Serving:

1. Mix the two stocks together and check the seasoning. Adjust if needed.
2. Mix the tare ingredients together and then equally divide them into four bowls. 
3. Add in your hot noodles into the bowl and mix them with the tare. 
4. Add sliced teriyaki chicken and a ball of spicy cabbage into the noodle bowl and arrange as you fancy.
5. Pour your soup on top. Make sure your soup is boiling hot. 
6. Top the dish with the furikake.
7. Serve hot.

Alternatively:

1. After mixing the noodles with the tare, pour your hot soup into the bowl and serve immediately with the cabbage, chicken and furikake on the side.

Tips and Tricks:

• If after deboning your chicken legs you find that it is uneven in thickness, put it between some clingfilm and bash it down with a meat hammer or a rolling pin to even it out. This ensures that everything cooks evenly. 
• When your grill has heated up, dip a paper towel into some oil and use it to oil the grill. Use tongs so you don’t burn yourself.
• You can even add a little bit of oil on the chicken skin too before laying it down to ensure your chicken doesn’t stick, and that beautiful glass-like crispy skin you’ve been working on doesn’t go to waste. 
• Make sure your chicken is at room temperature before, if not, it will stick to the grill despite you oiling the grill and the chicken.
• The temperature of the grill can’t be too high as if it is your chicken skin will shrink. You want it to be even all the way, covering the entire chicken. So a medium gently cook is what’s best. 
• Play with your heat if needed. Make sure you hear a gentle sizzle throughout the whole cook.
• If you have some leftover chicken fat from some roast chicken the next day before, use that instead of just pure chicken fat.
• The liquid smoke and Worcestershire sauce help add a nice smokey note to the chicken, mimicking, to a certain extent, a traditional charcoal grill. However if you do have a small japanese grill or a bbq, and if you’re willing to spend the time, use those instead (I would). 
• If you have a leftover carcass from stuffed in your fridge, use that for the stock too and increase the amount of water if needed. You can always keep the extra stock for another day. 

About:

You might be thinking I’ve completely bonkers to title this as ‘Simple’ after then seeing that this reads to be about 5 pages long…but trust me. It is. It is lengthy, but it also simple. What makes it long is the many components that make up this dish, but those many components are almost effortless to make. Time is your best friend here and hey if you get your butcher to debone the chicken legs for you, you’re essentially just boiling soup and grilling chicken. Effortless. Just be a little patient. If you ask me, I think 1.5 -2 hours is a steal compared to a 3-day boil for a traditional tonkotsu ramen.  

Essentially you’re making what’s called a ‘Shio’ ramen, which means flavoured with salt. The soup is a mix of equal parts chicken stock and dashi as the flavour from the kombu, anchovies and katsuobushi add an extra ‘ummphhh’ of umami to the overall soup. If you’re not a fishy fan just double up the chicken soup and skip the Dashi but trust me, you won’t regret it. Sometimes you might not even notice it when you order things like ‘chicken udon’ or ‘beef stew’ at a restaurant, but they all have, most probably than not, dashi mixed into it. It is after all a staple in almost all japanese broth dishes. 

As for the overall dish itself, I chose to pair it with cabbage. Not just because I like cabbage, but because the thinly sliced cabbage as per this recipe lets you twirl it around with your noodles. Just like string of meat from your ragu entwined with your parpadelle. The mix of chewy ramen noodles with the crunchiness of the cabbage is so good! Top that up with the crispy furikake and that’s textural heaven in your mouth! 

Finally, the chicken, traditionally you’d have have some thin sliced pieces of rolled pork or chicken, but man that takes time. The whole point of this is to save time so just slap so meat on the grill and bob’s your uncle! Because this dish is so simple I’d recommend getting the best quality chicken you can find, if not, just wash it with a bit of lemon to take out that icky ‘chicken smell’ we all don’t like. You’ll notice in the recipe that I’ve used about 1-2 tbs of teriyaki sauce for 3 whole chicken legs, which admittedly isn’t a lot, but the whole idea of this is to have the sauce compliment the chicken. Not the other way around. The subtlety of the teriyaki flavours in this dish with the clear soup is a good blend of clean flavour that leave you feeling refreshed rather than stuffed at the end of your bowled. Also, I just hate the ‘generic teriyaki chicken’ we’ve all come to ‘love’, doused in sticky soy, no chicken flavour. Hey that’s just me. Anyway, I’ve probably said too much two paragraphs ago but I hope you guys really like this recipe as much as I did! Stay tuned for a much longer one in the future. 

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