Watch Your Pasta Turn Into Ramen Noodles With Just One Ingredient

Spaghetti noodles and ramen are both made primarily from wheat flour, but they have a different look and feel to them. Ramen noodles appear more yellowish, despite the fact that they lack egg, and they also have a springier snap to them. While you could substitute spaghetti — or, better yet, its thinner sibling, angel hair – for the necessary noodles, it will make a disappointing difference in a dish like ramen chashu or abura soba (Japanese-style ramen without the broth). What you can do, however, is take one simple step involving a pretty basic pantry ingredient: baking soda.

You see, the thing that makes ramen's texture so special is that the noodle dough is made with an alkaline ingredient called kansui that provides their characteristic bounce. The easiest way to replicate this quality using store-bought pasta is to boil it with a small amount of baking soda in the water. While the baking soda may lend a slightly bitter flavor to the noodles, it should be undetectable once spices and broth have been added. Let the type of seasonings you're using dictate the amount of baking soda you add to the water. If you're using, say, a light chicken broth flavored with sesame oil and sliced scallions, opt for two teaspoons per quart of water. If your ramen will be served in a bold broth with lots of tare (the secret sauce for ramen), go with a tablespoon of soda for the same amount of water.

So is kansui the same thing as baking soda? Not quite. Kansui is primarily composed of sodium carbonate, while baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. While both are alkaline, the latter is considerably less so. It can, however, be transformed into sodium carbonate simply by baking it in the oven. Heating the sodium bicarbonate like this breaks chemical bonds, releasing CO2 and H2O, and leaving behind pure sodium carbonate. Baking instructions allow for variance in time and temperature, calling for anywhere between 250 degrees Fahrenheit for one hour to 350 degrees Fahrenheit for between two and five hours. If you're anxious to have it turn out perfectly, you can weigh it before you begin and again when you think it's done; the weight should be reduced by about one-third.

Sodium carbonate, aka baked baking soda, isn't just used for making ramen noodles, it also pops up in recipes for a few other types of baked goods. It is sometimes added to the water used to boil bagels, and can also be used for the boiling water into which pretzels are dipped. If you make a big batch of it, you can keep it in a lidded jar in the pantry for as long as you like, but there is one major caveat: Be very, very careful when handling sodium carbonate since it's way more caustic than baking soda. Don't touch it with your bare hands, and instead use either a spoon or rubber gloves.