10-Minute Shio Ramen Made with Noto's Fish Sauce "Ishiri," and the Chef's Hagatsuo Namerou

Ryuji began by explaining ishiri to viewers unfamiliar with it. Ishiri is a squid fish sauce with an extremely strong squid umami. He said that if you make pasta with ishiri, the flavor is so rich you don't need any MSG. Some people think of nam pla when they hear "fish sauce," but Ryuji said it has "a completely different taste" and praised it as a seasoning that is distinctly Noto.

So that it can be made at home, the chashu uses a simple method. You just pour half a tablespoon of ishiri over a slice of Noto pork loin and heat it in a 600W microwave for three and a half minutes. The pork cooks through and turns out like chashu.

After heating it, Ryuji said, "The pork is so good, this is all you need." He doesn't do anything extra and simply slices the meat thinly at an angle. Ryuji's point is that as long as you have ishiri, there's no need to make chashu separately. The people who tasted it were also surprised at how tender the pork was after just three and a half minutes in the microwave.

For the soup, put about 300 cc of water in a pot, add the following ingredients, and heat.

• Ishiri: 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon
• Granulated kombu dashi: half a teaspoon
• Chicken bone broth powder: half a teaspoon (store-bought is fine)
• Lard: 1 tablespoon (if you don't have any, he says vegetable oil or olive oil is also tasty)
• Garlic powder: 4 shakes
• Table pepper: 4 shakes

Ryuji explained that he adds garlic powder because it's better with some spices in it. The process is simply to add the ingredients and bring it to a boil, and he himself kept repeating, "Super easy, right?" Even so, he said it tastes quite a lot like restaurant ramen. Because the soup itself is so tasty, he also suggested that if you leave out the lard, you can use it as a base for yosenabe hot pot.

For toppings, he uses green onions and regular onion. Ryuji said diced onion floating in the soup goes really well with ramen. Thin noodles are best, he said, boiled for 1 minute. While the noodles are boiling, filling the bowl with hot water to warm it up helps keep the ramen from cooling down.

Pour the soup into the bowl, add the noodles, and top with as much onion, green onion, and ishiri chashu as you like, and it's done. Ryuji called this ramen "the easiest and tastiest ramen" he knows of. He also said it was the fastest ramen he had ever made.

The first to taste it was the chef's daughter, who kept eating without putting down her chopsticks, saying, "This is so good." Ryuji added that although he also uses a little chicken bone broth and kombu dashi, it's almost entirely the taste of ishiri. He then emphasized, "Ishiri is seriously amazing."

Next, Yusha, a local VTuber from the Noto region of Ishikawa Prefecture, also tried it. Yusha said it was like "ramen from a ramen shop" and remarked that it was hard to believe it was made in under 10 minutes. Yusha also said, "Ishiri deserves more recognition." Ryuji agreed, responding that ishiri is a seasoning that can be used in anything, so you could come up with any number of recipes if you wanted to.

The second half is the chef's demonstration. Saying, "Even I don't know what I'm going to make," he decided to use leftover ingredients and fish from the refrigerator. For miso, he borrowed homemade miso from "Sensei," who was there. Yama-chan, who said she had never filleted a fish, was called in as his helper.

The fish he used was hagatsuo, which also appears in this episode's thumbnail. Yama-chan had never heard of hagatsuo. The chef first recommended placing something on top of the cutting board as a liner. That way, once you're done filleting, you can just throw it away, which makes things easy. He also told her to keep the area around her hands as clean as possible.

He explained how to remove scales too. Hagatsuo don't have scales, but ordinary fish do, so he just showed how it's done. The chef taught that it's easier to work if you keep your own body as still as possible and move your hands to change the fish's orientation.

Next, he cut off the head and cleaned out the belly. He scored the bloodline with the knife and scrubbed it off with a toothbrush under running water. Yama-chan tried it herself as well. The chef instructed her to remove as much as possible by hand first, then get the remaining bits off with the toothbrush. He said this step is important because any bloodline left behind causes a fishy smell. Once it was washed, the flesh was clean.

Along the way, the difference between hagatsuo and skipjack (honkatsuo) also came up. Hagatsuo has somewhat whitish flesh, while skipjack is much redder. There was also talk that, unlike people in Tokyo, many people in Noto are said to be able to fillet fish. The chef recalled that the previous year's guest could apparently fillet fish about as well as he could.

He also showed how to fillet the fish. Yama-chan gave it a try but it didn't go well, so the chef demonstrated. First make a light cut, then advance the knife all the way through as if sliding it along the top of the bones. He explained that hearing a "clack-clack" sound as the knife hits the bones is key.

There was also advice for home cooks on removing the belly bones. The belly bones are shorter than you'd think and only go partway. Since they're hard to remove if you angle the knife, he said it's fine to just cut them off at home. Pointing to the belly portion, the chef said, "This is the tastiest part," noting that it's rich with fat.

When it came time to slice the sashimi, he switched to a sashimi knife. He explained that the trimmed-off end pieces can go into the namerou. This, too, was presented as a tip that's easy to copy at home. Finally, he showed the teeth that give the hagatsuo its name. They were so sharp that when Yama-chan touched them, she cried out, "That really hurts!"

For the namerou, the hagatsuo is chopped with a knife and combined with miso and green onions. According to the chef, the texture is better if you don't chop it too finely. To that he added ishiri and sesame oil. The chef revealed that he had never tried combining ishiri and sesame oil and was going by feel.

The chef then added just a tiny bit of heshiko, a rice-bran-fermented fish that had also appeared earlier that day. He said the idea had just come to him, and it became a dish layering Noto ingredients. He also made sashimi from amberjack (kanpachi), improvising a presentation in which the slices were rolled. The chef said all of these dishes were within the range of what you can make at home.

Those who ate the hagatsuo sashimi described the flesh as very tender and light, and said it goes well with soy sauce too. The chef suggested marinating it as zuke and serving it over rice as a donburi. The chef himself kept repeating that all he did was slice it, and that it was the ingredients that were delicious.

The amberjack was praised for its just-right amount of fat and the umami that comes out the more you chew. As for the namerou, people commented that it was delicious, with the aroma of sesame oil and the umami of ishiri coming through well.

At the end, Ryuji encouraged viewers to give them a try, saying that Noto has delicious fish and wonderful seasonings, and that they can be ordered by mail. The chef said he would keep cooking quickly even after the camera stopped, and the demonstration ended there.