The 45-year-old beef stew

A vintage antique dating back to the ancient Chinese, a barrel of Italian wine sitting in the cellar, or a big old oak tree no one knows when it was a seedling. Many things get better with time. For the family at Wattana Panich (Bangkok, Thailand), they know exactly what that thing is – a broth.

Good broth takes time to cook. As animal bones are stewed in liquid for a very long period of time, the protein inside breaks down, giving the broth an intense and deep flavor profile. This flavor is called ‘umami’ (うま味 in Japanese), the fifth taste alongside sweet, salty, sour and spicy, first scientifically identified by professor Kikunea Ikeda at Tokyo Imperial University. The longer you simmer those bones, the more flavorful the broth gets.

For comparison, you need around 12-24 hours on average to make excellent broth for phở, and 60 hours to make authentic ramen broth. Wattana Panich Beef Noodle Restaurant has been around since as far as the 1970s, and is famous for a reason: For 45 years, they have never changed their broth. Not the recipe, but the soup itself.

They preserve the broth by straining it at the end of the day, putting it in jars and preserve for the next day. Early in the morning, the people over at Wattana Panich would dump it out to a gigantic pot and heat it up again. The same soup is used, but other ingredients are fresh for each day. More meat equals more flavor, and more flavor means better soup the following day.

Wattana Panich has been consistently serving a wide variety of noodles with its signature broth. Each serving contains stewed beef, rare beef, meatballs, tripes, and internal organs. Fresh herbs are added for extra aroma, with spring onion for a bit of kick. For many Thai people, a warm bowl of beef noodles soup (or neua tune in their language) is the ultimate comfort food.

People there also need to refill the liquid from time to time by having another pot in which they simmer new beef bones. If you are lucky enough, you can see them adding new broth into the mix at times.

Special thanks to #GreatBigStory for providing us with ideas on the subject. Please check out their channel in the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCajXeitgFL-rb5-gXI-aG8Q