Homemade Ramen Broth (Clear Chicken Base with Seasoning Liquid)

Everything good about a bowl of ramen comes from the liquid. Get the broth right and mediocre noodles and a single slice of meat will still make you happy. Get it wrong and no amount of chilli oil, cheese or crispy onions will rescue it. This is the base broth we build almost every ramen bowl on, and it is worth learning properly.

It tastes deeply savoury with a clean finish, a little sweet, and it has enough body to coat the noodles rather than run straight off them. The technique is simple but the timing matters: about 20 minutes of hands-on work and 2 hours of mostly unattended simmering, or 25 minutes total if you take the shortcut version at the end. Use it for any of the ramen bowls on our blog, and as a starting point for your own.

Why This Recipe Works

• Roasting the bones first builds colour and depth. Twenty-five minutes in a hot oven creates the browned flavours that raw simmering cannot produce, and it does it without you standing over the pan.
• The broth is separated into base and seasoning. A neutral stock plus a separately mixed seasoning liquid, or tare, means you can make one batch of broth and turn it into four different bowls. This is how kitchens do it.
• A bare simmer keeps it clear. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and scum into the liquid and gives you a murky, slightly greasy broth. Small lazy bubbles are what you want throughout.
• Skimming in the first fifteen minutes does most of the work. The grey foam that rises early is coagulated protein. Remove it then and the broth stays clean for the rest of the cook.
• Kombu and dried mushroom add savoury depth without meat. They contribute glutamates and guanylates that make the chicken taste more like itself. This is the single biggest upgrade most home broths are missing.
• Butter and a pinch of sugar at the end balance it. Fat carries flavour and a little sweetness rounds off the salt, which is why a good restaurant broth tastes complete rather than just salty.

Ingredient Notes

Chicken wings and carcass. Wings are the secret. They are full of collagen and skin, which is what gives the broth body and that slight stickiness on the lips. Most UK supermarket butcher counters will give you carcasses cheaply, and packs of wings are inexpensive. A whole chicken carcass left from a roast is ideal.

Kombu. Dried kelp, sold in sheets in Asian supermarkets and the world food aisle of larger UK supermarkets. It must never boil, or it turns slimy and faintly bitter. Steep it and remove it.

Dried shiitake mushrooms. A small handful. They bring an earthy savoury note and the soaking liquid is worth adding too. Dried are much more effective than fresh here.

Onion, garlic, ginger, spring onion. The aromatic base. Halve the onion and leave the skin on for a little extra colour. Bruise the garlic and ginger with the flat of a knife rather than chopping, so they release flavour slowly and are easy to fish out.

Light soy sauce. The backbone of the seasoning liquid. Light soy is saltier and thinner than dark soy; dark soy is for colour and has a molasses character that will dominate. Use light.

Mirin and sake. Mirin is sweet, sake is dry and both cook off their alcohol quickly. If you would rather not use sake, replace it with an equal quantity of water and add an extra half teaspoon of mirin.

White miso paste. Optional in the base, essential if you want a miso bowl. Add it off the boil, always slaked into a little hot liquid first.

Substitutions and Variations

Beef broth. Swap the chicken bones for 1 kg beef marrow bones and short rib, roast them for 35 minutes rather than 25, and simmer for 3 hours. Deeper, heavier and excellent under sliced beef and chilli oil.

Prawn broth. Roast 200 g prawn shells and heads with the chicken bones. It gives a sweet, shellfish-forward broth. Do not simmer prawn shells longer than 45 minutes or they turn bitter.

Miso broth. Whisk 3 to 4 tablespoons of white miso paste, slaked in hot broth, into the finished liquid off the heat. Do not boil afterwards.

Creamy broth. Whisk in 100 ml of unsweetened soya milk, oat milk or single cream per litre, off the heat. Silkier and gentler, and it softens chilli heat noticeably.

