Beveren_Rabbit posted...
it takes about 26 hours to make ramen
You didn't ask but I typed it out anyway.
Ramen typically has 4 components: the noodles, the broth, the toppings and the tare (seasoning sauce). Let's take a "tonkotsu" (pork broth) ramen as an example.
The noodles are handmade. They are the quickest thing to come together and require the least amount of ingredients, but they're also the hardest part to get right. There is very little margin for error and a considerable amount of craft. Usually there's a special noodle making machine required, and this is expensive to buy and maintain. Any ramen shop worth its salt is making its own noodles.
The broth for tonkotsu is a pork bone stock made over 2-3 days, sometimes a week. You can use a lot of pork bones, but for the really authentic kind you need pigs trotters. The bones are cleaned and blanched and then the boil has to be kept at a high rolling boil for the entirety of the time you're making it. You can't stick it in a slow cooker and forget about it - in order to get the creamy consistency required you need to keep it very very hot and you need to keep topping it up with water. This means it has to be manned regularly.
The toppings usually includes pork chashu, which is a slow braised roll of pork in particular liquids. This is usually finished with a blowtorch to get the perfect char. The braise might take 8 hours or so. Other toppings including soft boiled marinated eggs, kelp seaweed, mushrooms, etc. You can have a lot of things here, and a ramen shop will treat and prepare each of these toppings carefully.
The tare is going to be some complex ultra reduction of soy sauce, chilli, mirin and dashi stock. Blackened garlic is often used. A lot of ingredients will get used to make a very small amount of sauce.
So you prepare all of this, and the final step is to combine it all together with just the right timing. You need everything hot but you don't want the noodles to overcook or the toppings to lose their freshness. You can't pre-prepare ramen bowls. If it sits in the bowl for too long the entire thing is ruined. So all of these things you spent days preparing now has to come together and be served at just the right temperature in a 30 second window.
That's one ramen bowl. Every ramen bowl is prepared something like this, regardless of the type of ramen or ingredients used.
If you try to do this at home, it ends up being expensive and needlessly fussy. So if you want a real bowl of ramen, the only way to have it is to go out and eat it somewhere.