There’s nothing quite like gulping down a big bowlful of warming, hearty ramen complete with its silky noodles and colourful toppings. This 15 minute beef ramen is so much quicker to make than a traditional beef ramen and makes a delicious midweek family meal. YUM.

I’d recommend spending a few moments reading the following for useful information and tips on making this 15 minute beef ramen. If you’d prefer though, skip to the middle of the page for step-by-step instructions or jump to the bottom for quick recipe.

Note that 15 minutes is the approximate time to make this dish after you’ve gathered all of your ingredients. Actual preparation times may vary slightly due to factors like knife skills and how quickly your hob heats up.

Traditional Japanese Deliciousness

Ramen is thought to have originated in the 17^th century and remains one of Japan’s most loved dishes. Traditionalists may say that to make this dish ‘properly’, a broth base should be first created by boiling bones and meat for several hours, allowing the flavours to seep and marinade, resulting in a rich and yet light soup. All very delicious but all very time consuming!

So at first glance, it would appear not to be a dish that a busy person should attempt, however I have found that it is certainly possible to make a wonderfully tasty and rich ramen in a fraction of the time it takes normally and I think this 15 minute beef ramen recipe proves exactly that. 

Balancing Flavours

For a perfect beef ramen flavour, it’s critical to get the all-important balance of sweet, salty, sour, spicy and umami – the latter of which is famously celebrated in many Japanese dishes and translates roughly as as the ‘essence of deliciousness’ – a meaty, savoury undertone.

For this 15 minute beef ramen, I have listed the quantities of each ingredient in the recipe but it’s important to remember that you can absolutely feel free to add a little more or less of any particular ingredient if you want to emphasise one particular flavour, depending on your personal preferences. This is true of most of my recipes but especially this one. I personally am a huge lime and chilli fan so given the choice, my ramen would be highlighting these flavours but other people have different tastebuds.

In fact, feel free to totally omit any of the ingredients that you especially don’t enjoy, such as the chilli or even the coriander (some people seem to think that this tastes like soap…. what’s that about?!) But anyway, I’d suggest having a play around and seeing what works for you.

No-fuss steak prep

A final important word about this 15 minute beef ramen – the raw steak is sliced thinly then placed into the serving dish at which point you pour over the boiling hot ramen broth. This ensures the steak cooks sufficiently but only lightly. I love this method as it is so quick (no extra cooking of the beef required!) but also creates beautifully tender and soft slices of meat.

Of course if you prefer, you could always throw the steak slices into the broth to cook them for longer but this step of course takes extra valuable time, and is likely to result in a tougher texture to the meat.

15 minute beef ramen – step by step

Now lets take a look at a super handy step-by-step guide to making this deliciously quick 15 minute beef ramen, including useful photos to guide you along the way…

Serves 2

1) To get started, boil a full kettle while you assemble your ingredients.

2) Grab 100g (3.5 oz) of rice noodles and put them in a medium heatproof bowl. There are lots of types of rice noodle available – ranging from very fine/thin to the thicker type. I’ve used a medium-thickness noodle for this ramen recipe but the finer kind would work well too. Cover the noodles totally with boiling water. Leave until cooked according to pack instructions (typically 8-10 mins).

3) Crumble one beef stock cube into medium sized pan. Turn the heat on to medium/high and then cover the stock cube with 2 pints (1/2 litre) of boiling water.

4) Now that you’ve got your basic beef stock in a pan, heating nicely, it’s time to add the other ingredients to make the flavour really zing! Pop in 2 tablespoons of white miso paste (you can use brown miso if the white is unavailable where you live), then 2 tablespoons of fish sauce, 3 tablespoons of brown sugar, 2 teaspoons of ginger purée (note that I used pre-minced ginger from a jar – widely available and much quicker than prepping your own) 1 teaspoon minced garlic (again, I fully recommend using the pre-minced variety!) and finally, the juice from one large lime to the stock pan. Stir everything well to combine.

5) Take 115g (4 oz) of Shiitake mushrooms (note this is usually the size of a standard pack) and chop them into large chunks. Throw these into the stock broth and heat for around 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

6) While that’s bubbling away nicely, grab one medium sized red bell pepper and slice it into thin strips. Add these pepper pieces to the stock broth. Finally, add 100g (3.5 oz) of sugarsnap peas to the broth pan as your final vegetable. Simmer this all for a further 3 minutes, stirring occasionally and enjoying those yummy aromas as you do, mmm.

7) As the broth happily cooks away, drain the cooked noodles and divide them between two decent sized serving bowls. (Not too little, or they won’t hold everything. This beef ramen recipe makes a hearty quantity!)

9) Using a slotted spoon, scoop out all the vegetables out from the broth and place them into the serving bowls on top of the noodles, ensuring an equal amount gets into each bowl.

10) Put the broth back on the hob and turn the heat to max in order to bring it to a boil. You need to get it really hot for the next stage – cooking the steak.

11) Whilst the broth heats up nicely, slice the steak into 2-3mm thick slivers and place the raw slices on top of the noodles and veg. (Ok so this might sound bizarre – putting raw steak into the serving bowls – but bare with me, it’s all about to make sense….)

12) Take the boiling hot broth off the heat and using a ladle, quickly scoop it out and pour it evenly over the noodles in both bowls, focussing on saturating each one of the steak slices. They’ll turn brown as they cook lightly but remain soft and tender on the inside. Ensure every piece of meat has been fully covered by the broth to allow this to happen.

Now if you’d prefer, you can put the steak strips into the broth as it’s heating up then pour the broth and steak strips over the noodles all together, but this risks the meat becoming tough so I’d really recommend flash cooking it in the serving bowls as described above for the absolutely best result.

13) You’re almost done! Next, chop up two spring onions and one fresh red chilli. Sprinkle these both evenly into your ramen bowls, on top of everything else. Of course, if you aren’t a chilli fan just omit this particular ingredient from your ramen. Or if you like just a whisper of spice, de-seed the chilli before chopping it up. (I’m a total heat fiend so I like to use the whole chilli, seed and all!)

14) Last step – grab a small bunch of fresh coriander and roughly tear it with your hands, then scatter the leaves over the top. Some people really don’t seem to like coriander, so just like with the chilis, feel free to leave out this step entirely if you’d prefer.

15) Dig in! Sooooo good.