Two particular soup recipes have been catching my eye recently, Andy Baraghani’s I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Vegetarian-Ramen and Amiel Stanek’s French Onion Beef Noodle Soup (click the links to access both recipes – both from Bon Appetit of course!).   Considering that I am such a soup fan and that I had many hours at home yesterday (hello from my real office this afternoon and tomorrow!), I decided to make a hybrid of these soups for dinner.

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Every Monday our friends over at @healthy_ish bring you a brand new recipe to add into your roster of “must cooks”. This week? @andybaraghani’s I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Vegetarian-Ramen that’s loaded with tomato paste, dried shiitake mushrooms, kombu, and a little butter to achieve a tonkotsu-like broth without any meat. Yep yep yep need to cook it. Click the link in our bio for the recipe. 📷: @emmafishman 🍴: @mpearljones

A post shared by bonappetitmag (@bonappetitmag) on Mar 2, 2020 at 10:26am PST

 I loved the approach of blending in aromatics and butter into the broth from Andy’s recipe, and caramelized onions in soup are truly a delight (good call, Amiel!).  I also have recently acquired far too many onions because Chris thought we needed some (we didn’t, but all good!) and have bags of chicken stock taking up valuable freezer space, so I decided to take the best of both recipes and stock of what I had on hand and get to work.

The recipe for my hybrid soup is below.  Both recipes were originally served ramen-style, which is definitely how I would recommend serving mine.  I also added some re-hydrated shitake mushrooms and roasted carrots to mine as an added veggie factor.  Hard-boiled eggs, tofu, bok choy, or dried nori leaves would be great too!

Recipe – Ramen Soup Broth

Ingredients:

• 3 onions, sliced
• 1 1 in piece of ginger, sliced
• 3 tbsp sesame seeds
• 1 tbsp miso paste
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 2 tbsp butter
• 3 dried shitake mushrooms
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 ½ quarts chicken broth/stock

Method:

1. Place a large pot or Dutch oven on the stove, over medium heat.  Once warm, add the butter and onions.  Cook the onions slowly until caramelized, stirring occasionally.  This should take about 15-20 minutes.
2. When onions are mostly caramelized, add the sliced ginger.  Stir to combine, and cook for about 5 minutes.
3. Add the sesame seeds to the pan, stir to combine.  Cook for another 2 minutes to lightly toast the sesame seeds.
4. Add about 1-2 cups of the chicken stock, and stir to deglaze the pan.  Bring to a boil and continue stirring to release all of the brown bits from the pan.
5. Add shitake mushrooms, tomato paste, miso paste, and soy sauce.  Stir to combine, and cook for about 5 minutes to fully hydrate the shitake mushrooms.
6. Remove the pan from heat and allow to cool for about 5 minutes.  Once cooled, pour all of the contents into a blender, and blend on high until completely smooth.
7. Add the remaining chicken stock to the pan and bring to a boil.  Once boiling, add the contents from the blender, and stir to combine.  Bring the whole mixture up to a boil and serve over ramen noodles and desired toppings.
8. Enjoy!