Our specialty mentsuyu

The key to enjoying delicious noodles is the mentsuyu, the noodle broth.

TumuLab’s noodle sauce is filled with the passion of its developer, Chie Tsumura, the Managing Director of Tsumura Noodle Factory.

A look back on the development of mentsuyu over the years.

The secret is “o-dashi”. Made exclusively for Tsumura Noodle Factory’s noodles

When we decided to open TumuLab, the most difficult thing we had to do was make the noodle broth.

The company’s long process of making mentsuyu began with the underlying thought, “We want people to enjoy the noodle and most delicious broth that our president and employees work so hard to make.“

The first step was to find the proportions to blend the base stock.
I have always been interested in dashi stock itself, and in 2018 I obtained the qualification of a “dashi sommelier.” I consulted the instructor I met there, Kazumoto Momoi, president of Nagami Co., Ltd.

When I told Mr. Momoi that I was going to use hiyamugi as the main ingredient at the store, he advised me, “You should definitely include mackerel,” and he made dozens of prototype soup stocks.

If there is a lot of kelp in the soup stock, it will taste fishy, ​​and the taste can really change depending on the ingredients used.

In the end, this dashi was created. It has a blend of bonito flakes, mackerel flakes, kelp, and dried sardines.

Among those ingredients, we identified the blend with the best balance of dashi flavor and decided to use these without any chemical seasonings or salt; we created an original dashi that only goes well with Tsumura Noodle Factory’s noodles.

This product is also sold in stores and online.

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For the dashi we use at our store, we have large commercial-grade dashi packs made for us, and each time we make a large amount of dashi in a stockpot.

The Japanese tradition flavor of “soy sauce and mirin” enhances the delicious taste

Of course, you can’t make delicious mentsuyu just by being particular about the stock.

The most difficult part was making soy sauce, which I tried many times by buying it from a store that stocked carefully selected seasonings and by directly calling breweries all over the country and asking them to send me samples. After searching all over the country, I decided on Marushima Soy Sauce’s “Shodoshima Soy Sauce.” We use mirin from Hakusen Sake Brewery in Gifu Prefecture, which is recommended by Tomi Sasaki.

Tomi is currently a food advisor in Okito Town, Hokkaido. They have appeared on NHK Professional Work Style, and are a celebrity who created a culture that is said to be the best school lunch in Japan.

This mirin has no unnecessary ingredients, giving the stock a crisp and clean flavor.

It was worth the time it took to develop it. This “comeback”, which was a difficult task, but with much effort was successfully completed

Now that you have all the ingredients, it’s time to start making the mentsuyu. This is the process of determining the proportions of seasonings.

Although I nearly gave up on this task multiple times, I held onto the salt meter for six months. The current mentsuyu is the result of experimenting every day to find out which concentration is the most delicious.

Without making any compromises or worrying about cost, I relentlessly continued to pursue delicious food. When it was finally perfected, I was very happy.

Every day I hear from customers that it’s delicious, so I am really glad that I took the time to develop it and didn’t compromise.

In fact, this mentsuyu is further modified when eaten with cold hiyamugi. By doing so, it turns into a mentsuyu that easily gets mixed in with the noodles.

The noodles are delicious, but please try it together with the mentsuyu at TumuLab.