles at first, they seemed to be never ending as we ate. Seriously, it’s like the noodle fairy kept adding more noodles or something. Needless to say we were very satisfied with them…

Buried under all those noodles, was the chashu chicken that came in the broth pack. I’m not against chicken in ramen, but I do have to say this was our least favorite part. The chicken was dark meat, which tasted great. It was seasoned really well, but it was both dry and rubbery. It was almost as if it had been overcooked. We aren’t sure if it was overcooked when it was being made or if we overcooked it… The cooking directions of 10 minutes does seem like a long time to heat the bag, and it was definitely hot before the 10 minutes was up, so if we get it again we may try cooking this one for less time, and see if it improves.

Overall the Nakamura pack hit the spot, and gave us a temporary reprieve from our insatiable ramen cravings. Right now it looks like the Nakamura Ramen at Home packs are out of stock, but if you happen to be in Nakamura’s delivery radius you can order some ramen kits from them directly. Personally, if we were in their delivery radius, I’d order ramen for dinner and then get a ramen kit to pop in the freezer. You know, so you have it in case of emergency ramen cravings…