A good sliced pork recipe can elevate your homemade ramen to a savory meal in ways just adding hard-boiled eggs can’t. Pork slices add to the flavor of the broth, give a more robust visual aesthetic, and taste damned delicious. You can even use it for packaged ramen. This is my personal recipe for a braised pork using a center loin. It may not be the most ideal or traditional cut or recipe for a ramen, but it works for me, and it can double as an anytime-recipe outside of ramen prep, which is ideal when coming up with meals for your family.

Prep: 5 min
Sear: 15 min
Cook: 1 hour 30 min.
Rest.
Ingredients
- 1-2 lbs. Fatty Pork
- 2 tbsp Vegetable Oil or Olive Oil
- 2 Cups Water
- 1 Cup Shoyu (soy sauce)
- 1/2 Cup Saké
- 1/3 Cup Sugar or 1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
- 1 Cinnamon Stick
- 1 tsp Black Peppercorn
- 1 tsp Ginger Powder or 1 inch Crushed Ginger
- Salt (to taste)
- Pepper (to taste)
The Pork
There are a lot of people who choose pork belly over other cuts for their ramen prep. I prefer the loin, as pork belly can sometimes be overpowering for some. At my local grocery store they stock a nice center loin cut that works well for us. The important thing is that you get yourself a big chunk of pork with a layer of fat – fatty pork is what makes ramen pork so delicious.
The Cook




Pro-tip: Use a splatter screen or splatter guard. That oil is going to kick up something fierce, it’s best to be careful.
After the sear is complete, pour in your 1/2 cup saké to deglaze the pot. It’s going to smoke pretty righteously, so be careful. Once the pot is deglazed, add everything else in:




Stir up all the liquid and ingredients then bring everything to a boil. Once it’s boiling, set your burner to between medium low and low to simmer, timed at 1 hour 30 minutes. Cover the pot and let it do its thing.
After 45 minutes have past, use some tongs to flip the pork, then cover it back up until time is up.


After the Cook
At this point, you have two options: either save it for ramen, or eat it. If you’re planning on saving it for ramen, after it cools, wrap it up and put it in the fridge for a few hours – the pork will be easier to cut for those nice, thin slices that work so well in ramen. Heating up the pork is easy enough – in my personal ramen recipe, I like to re-heat the pork in the broth, which elevates the flavor and gives the pork slices a nice texture.
However, you can just go ahead and eat it as an entree. It’s delicious either way! Usually, we’ll cook up a whole loin or shoulder this way and use half for one dinner, saving the other half for ramen. If you want to eat it immediately, go ahead and slice that sucker up. Enjoy!