This soup has just a few ingredients so it’s important to use the best. Using homemade broth is a great way to make this soup over the top delicious.
We used beef broth, but you can easily make this with chicken. If you’d like to make chicken broth, see our recipe here.
Your meat choice can be based on what you have leftover or you can use raw beef, pork or chicken. We used Beef Stew Meat, diced, seasoned and quickly seared in a pan.
Making Beef Broth
We use a variety of beef bones and cuts to make our beef broth. For this recipe, we used 1 – 5 lb. bag Beef Bones, 2 packages Beef Neck Bones and 2 packages Beef Soup Bones. We could have easily added a Beef Knuckle or Beef Marrow bone as well. More variety is good and including a cut with some meat, like the Beef Soup Bone, will give you the best flavor.
Place all cuts and bones into a large stock pot and fill with water using 1 quart water for each pound of beef bones/cuts. Or, fill just until water covers the bones. We did not thaw the beef and added it to the stock pot raw and frozen. Also, we did not brown the beef cuts so we’d end up with a milder tasting broth.
Bring pot to a gentle simmer and skim off film as it forms on the surface giving the pot a stir every so often. Once film is at a minimum, simmer for several hours partially covered. Strain through a fine mesh strainer. We use wide mouth Mason jars to hold our completed broth. The fat will rise to the top and it is easily skimmed off. This broth was cooled and afterwards, it gelled nicely from the collagen extracted from the beef cuts. This was a gelatin rich broth.
Preparing the Soup Broth
2 qts. Beef or Chicken Broth
Fresh Ginger – thick, 1″ piece, peeled, cut in half lengthwise
Fresh Garlic – 1 large clove peeled, cut in half lengthwise
1 T Fish Sauce
1 T Soy Sauce
Place all ingredients into medium pot and bring to a gentle simmer. Turn off heat, cover and set aside.
Vegetables, Meat & Udon
Fresh Spinach leaves, chopped
Carrot rounds, sliced very thinly
Hakurei Turnip, sliced very thinly
Thinly sliced mushrooms, Napa Cabbage, Bok Choy, scallions also work well
Udon noodles, prepared according to package, tossed with Toasted Sesame Oil
Meat of your choice – diced chicken, beef (Stew Meat, Steak) or pork
Fresh Cilantro
Immunichi or Curtido raw ferment
Season diced meat with salt, pepper, garlic and quickly sear in a hot pan just until barely done, then remove from heat. To make an individual serving, place cooked Udon noodles in a bowl and top with chopped spinach, thinly sliced carrots and turnip. Reheat broth to a gentle simmer. Ladle hot broth over vegetables and noodles and allow to sit for a minute or two until noodles and veggies are hot and spinach wilted. Sprinkle sauteed meat over the top. Top with fresh cilantro and raw ferment of your choice. Serve with soy sauce close at hand.