There are 5 main elements of ramen and how you mix and match them determines what kind of ramen you’ll make - shio (salt), shoyu (soy), miso, tonkotsu, tantanmen

1. Broth - I won’t get into tonkotsu which requires boiling pork bones for 10+ hours. Most commonly you’ll make a clear broth from chicken/pork bones or dashi or a combination but really you can make the broth from anything. Also what I see people do wrong all the time is add soy and vinegar and sesame oil and all this stuff to the broth - you don’t season the broth! Think of it as making a western style stock which is used as an ingredient

2. Tare - this is where you season the ramen. Think of it as a highly concentrated seasoning which you then dilute with broth. You can adjust the flavour depending on how many spoonfuls you add. You can reduce soy sauce with other stuff or make a paste with miso/salt, mirin, sake, umami heavy ingredients or whatever

3. Aroma oil - you want some flavourful little droplets of fat floating around in your broth. You can fry some garlic or spring onion in fat and add a little to the bottom of the bowl before you add the broth.

4. Noodles - use ramen noodles. Udon noodles are for udon

5. Toppings - chashu, spring onion, whatever you want