Spicy broth. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of chilli oil, or a teaspoon of chilli bean paste slaked in a little broth, per portion rather than to the whole pot. Everyone controls their own heat that way.

The 25-minute shortcut. Bring 1.2 litres of good fresh chicken stock to a simmer with the ginger, garlic, spring onion tops, kombu and dried shiitake. Steep 15 minutes, strain, then add the seasoning liquid and butter. It is genuinely good, and it is what most of us actually do midweek.

We have not tested a vegetarian or vegan version of this broth, so we are not able to describe one as suitable for those diets.

Step-by-Step Guidance

The card below has the full method. These are the points that separate a decent broth from a very good one.

Roasting the bones

Spread the wings and carcass in a single layer in a roasting tin — crowded bones steam instead of browning. Roast at 220°C for 25 minutes, until the skin is deep golden and there are dark sticky patches on the tin. Those patches are flavour. Tip the bones into your stockpot, then pour a mugful of hot water into the roasting tin, scrape everything loose with a wooden spoon and add that liquid to the pot as well.

The first fifteen minutes

Cover the bones with cold water and bring it up slowly. As it approaches a simmer, a grey-brown foam will rise. Skim it off with a ladle or a large spoon and discard it, repeating every few minutes until the surface is mostly clear. This is the only part of the process that needs your attention, and it takes about ten minutes.

Holding a bare simmer

Once skimmed, drop the heat until you can see only occasional small bubbles breaking the surface. If it is bubbling steadily, it is too hot. Partially cover the pan and leave it for two hours, topping up with hot water if the bones become exposed.

The kombu and mushrooms

These go in for the final 20 minutes only, off a full simmer. Kombu that boils goes slimy; shiitake that cooks too long turns muddy. Twenty minutes of gentle steeping extracts what you want and nothing you do not.

The seasoning liquid

Mix the soy sauce, mirin and sake in a small pan and warm gently for 2 minutes to take the raw edge off the alcohol. Keep it separate from the broth. When you build a bowl, put 3 to 4 tablespoons of seasoning liquid in the bottom of the bowl, then ladle 350 to 400 ml of hot broth over it. That is the professional method and it lets you season each bowl exactly.

Professional Tips

• Start with cold water. Cold water draws proteins and gelatine out gradually. Hot water seizes the surface of the bones and gives you a thinner, less flavourful result.
• Never boil, ever. If you take one thing from this page, take that. A bare simmer is the whole secret to a clean broth.
• Strain through a fine sieve, and do not press. Pushing the solids through forces fine particles into the liquid and clouds it. Let it drip.
• Chill it and lift the fat. Refrigerate the strained broth overnight and the fat sets into a pale layer you can lift off in one piece. Keep it in a jar — that schmaltz is superb for frying the aromatics on your next bowl.
• Judge the body, not just the flavour. A good broth will set to a soft jelly in the fridge. If yours stays completely liquid, use more wings next time.
• Season the bowl, not the pot. Unseasoned broth keeps and freezes better, and gives you the freedom to make a miso bowl one day and a plain soy bowl the next.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Likely cause	Solution	Prevention
Cloudy, murky broth	Boiled rather than simmered, or not skimmed early	Chill, lift the fat, and strain again through muslin; it will improve but not fully clear	Skim in the first 15 minutes and hold a bare simmer throughout
Broth tastes thin and watery	Too much water for the quantity of bones, or too short a simmer	Simmer uncovered to reduce by a quarter, then re-taste	Water should just cover the bones, and include plenty of wings
No body, does not set in the fridge	Not enough collagen-rich cuts	Add 500 g more wings and simmer another hour	At least half the weight of bones should be wings or feet
Slimy or slightly bitter	Kombu boiled or left in too long	Nothing reverses it; dilute with fresh stock	Add kombu for the final 20 minutes only, off a full simmer
Greasy on the lips	Fat emulsified into the liquid by hard boiling	Chill overnight and lift the solid fat layer off	Keep the heat low so the fat sits on top and can be skimmed
Too salty once assembled	Too much seasoning liquid per bowl	Top up with unseasoned hot broth	Start with 3 tbsp of seasoning liquid per bowl and taste
Smells faintly sour after storage	Cooled too slowly before refrigerating	Discard it	Cool in a shallow tray or sit the pan in cold water, and refrigerate within two hours

