Freeze drying ramen noodle add ins
My mother and her husband's hobby is trawling Facebook marketplace for things they never realized they wanted (and often repairing them) and they managed to obtain a Harvest Right Freeze Dryer at a laughably low price. They've had some fun with it, and I'll be over soon and am considering giving it a try.
We're getting into winter, so my first thought was to freeze dry some toppings to pour into my ramen as needed -- I often add whatever is in my fridge, but it would be nice to have something mindless to throw in. Once you're running the dryer, it makes sense to fill it completely for efficiency's sake, so I'd be making a good quantity. There are 5 trays, so it would make sense to do 5 different mixes, though I could do more than that by making a tray separator with foil.
A little bit on freeze drying: To do it efficiently, you pre-freeze whatever you want to dry. Small or thin pieces are best, because they will sublimate out moisture faster, meaning the cycle completes faster. That's important, because the whole assembly uses a ton of electricity. Things that are very fatty or oily (ie, bacon or peanut butter) will not freeze dry well, and then will not be shelf stable after drying either. The other benefit of small pieces is that they rehydrate faster in liquid.
My first thoughts were a mix with frozen peas, carrots, broccoli and edamame (maybe chicken? But that's more work because it would need to be cooked first). Perhaps another with chopped napa cabbage, grated ginger and garlic...? I considered just doing individual ingredients, but I think it would just be easier for me to have a premade packet I can open and go. I typically buy chicken ramen, but I'll occasionally get something different.
There aren't any big Asian grocers anywhere near where the freeze dryer is, so any obscure ingredients I would want to dry, I would have to bring with me.
Let me know your ideas!
I got a large bag of freeze-dried "seafood-flavor ramen topper" at Costco a couple of months ago, and it's pretty good. The ingredients include carrot, cabbage, green onion, seaweed, shiitake mushroom, dashi kelp (kombu), sliced fish cake, and imitation crab.
You can get all kinds of surimi (shaped fish cake) at an Asian grocery store. You'll only find pre-dried seaweed and kombu, but the other components should be within reach. Many soups and recipes include dried small fish or shrimp - it's probably not cost-effective to dry these yourself, but packaged dried fish and shrimp can be added to your home-dried vegetable mixes. You mentioned you don't have an Asian grocery nearby, but imitation crab surimi (those "Krab" sticks) are everywhere, and you can get most of the typical Japanese or other Asian food ingredients online. [We just got back from a trip to a big city two hours away, and did a huge Asian pantry restocking while there.]
Dried green onions are worth having around on their own as an easy topping for other foods - rice, omelets, soups, etc.
Other ideas:
Fried shallots. Dried fried shallots are a component of many Vietnamese and Thai dishes - they're delicious in soup. Dried lemongrass, ginger, cilantro, basil, chillies, and lime peel would round this out as a general-purpose broth seasoning. Add fish sauce, a little sugar, mushrooms, plus tamarind and tomato pastes to the mix in the freeze dryer if you're feeling adventurous and like sour tastes in soup. Instant tom yum!
I've seen egg furikake (a mix of seaweed, bonito flakes, sesame, MSG, etc., a common Japanese rice and soup topping). I think the trick with eggs is to scramble them and cook in omelet form, then slice, cube, or mince the omelet and freeze-dry.
This might sound unappetizing, but it's become common to add cheese to soups and noodles in Japan and Korea, as a fancy Westernization. Dried Parmesan would probably work well as an umami additive, or white cheddar if you like gooey mac and cheese richness. Dried white cheddar powder is also handy for popcorn.
I would thoroughly cook any meat, egg, or dairy ingredients before freeze-drying. Some nasty bacteria can survive dessication. [The labels on my cats' freeze-dried raw treats specifically warn about Salmonella, but Listeria, Brucella, and other unpleasantness resist drying, too.]
Have fun!
This has a ton of really great ideas, thank you so much! How big are the pieces in your premade mix, particularly for the cabbage?
I don't think any piece is much bigger than a centimeter. The carrots are short matchsticks. The surimi slices are paper-thin, and the imitation crab chunks are about pea-sized.
Sliced mushrooms freeze dry great, and add a lot of umami to broths. Works a lot better than regular drying since it doesn't collapse the cell structures. Preserves the texture far better. There are a lot of fancy mushrooms you can add to ramen to dramatically increase its natural msg.
I wonder if you fry an egg (maybe just the white), lightly freeze it, cut it into strips, and freeze-dry those, how well they'd reconstitute. Could work, I think.
I know that freezing does weird things to egg yolk texture -- Ann Reardon talked about this in one of her more recent debunking videos iirc -- so I don't think anything with a runny yolk would work properly. But I do wonder how something like a hardboiled egg, where the yolk is already fully cooked, would work.
I'd also add raw thinly sliced pork, mushrooms and corn. Rehydrate the pork, pat dry and drop into a searing hot pan before adding to ramen.
Electricity aside, if I had a freeze dryer at home I'd also make large batches of parboiled rice, store all the fruit (especially berries) and batches of mirepoix/trinity that I can conveniently drop into a soup or stew.
Ooh, mirapoix is an interesting idea. Rehydration might make it hard to brown the mirapoix for what you're cooking though, since it would be wet. This thread is making clear that I need to know more about texture after rehydration...
I know myself well enough to know I wouldn't want to be rehydrating meet to cook it afterward.
I unfortunately don't really know enough about freeze drying to give good answers here -- I'm not sure how much things you freeze dry maintain their texture after you rehydrate them. I think veggies are probably the best ramen add-ins to try, but I worry whether it'd ruin the texture with something like napa/chinese cabbage. I also wonder how much flavor would be affected for herbs and aromatics -- I'd be interested in your ginger/garlic ideas and very curious to see how freeze dried cilantro tastes after rehydration.
Flavor is preserved amazingly well. My mother did pineapple, and that's almost perfect. She does little drops of yogurt, and if not for the texture, it tastes like fresh out of the fridge.
Texture after rehydration will vary widly based on the ratio of water/sugar/fat/fiber of the food. Most of what my mom has done has been for eating out of hand (the crunch in things that shouldn't be crunchy is fun to experience), so I don't have too much experience. I know that tomatoes, for example, will get very soggy, but that seems like it's fine for soup?
I'm excited to see how your attempts go! It seems fun to experiment with. Herbs and aromatics have a bunch of weird properties that could make keeping flavor around hard, so I'm excited to see what happens if you try it.
More practically, mushrooms as everyone else suggested are a good idea. I forgot those entirely because I mostly buy mine at the Asian grocery store already dried or freeze dried (I've never checked what method they actually use tbh). They're possibly the perfect thing to preserve this way tbh.
Freeze dried fruit powders like rasp and strawberries are super expensive but they will super up your pastry game. That's what I would do with the machine all day: freeze-drying berries and sell them as snacks at farmer's markets.
Anyway the best ramen toppings are freeze dried seaweed, octopus thin slices, prawn, fish, jellyfish and shiitake. Umame bits essentially. Brisket and daikon also good.
I also love free dried scrambled egg but I know the texture is not for everyone.
I've seen https://theramenbae.com/ advertised online, and their combos and items may give you some fun ideas. Please let us know how it works out, I've always wanted to play with a freeze drier myself!