noodsletter #.0056

Homemade Ramen, pre-order it Sham-now!

Hello!

You’ve received this email because you’ve signed up for noodsletter. Thank you.

If any of you want to send over things you find interesting, or that you think I would find interesting, I encourage you to do so! (Thank you to all who do!)

Switching things up for today; have a couple newsletters lined up for the next couple weeks, stay tuned!

All the recipes ever published in noodsletter have been archived in the very first noodsletter, which you can find here.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber!

---

Book Bit

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

...

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

...

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

...

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

...

The Declaration of Independence, by a bunch of guys hopping mad about tariffs.

---

Homemade Ramen … news!

It's official: Homemade Ramen is now available to pre-order! The book will be released on October 15, 2025.

Admittedly I got the news a couple weeks back, and I made an ephemeral Instagram post to commemorate the occasion. But consider this the "official" announcement!

Pre-orders are quite important for marketing/publicity/sales purposes, so if you've been thinking about picking up a copy, please pre-order it! It doesn’t really matter which bookseller you choose—there are links to various booksellers on the publisher's page—so pick whichever works best for you. (Pre-ordering from Amazon is apparently the most helpful, but I leave that decision up to you and your conscience.)

If you're on the fence about shelling out $35 for 320 pages of me nattering on about “how I make ramen at home (and so can you!),” I'll briefly summarize its contents below, and highlight what a few ramen chefs have to say about it.

The book is split into two parts.

The first half is mostly text, with some step-by-step photos, where I explain (my understanding of) the science behind making every element that goes into a ramen bowl—soup, noodles, seasoning (tare), fats, and toppings—and go over how I like to make those things.

The second half is recipes (and pretty photos by the incredibly talented Linda Xiao), and it, too, is split into two parts. The first recipe section consists of 13 recipe sets for composed ramen bowls that are intended to work as proofs of concept for all the stuff I talk about in the beginning. For example, I note that some ramen shops poach their toppings in their soup stock in the first half, so one of the recipe sets calls for doing that. Another: I note that a single soup stock can be used with three different tare (seasonings) to produce three drastically different soups, so three of the recipe sets use the same base stock.

The second half of the second half consists entirely of what I ended up calling "component recipes"; recipes for stuff that can be used in any ramen bowl, or just all on their own, like the basic pressure cooker chicken stock for using up cut-up chicken carcasses, the roast pork shoulder designed for using up the rest of a pork shoulder you've butchered for chashu, and the pig's foot terrine that lets you repurpose the foot you add to stock to bump up its gelatin content.

While the book is obviously about making ramen, it has several other goals, none of which are explicitly stated.

The first is that, like any cookbook, its goal is to make you a better cook. I focus a lot on (what I think are) the "whys" of cooking: noodle gluten structure, the idea of "texture" in liquids, etc., with the idea that these concepts are transitive and can be applied to cooking anything.

The second is that it's designed to give you the tools to experiment with ramen. Sure, there are recipe sets and recipes, all tested thoroughly (by a small army of volunteer cross-testers, all of whom are thanked in the acknowledgments), but they're just a starting point. I included a lot of text focused on encouraging the reader to experiment, with tares, with soups and extraction methods, with odd-ball flavor profiles, with noodle formulae. (In the back, there are blank noodle formulae templates so you can note down your trials exactly for this reason.)

The third is that I wanted the book to be "primary," as in I wanted it to be a primary resource that contained everything you need as you start making ramen. I didn't want a reader to have to Google anything, like how to cut up a chicken, or a fish, or wonder about the various styles of dried seafood products that you can't really get in the United States.

Finally, I wanted to make it as undaunting as possible. One of the main ideas of the book is: “If I, a certified dum-dum, can do it, you can definitely do it, too!” But you can’t sell a book by explicitly calling yourself a dumbass, so I tried to get that message across in subtler ways.

This is why I was adamant about having my hands in the photos doing the butchering of chickens and cutting up of fish, and why I insisted on making all the food for the shoot and coming up with the style of the bowls myself. Pros and competent cooks will see quite plainly deficiencies in technique and styling, but that’s by design. I am not a chef, and I am not particularly skilled at butchering chickens, cutting up fish, and styling food. The oddities and errors in plating, butchery, and noodle-making are all meant to reinforce the idea that this is an approachable subject. (Of course, I got a huge assist for actual styling from, you know, an actual stylist—Emma Rowe, a wizard and a pro. As much as I wanted the stuff to look like I made it, it still had to be nice enough for a glossy cookbook.)

That’s the pitch! If you’re interested, please pre-order it! If you know someone who might be interested, forward them this email!

To close this out, here’s some of the blurbs I received some very kind people in the making-actual-ramen industry. (They all make crazy good ramen, so they should know what they’re talking about.)

(Also, I’ll be writing up a couple trips I took recently to Erik Bentz’s Mochiko Cafe and Scott LaChapelle’s Pickerel in the next two noodsletter installments!)

When I started my ramen journey there was nothing in English to read to guide me. If only a book like Homemade Ramen had been available. It demystifies everything!!

― Ivan Orkin, chef and owner of Ivan Ramen

Sho Spaeth is arguably one of the most fastidious, meticulous ramen makers in the United States, and this book is an obvious demonstration of his dedication to understanding ramen. I do not think there is a book that explores ramen in more depth in the English language. This book unquestionably pushes the craft of ramen forward, for both home cooks and professionals alike.

― Mike Satinover, chef and owner of Akahoshi Ramen (aka Ramen Lord)

Sho Spaeth does his homework. Homemade Ramen is the first ramen cookbook that genuinely supports a home cook’s journey into this mystifying craft and introduces building a foundation for making 'kodawari' ramen at home.

― Keizo Shimamoto, founder of Ramen Shack

Despite the title, Sho Spaeth’s work on Homemade Ramen brings restaurant-level knowledge to anyone aspiring to dive into making ramen at home. Studded with recipes, but more importantly, packed with ideas, this book will prove invaluable for years to come.

― Scott LaChapelle, chef at Pickerel

The amount of knowledge that Sho Spaeth has on the ‘science of ramen’ is vast, and being able to translate that knowledge into recipes for home cooks is extremely rare. I personally have never seen a ramen book, this in depth and accurate, published in English.

― Erik Bentz, chef and co-owner of Café Mochiko