Serving Suggestions

This broth is the base for every bowl we make. Use it in our simple chicken ramen with a fried egg, under the omelette blanket in Ramen Deluxe, or in the dumpling ramen bowl with chilli oil. Add miso and it becomes the base for our cozy miso chicken ramen.

Topping-wise, it is worth making a batch of crispy sliced potatoes to prop on the edge of the bowl. And a small cup of plain seasoned broth on the side is a lovely thing to serve with chicken bao buns. See more in ramen bowls and our kitchen tips.

Storage and Reheating

• Refrigerating. Cool the strained broth quickly — a shallow tray or the pan sat in a sink of cold water — then refrigerate in sealed containers. Leave the fat layer on top while it stores, as it helps seal the broth, and lift it off before use.
• Freezing. The broth freezes very well. Freeze in 400 ml portions, which is one bowl, so you can defrost exactly what you need. Ice cube trays are useful for smaller amounts.
• Reheating. Bring to a bare simmer in a pan, not a rolling boil. Re-taste before seasoning, as freezing dulls flavour slightly.
• The seasoning liquid. Keeps separately in a sealed jar in the fridge and lasts considerably longer than the broth because of the salt and alcohol. Give it a shake before use.
• Reducing for storage. If freezer space is tight, reduce the strained broth by half, freeze the concentrate, and dilute with an equal amount of water when you reheat.

Follow standard UK food safety guidance: cool within two hours, refrigerate promptly and reheat until piping hot throughout. We have not carried out formal shelf-life testing on this broth, so please use your own judgement on storage periods.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use a shop-bought stock instead?

Yes, and the shortcut version in the notes is built around exactly that. A good fresh chilled chicken stock, steeped with the aromatics, kombu and dried shiitake and finished with the seasoning liquid and butter, makes a bowl most people would be very happy with. It will have less body than a wing-based broth.

Why does my broth not look milky like tonkotsu?

Because this is a clear-style broth, made deliberately at a bare simmer. Tonkotsu is a pork bone broth boiled hard for many hours specifically to emulsify fat and collagen into the liquid. Different technique, different goal.

Can I do this in a pressure cooker?

Yes. Roast the bones as normal, then pressure cook on high for 45 minutes with the aromatics and let it depressurise naturally. Add the kombu and shiitake afterwards, off the heat, steeping for 20 minutes. The body is excellent; the clarity is slightly poorer.

How much broth do I need per bowl?

Between 350 and 400 ml per portion, plus 3 to 4 tablespoons of seasoning liquid. This recipe makes roughly enough for six bowls.

Do I have to use kombu and dried shiitake?

You do not have to, but they are the cheapest and most effective upgrade available to a home ramen cook. Without them the broth tastes noticeably flatter and you will be tempted to fix it with salt, which is not the same thing.

Can I reuse the bones for a second batch?

You can make a lighter second broth from them, sometimes called a remouillage, and it is fine for cooking noodles or thinning a strong batch. It will not stand up on its own as a ramen broth.

Should the broth be salty on its own?

No. Taste the plain broth and it should be savoury but under-seasoned. All the salt comes from the seasoning liquid you add to the bowl. That separation is what makes the system flexible.

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Build Your Own Bowls From Here

Once you have a container of this in the freezer, ramen becomes a fifteen-minute dinner rather than a project. Work your way through our ramen bowl recipes using it as your base — and if you want to taste what we do with ours, the ramen menu at The Cozy Bowl on Biscot Road in Luton is available for delivery and collection.