When I was a college student, I once accidentally ordered a box of 25 Shin Cups (I thought I was buying 5). It turned out to be the 20 happiest days of my college life. They were spicy, full of big beefy flavours, yet balanced by acidity and brightness. They were addictive. The flavour profile also turns out to be a wonderful solution to the leftover steak problem.

Leftover steak is a difficult issue. You can’t really just heat it up, because that would most likely ruin the desired doneness, unless you have a combi oven or a sous vide circulator. Even if you do, who wants to go through that much trouble for leftovers? A cold steak sandwich is rarely appealing either.

Enter Shin Cup style flavours.

Now, I am not even going to pretend I know how the real deal is manufactured, but it certainly has a few characteristics: 1) a deeply flavoured beef broth, which we can achieve by using the leftover bone as well as mincing and browning our leftover steak; 2) a ton of umami (I assume from MSG), which we can easily replicate by making any form of dashi plus a bit of soy sauce; 3) Acidity and brightness, which we can emulate by using both sauteed kimchi and adding some kimchi brine to the broth. The result is almost as good as the real thing.

As for garnishes, you can really just add whatever you feel like or whatever you have in the fridge. There is absolutely no need to shop for this dish, unless you are out of noodles…

A side note, this is actually my second time filming this. For the first one, I simply forgot to press record. For this one, I spilled a whole tray of roasted beef bones straight from the oven, but since it took me so long to have leftover steaks in the fridge, I decided to soldier through.

Ingredients

• Leftover steaks, preferable with bones
• Store bought dashi sachets - 2 bags
• Water - 800 ml
• Kimchi - about 70 mg
• Egg - soft boiled for 6.5 minutes
• (Optional) bean sprouts - blanched for 1 minute
• (Optional) Wood ear mushrooms - rehydrated, sliced and blanched for 1 minute
• Scallions - 2, thinly sliced
• Ramen noodles
• Soy sauce
• Vegetable oil

Directions

1. (If using beef bones) roast the bones in a preheated oven at 200°C (392°F) for about 30 minutes. Try not to spill the whole tray like me when you take them out.
2. Add the bones and the dashi sachets to a pot with 800 ml of water. Boil for 5 minutes, then remove the sachets and continue to simmer at medium heat (induction 6).
3. Squeeze most juice out from the kimchi, preserving the juice.
4. Finely chop the leftover steaks with the kimchi.
5. Add vegetable oil to a pan at medium high heat (induction 7.5), add the beef and kimchi, cook until well browned. Then lower the heat to medium (induction 6) and add a dash of soy sauce. Mix and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated. Set aside to keep warm.
6. Remove the bones from the dashi and add a dash of soy sauce to taste. Add the kimchi brine to taste. Keep the broth on a simmer.
7. Cook your noodles according to its instructions.
8. To plate, add the noodles to a ramen bowl and top with the beef mix, bean sprouts, wood ear mushrooms. Ladle the hot broth on top, then add the scallions and egg.

You can watch me cook this recipe on my YouTube channel.