Easy Ramen Soup Base

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Hey guys!

I’m back today with an easy freezer-stocking soup base that everyone will love. I am not an expert in asian cuisine, but this is the soup broth I eat with ramen noodles, so I call it ramen soup base. I use my home-made chicken stock and water to create this flavorful, slightly spicy veggie broth that can be easily made vegetarian by using mushroom (so good) or veggie broth instead. I just have loads of almost-free chicken stock on hand normally, so I try to head for that first.

I also do not have meat with this soup, but you can easily add chicken, beef, a soft boiled egg, pork… whatever you feel like. This is the soup I turn to when I’m either freezing cold or sick, so I leave out the heavy meat. The trick to using this as a freezer stocking soup is to just cook your noodles when you defrost a package of the broth. If you make your noodles in the soup base itself, they will not only soak up a ton of the delicious broth, but also get soggy when you reheat them. Noodles just don’t know when to stop sucking up water. It’s gross, so don’t do it.

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The size of this recipe is actually so humongous I almost didn’t fit it in my stock pot, which is crazy because it’s pretty sizeable. Feel free to cut it down if you don’t have a huge pot or check out one of the ones I’ve linked in the shop the post section below and invest in being able to create cheap meals in larger batches.

Makes about 16 servings, $13.88 or $1 per bowl with half a packet of ramen noodles

1 907g bag of broccoli slaw – $3.98

2 heads of Bok Choy – 3.42

Mushrooms – 3.54

3-4 cartons of the stock of your choice – $2.94 (priced out for chicken, beef or veggie stock- mushroom will cost more as it’s not available generic).

Garlic, Ginger, soy sauce, chili paste, sriracha, crushed red chili flakes, one original IchiBan flavor packet (optional, sodium haters)

This soup starts exactly the same as any other- with the aromatics. So I start by grating 5 large cloves of garlic into my stock pot, which will have about a tablespoon of olive oil in the bottom. While that warms up and gets toasty, I’ll grate in about an inch of fresh or frozen ginger (I always keep in in my freezer). Next I add in a couple (yeah, it’s a lot) pinches of crushed red chili flakes and a tablespoon of chili paste. If you’re adding an Ichi Ban flavor packet, now is the time to do it. I always end up with ten of these in my drawer because I rarely make plain ramen noodles with just the flavor packet.

Once your garlic is cooked out and no longer raw, add in your sliced mushrooms and cook them about halfway. You do this at this point because otherwise, they’ll never get much time on the direct heat because we are adding in a ton of broccoli slaw as soon as they’re softened.

Once your mushrooms are halfway cooked, add in that entire bag of broccoli slaw! I love this stuff because it has a bit of cabbage, a bit of carrot, but loads of broccoli stalks which is my favorite part! And, it saves you the trouble of julienne-ing all of your veggies. Cook these down, it’ll take quite a bit of time given the amount, so just keep the heat on and keep stirring to redistribute in the pot.

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Once your veggies are all at least halfway cooked, add in your stock and bring it to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer for 30ish minutes, add in soy sauce and sriracha to taste, and then safely cool before freezing!

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