The Story of our November 2024 Image

November 18, 2024

Our November image for The Dolphin Studio Calendar was created by Jamie! Jamie is seventeen years old and is a senior in high school. The design depicts one of her favorite foods…ramen! 

For a few years now, Jamie has had a fascination with all things Japanese.  She became very interested, almost obsessed, with reading Manga, or Japanese comics, from an early age. I was not aware of this book genre until Jamie brought me to her favorite bookstore where there are multiple aisles of Manga books. Through her exposure to Manga, Jamie grew a love of Anime, spending countless hours drawing her own Anime characters. As her interest in Manga and Anime blossomed, so did her love of Japanese culture and ramen! She has been preparing ramen for years now and has some special ingredients that she adds to her basic ramen recipe, one of which is hot sauce!  

Let’s look at how ramen became such a “go-to” food for so many of us around the world. Ramen got its start in the 1800s in China, the birthplace of all things ramen, but then expanded to Japan as Chinese immigrants travelled there in the late 19th century. Although ramen became greatly enjoyed in both China and Japan soon after its introduction, it took a while for the ramen craze to hit America. In fact, it wasn’t until the early 1970s when a few food companies developed a ramen that was in a disposable cup that the food became more common, nor until 1976 that the first ramen restaurant opened in the United States in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. And while Americans got a taste of ramen in the ‘70s, it really wasn’t until the early 2000s that the ramen boom in the United States began in earnest. Fast forward to today, and it’s now a fixture in American food culture. 

So now you know a brief history of how ramen became a staple food for so many of us around the world!

TikTok Ramen Recipe

How to Make TikTok Ramen

1. Cook your instant ramen. Don’t overcook it – mushy noodles are a travesty. Instant ramen should have an al dente bite. Pop the noodles into boiling water, set a timer, use a pair of chopsticks to loosen them up, and when the time is up, instantly drain them and set them aside. Pro tip: if you’re a true noodle lover, cook the noodles slightly less than the suggested cooking time, as they will cook up a bit more while you’re tossing them in the sauce. This way, you’ll have perfectly al dente noodles.
2. Make the sauce. In a pan, heat up the butter over low heat. Add the garlic and cook until soft. Stir in the crushed red pepper, then the brown sugar and soy sauce.
3. Toss. Add the drained noodles to the pan, turn up the heat, and toss to coat.
4. Cook the egg. Push the noodles to one side and add an egg to the pan and scramble until just set.
5. Serve. Place the noodles in a bowl and finish with sliced scallions and everything bagel spice. Enjoy hot!

TikTok Ramen Ingredients

Instant ramen – choose your favorite brand of instant ramen. The flavor doesn’t matter because you’re not going to use the seasoning packet. Our favorite noodles are Nong Shim Shin Ramyun, due to how thick they are.

• Butter – just a bit of butter is melted down to cook up some garlic.
• Garlic – you need about 1 teaspoon of chopped or minced garlic. Or, if you’re a garlic lover, use as many cloves as you can handle.
• Brown sugar – the brown sugar adds a bit of caramel sweetness and color. If you don’t have brown sugar, you can just use regular sugar or even honey.
• Soy sauce – use your favorite soy sauce – we like Yamasa or Kikkoman.
• Crushed red pepper flakes – you can add as many chili flakes as you like or leave them out entirely, depending on your spice tolerance.
• Egg – throw an egg on it, because ramen without an egg isn’t even ramen.
• Everything bagel spice – make it rain everything bagel spice!

Enjoy! 

Sofia

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