How do you eat your Ramen? Not how you flavor it, add to or dress it up.
Physically, how do you eat it?
I like a blob method..I roll a hunk of ramen, catching any goodies on my fork or chop stick.
Stick it on my right side of my pie hole. In a big blob and stragglers get sucked up. Then I chew it as one piece.
I chew janky-like from having half a mouth full of implants. But I believe I did this before. With chicken noodle soup or spaghetti noodles.
I usually use a fork. But when I make it at home I don’t make it like soup. I make it like noodles.
I roll a ball of noodles. If it’s too big, I take it apart and re-roll with fewer strands. No stragglers allowed if there’s anyone who could be watching.
I’m in the “Can I have some more?” broth faction, so with a spoon for me. I have lousy chopstick skills, but do my best using them for the noodles if I’m in a more traditional place.
If I want a noodles forward option, I normally go with udon, much easier to eat with the thicker, heavier noodles.
Chopsticks. They do have to be wood for noodles as they slide off of plastic or metal. Asian soup spoons are a must for the broth. They do a much better job on broth than any European soup spoon and hold a lot. Any Asian market should have some. I like the plastic ones instead of metal.
Chopsticks. (I have never seen anybody use a fork to eat ramen. Then again, my sample size is small and skewed.) Raise the bowl to my lips to slurp some of the broth. When all that’s left is broth, beat an egg into the remaining broth, put it in the microwave for about 90 seconds, then eat the savory custard (sort of a poor man’s chawanmushi) that results.
Appreciate its gestalt. Savor the aromas. Jewels of fat glittering on the surface. Shinachiku roots shining. Seaweed slowly sinking. Spring onions floating.
Concentrate on the three pork slices. They play the key role, but stay modestly hidden. First, caress the surface with the chopstick tips to express affection. Then poke the pork. Just touch it. Caress it with the chopstick tips. Gently pick it up and dip it into the soup on the right of the bowl. What’s important here is to apologize to the pork by saying “see you soon.”
Finally, start eating-the noodles first. Oh, at this time, while slurping the noodles, look at the pork, eye it affectionately.
Funny you should ask, because ramen is one of those foods where I’m oddly obsessive about both the utensil and the container. Yes, I eat it with a fork, because I make ramen as a noodle dish, not a soup, with a minimum of water, and added ingredients like sliced mushrooms and pieces of chicken or pork and raw green onions.
But for reasons of habituation, I eat it with my special “ramen fork”, not any old fork! The “ramen fork” is a little smaller and more delicate than my other forks and ramen is just about all I ever use it for. Does it make any real difference? No, but I am a canine creature of habit!
Also, I always eat ramen in my “ramen bowl”. Always. The ramen bowl is basically a shallow pasta bowl, but with a smaller lip than my actual pasta bowls. Why is this important? Because, if you must know, the shorter lip allows me to drink the last of the broth out of the bowl after all the solids are gone!
Since I make ramen as a noodle dish, I can no more imagine using a spoon to consume it than using a spoon to eat spaghetti. Chopsticks are a possibility but my chopstick skills just aren’t that good, and the noodles are pretty slippery. I mostly only use chopsticks for sushi and dim sum. Sushi can also just be picked up by hand, but I cannot imagine any way to eat dim sum dumplings other than chopsticks.
Let’s not forget what we have quoted and paraphrased - Tampopo.
Student of ramen eating: Sensei, broth or noodles first?
Old gentleman: First comtemplate the ramen. Carefully observe the entire bowl while savoring the aroma. The jewels of fat twinkling on the surface, the men shoots glistening with fat, the nori darkening with moisture, the scallions floating on top. Above all, the stars of the show: three slices of roast pork, modestly half submerged. Now, then, with the tips of your chopsticks, smooth out the surface and caress the ramen.
