If you think that this Pork Ramen Soup is easy - and it is - then you’ll be sort of aghast at how lazy I’ve been with my diet recently that I couldn’t even get my act together to make a bowl of ramen until I had to.
Really, thank goodness this site doesn’t have some kind of high-tech automatic feed running from my hypothetical food journal to these pages, because then you’d be reading daily about curly fries and pepperoni pizza - and we’re talking, tragically, about mediocre pepperoni pizza, not even superlative pepperoni pizza where the edges of each pepperoni slice perk up and caramelize as they crisp into little containers of oil.
I’m taking a break from complicated, multi-part dinners. I’m giving real, honest-to-goodness simplicity a try, if only in the name of cutting down on my pepperoni ingestion. The other night I made the easiest-ever lentil soup (recipe coming soon, naturally, if you need one. I love lentil soup), and I felt like a champ.
So when Kristin emailed me about taking part in Real Simple’s blog relay, aka a month of simple dinners cooked by bloggers around the ‘net, I was easily convinced. I claimed a dinner that appeals to be beyond remedial: ramen, the stuff of dorm dinners across the U.S. But this recipe redeems those packages of crackly, curled noodles and transforms them into something you’d not only feed yourself but even offer to people you care about. I can’t say the same about mediocre pepperoni pizza.
You can see all of the simple recipes in the blog relay here, and scroll down for my take on this awesome Pork Ramen Soup.
**Recipe**
Pork Ramen Soup
Serves 4
Slightly adapted from Real Simple
Ingredients
1 tablespoon canola oil
2 boneless pork chops (1/2 inch thick; about 1/2 pound total)
kosher salt and black pepper
8 scallions, sliced, white and green parts separated
1 2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth (preferably homemade)
1 tablespoon white wine or mirin
2 3-ounce packages ramen noodles (discard the seasoning packets)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar
1 large carrot, grated
2 radishes, halved and thinly sliced
1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves
Heat a Dutch oven over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add the oil. Season the pork with ¼ teaspoon each salt and pepper and cook until cooked through, 4 minutes per side. Place on a plate, cover with foil, and let rest for 5 minutes before thinly slicing.
Tun the heat to low and add the scallion whites and ginger to the drippings in the Dutch oven. Cook, stirring, until softened, 30 seconds to 1 minute. Add the broth and wine and bring to a boil. Add the noodles and boil, stirring occasionally, until tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the soy sauce and rice wine vinegar. Pour any juices from the pork that have collected on the plate into the soup.
Serve the soup in big bowls topped with the pork, carrot, radishes, cilantro, and scallion greens.
