Recipes from Sho Spaeth's 'Homemade Ramen'

And a giveaway

4 Nov 2026 — 4 min read

Photo by Linda Xiao.

This week I've got a set of recipes that I've been meaning to share for nearly a year, but better late than never, especially when they are from a book as great as my friend Sho Spaeth's Homemade Ramen. Here's what I wrote back when Sho asked me to blurb the book:

Beyond the fact that they both involve doughs, ramen is a lot like bread: many moving parts, but not all that complicated to pull off when considered in isolation. Sho Spaeth is a wise and knowing guide to the art and science of ramen making, and Homemade Ramen is the practical manual to ramen I did not know I've always wanted!

I stand by that assertion: Homemade Ramen is the comprehensive guide to making great ramen at home that every fan of Asian foods will want to have on their shelves. It covers every aspect of the dish in great detail:

Making ramen stocks of all kinds: chicken, duck, pork, fish, and vegetarian ones, along with guides to sourcing and preparing the ingredients that go into each.
Preparing the essential fat that every great bowl of ramen requires, whether from animal fat or aromatically charged vegetable oils.
Preparing tare, the flavorful "seasoning" liquid that adds salt, sweetness, and savoriness (umami) to the ramen broth.
Preparing ramen toppings, like meats, seaweed, vegetables, wontons, and eggs.

And noodles, which—justifiably—get the longest treatment in the book. Making pasta of all kinds is a little complicated, but noodles for ramen are especially so, since to achieve their signature springy, chewy texture, they must be made with both salt and an alkali (or two) like sodium or potassium carbonate and with an extremely low hydration, both of which yield a dough that is challenging to knead into uniform sheets without the use of industrial-strength mixers and rollers.

Except Sho has sorted out a reliable method for doing so at home, without the need for specialized tools (fair warning: it may call for use of your feet, however). What it does require, is a clear understanding of what to expect at each stage of the process, and that's what Homemade Ramen provides in spades.

Homemade Ramen contains gorgeous imagery of composed ramen bowls taken by Linda Xiao, in case you needed further incentive to want to make ramen at home.

Homemade Ramen has been out in the world for a year, and today for his own newsletter—Noodsletter—Sho wrote up a look back at how the book has done since it came out, which was of particular interest to me, given that my own book is about to launch in less than two weeks. (In the same post, he's doing a giveaway for copies of another excellent book on Asian cooking that you may want to get in on.)

Sho has generously shared a cluster recipes from Homemade Ramen with us this week, starting with one of the noodles from the book:

(Note: the recipe contains all the intel you might need to pull it off, but I suspect you'll have even better luck with it once you get your hands on the twenty-plus pages that proceed it in the actual book.)

Once you've made the noodles, then you can use them in this bowl of Vegan Chickpea Shoyu, which is a bowl I have been meaning to make myself for a long time now. (This being ramen, the "recipe" includes a bunch of sub-recipes for each of the elements that goes into it.)

Finally: I have a signed copy of Homemade Ramen to send to one randomly-chosen Wordloaf paid subscriber (US addresses only, please). If you want in on it, leave a comment with your favorite style of ramen (or other Asian noodle) after the fold. I'll select the winner a week from tomorrow, on November 12.

—Andrew