15-minute Vegan Miso Ramen

This easy vegan miso ramen is incredibly delicious and comes together in just fifteen minutes! Blend or process up the whole ingredients, cook for ten minutes, whisk in your miso and add noodles and toppings of choice.

It’s that simple. Enjoy your impossibly-quick-to-make miso ramen.

I’ve been working on this recipe for a year after seeing countless documentaries about ramen, its origins, and how important the stock was. I’ve tried tons of recipes and had several vegan ramen versions at restaurants here in Madrid but none of the light brothy vegan versions ever floated my boat.

Note this is a totally inauthentic recipe with shortcuts galore, but it tastes sooo good! I’m still dying to visit Japan and try every veggie dish there.

Enter a ton of experimentation and this recipe, one vegan miso ramen recipe to rule them all. The creamy easy vegan ramen broth is tasty enough to slurp up all on it’s own I promise, with a kick of spice you can dial up or down to suit your preference.

If slurpy tasty easy vegan soups ready in minutes are where it’s at for you, I think you’ll love this easy Indian spicy tomato soup, the easiest vegan tomato soup, or some light lemon lentil soup. Fancy something noodle-y and even quicker? Try my 10-minute sesame garlic ramen noodles.

How to make it

The super-simple vegan miso ramen broth is the key part of this recipe. You’re just going to prep the broth ingredients and set the broth to cook for ten minutes while you get any toppings you want ready and cook the noodles.

Grab the garlic and ginger and peel. Roughly chop the ginger and chuck into a food processor high-powered blender along with the garlic. Next grab a spring onion and chop off the white part, removing the root end. Chop it up and add to the processor.

Note that a spring onion is not the same as green onion or scallion – it’s the one that has a large onion-like bulbous white part with slimmer green parts above. I was totally confused about the differences for years, if you need a bit more clarification check out this resource.

If you don’t have a spring onion you can substitute a mild sweet white onion or enough white bits of scallions or green onions to fill one measuring cup.

Measure and add the sesame oil, sriracha, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and white pepper and add (see image one above). Process until as smooth as possible (image number two above), about two minutes. Next drizzle in one cup of water while still processing, until fully incorporated (image number three above).

One tablespoon of sriracha sauce will give a nice mild kick and extra flavor to this vegan miso ramen broth, but feel free to increase (or decrease) if desired. Don’t forget that the white pepper will also add a little kick, so start with less sriracha and later add more after tasting the finished ramen broth.

Decant the mixture to a medium-sized pot on high heat. Mix in the remaining seven cups of water (image number four above) and bring to almost-boiling before lowering the heat to medium, enough to keep it bubbling and simmering vigorously away.

Let cook for nine minutes while you prepare the noodles (according to the package instructions) and the optional toppings (see topping ideas below). Don’t be tempted to try cooking the ramen noodles in the broth, they will get gummy.

When the ramen noodles are cooked, drain, rinse with cold water and divide among bowls. If you leave them in the colander or sieve while cooking the broth they will be hard to separate into the bowls later.

When the timer goes off, turn off the heat and measure the miso into a small bowl (image five below).

I use – and recommend – red miso paste, but you can also substitute white miso, which has a slightly milder taste.

Take half a cup of the stock and whisk into the miso until there are no lumps (see image number six above), and return to the pot, mixing well.

Let cook on the residual heat for one minute more. It’s important not to boil the stock once the miso has been added – as a fermented food it has some pretty helpful probiotics it would be a shame to kill off by overcooking. Taste your delicious vegan miso ramen broth and test for salt.

Assemble the ramen

Ladle the miso broth over bowls that already contain cooked noodles. Don’t let the noodles sit a long time in the broth before they make it to the table or they will absorb more liquid and get bigger and overly soft.

If you have kids (mine freak out about very hot food), aren’t ready to eat or prefer your food on the warm side instead of piping-hot, just wait for the broth to cool and then add to the noodles when ready to serve.

If you have guests you may wish to put their toppings on before you bring the ramen out (so it looks super pretty) but if you’re just chilling out with the family home then I recommend a “ramen toppings bar”.

In other words, just pop the toppings into some individual ramekins or small bowls on the table and let everybody choose their own toppings. A ramen toppings bar is particularly effective with getting kids to eat their ramen!

Vegan ramen topping ideas

The broth is super important for lip-smackingly good ramen, but the toppings are still my favorite part (and so fun!). Below are some of my favorite toppings, both authentic and inauthentic (but super tasty).

• Chopped green onions/scallions/spring onions (the green parts only)
• Crushed or chopped salted peanuts (sooo good!)
• Raw beansprouts, plain or tossed with a little lemon juice or rice vinegar
• Fried tofu puffs
• Silken tofu cut into cubes (although good luck picking it up with your chopsticks!)
• Sweetcorn
• Toasted Nori (I snip it up into little pieces)
• Sesame seeds
• Flash-fried or simmered bok choi
• Cooked mushrooms

If I’m adding mushrooms or bok-choi I usally do it the lazy way and steam them over the broth or simmer them in the broth while it’s cooking, then fish them out with a spatula and put aside as toppings.

Storing leftovers

This recipe will make enough broth for four large or six smaller servings (depending on how large your bowls are).

If you want to make less you can of course easily halve the ingredient amounts to make less vegan miso ramen broth, but I recommend going ahead and making the full amount as it will keep four days in the fridge.

This means you’ll be able to have ramen for four-five days in a row which is kind of a no-brainer win-win situation for me. Haha (but actually I’m serious…).

Whatever you do, don’t freeze the broth (it separates upon being defrosted and no amount of whisking and reheating gets it to recombine).

Do not store the noodles with the broth. As I mentioned before, they will continue to absorb liquid and become pasty and rather unappetizing rather than al-dente.

If you’re looking to bring some ramen to work or school as a packed lunch, you can pack the cooked noodles and toppings together and the broth separately.

Then just reheat the broth and pour over the ramen noodles and toppings (no need to reheat the noodles, the hot broth should do so), and leave to stand for one minute.

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If you do end up making this recipe, please leave a star rating in the recipe card and a review, or take a picture and tag me on Instagram @the_fiery_vegetarian, I love seeing what you guys get up to!