チャーシュー The Pork That Makes It Ramen
Two cuts. Two methods. One braising liquid that does triple duty.
If ramen has a mascot, it’s that slice of pork sitting at six o’clock in the bowl. The one that’s glistening. The one that quivers when you pick it up with chopsticks. The one that melts into the hot broth beneath it and slowly bleeds its fat and flavor into the soup.
That’s chashu.
The word comes from the Chinese char siu — fork-roasted pork — but the Japanese version is its own thing entirely. Where char siu is roasted over high heat with a sweet glaze, chashu is braised. Low. Slow. In a soy-based liquid that turns the meat impossibly tender while building a braising sauce you’ll use for three other things before the week is out.
In my cookbook, I give you two pork belly preparations: the traditional rolled chashu and a flat soy pork belly that we use at the shop for pork buns and paitan bowls. Both are great. But for Ramen School, I want to give you something I’ve been increasingly excited about: pork shoulder chashu.
Here’s why. Pork belly can be hard to find at a regular grocery store. You’re either making a special trip to an Asian market or calling your butcher ahead of time. Pork shoulder? It’s everywhere. It’s at every Kroger, every Publix, every Walmart. It costs half as much as belly. And when it’s braised properly, the intramuscular fat in a shoulder gives you a rich, porky, pull-apart tender slice that holds up beautifully in a bowl of ramen.
Modern ramen shops in Japan are increasingly using shoulder for exactly this reason. The marbling runs through the meat rather than in layers on top of it, which means every bite has fat and lean together. It’s meaty in a way belly isn’t. It’s forgiving in a way belly doesn’t need to be. And it’s accessible in a way that makes Ramen School what it’s supposed to be: real ramen, made in real kitchens, by real people who don’t have a restaurant supply account.
I’m giving you both cuts today. Belly for the traditionalists. Shoulder for everyone else. Both use the same braising liquid. Both feed into the Ramen School system. Both are going to make your house smell incredible.
