(part of the Secret Pro Techniques ramen technique series)

@Elvin Yung <@shikaku.ramen>

I didn't like bamboo shoots for a very long time for some reason, but seriously getting into ramen made me love them. Now I consider them to be a sine qua non in an overwhelming majority of styles of ramen.

That said, it's really hard to get real menma outside Japan, especially if you're not already in bed with a Japanese restaurant or willing to buy at wholesale volumes. Compounding the issue, the actual fermentation process is often secretive, with details hidden or omitted in confusing texts.

This is a menma process cobbled together from my poor Japanese literacy, along with testing by the collective brain trust of the ramen nerd community. This process might not be 100% how menma is actually made in Japan, but it works, and it gets you a product that's probably at least halfway close to what you want.

For this recipe, you can use a variety of bamboo shoots. I usually use the 280g cans of young bamboo shoot tips, but people have tried this method with the frozen stuff. Preboiled should be fine here in general. For Japanese-branded bamboo shoots, you'll see 水煮 (mizuni) on the package label to indicate that it has been preboiled.

The basic method is this:

  1. Cut the bamboo shoots into appropriate slices. You'll want to cut them into slightly larger pieces than you expect to need for your final product, as they shrink by quite a bit during the dehydrate-rehydrate stages. I like to cut them into a variety of shapes so that I can cover a larger variety in a single batch (especially since the menma needs are different for different types of ramen).
  2. Soak the bamboo shoots in copious water, changing water regularly (every couple hours). The goal is to get as much of the funk out of the shoots as possible. I do usually for around a day, sometimes up to two days, based on smell.
  3. If your bamboo shoots are raw, boil it at this step, as raw bamboo shoots can contain cyanide.
  4. Fermentation: there are a a variety of methods that Japanese manufacturers use, including some of which seem closer to shiozuke and nukazuke, but the basic method that works is a straight lactoferment. The basic method here is to lacto-ferment in a 2% brine for 2+ weeks. Here I do the Noma method, which means that I weigh out the shoots and water in the container, and add 2% of its total weight in pickling salt. Adding cultures or other ferments into the same container to help the fermentation along may also help here.
  5. Dehydrate: traditionally, menma is sundried for multiple days, but a dehydrator speeds up this significantly and seemingly without a lot of textural difference. I like to do around 60c until the shoots look dessicated/brittle, about 3-4 hours.
  6. Rehydrate: Give the shoots an initial boil for about 10-15 minutes in water, then further rehydrate in water for upwards of 3-6 hours. (I haven't played much with the dials here yet, but my impression is that a lot of the final texture is affected here.)
  7. Marinate: I usually either simmer or cold-steep a mix of soy, sake, mirin, dashi elements, and sesame oil. Keizo's menma is pretty sweet, and it's generally what I aim for, although I tend to make it slightly more balanced out with savoriness and dashi flavors.

Example Marinades

Here's a listing of a few marinating liquids I've tried before. It varies from batch to batch, and will likely be very highly up to your preference (i.e. you possibly won't like these), but I'm leaving them up here anyways for posterity.