Category: Food

Ramen 7: Reboot!

June 7, 2021

The long-awaited day has arrived: I found more chicken ramen! A lot more in fact, so the series will now resume. Let’s go…

Tradition Noodles Soup Chicken Flavor (290 Calories, 6 g fat, 960 mg sodium)

This is a kosher product which has artificial taste. My hopes were high since the king of all chicken ramen (Gefen) is similar, but when I opened the cup I was surprised to see no flavor packet. It was just noodles, with perhaps the slightest trace of flavoring dried onto them.

I followed the instructions and it cooked well, but there was just no taste. It was just hot water with flavorless noodles in it. The definition of empty calories. Was mine a defect? Who knows, but I didn’t eat it and based on what I did try this is an easy 0/10.

Tradition Ramen Noodle Soup Chicken Flavor (360 Calories, 16 g fat, 1540 mg sodium)

Let’s try the brick version of the same product. Compared to other bricks this seemed to have a lot of calories/fat/sodium so the taste potential was high. Given the seeming absence of flavor in the cup I was surprised by the size of the flavor pack in this, which was about twice as big as in other bricks.

They noodles cooked well and everything seemed good until I opened and added the flavor. It smelled absolutely awful. Our entire kitchen was filled with a vile smell like rotting vegetables and it took quite a bit of fortitude for me to actually try the finished product.

Surprise surprise, it was dire. It tasted as bad as it smelled: more like dirt than chicken. It’s hard to understand how this is even marketed as a chicken product, or who would enjoy this. One bite was more than enough for me! Since it was worse than the cup I have to give -5/10

Gefen Noodle Soup Hearty Chicken Flavor (300 Calories, 13 g fat, 1200 mg sodium)

I have more products by Tradition, but after the two above they will have to wait. It was time to try the alternate flavor of Gefen that recently appeared in stores.

‘Hearty chicken’ it says, but the nutritional info is identical to their plain chicken flavor, and aside from the nifty purple packaging everything about it looks the same, including the contents.

I eagerly cooked it, waiting to see how hearty it was compared to the other. I even used the included fork for the full experience! One taste was all I needed: this is exactly the same as the ‘normal’ chicken Gefen cup!

But that’s hardly a critique, since a Gefen chicken cup is the King of Ramen. This therefore is the king in another gown, just as regal, and just as delicious. Without a doubt, this is another 10/10!

Next installment you can look forward to some more unusual (but still plain chicken) products, as this taster ventures into culinary areas he may have never visited before. Stay tuned…

Ramen 6: Finale!

April 12, 2021

And so we reach the final ramen post. But I’m not eating ramen today, I’m making it. Specifically, this:

It’s a plastic model kit of a ramen cup! This was made to commemorate 50 years of Cup Noodle and lest there be any doubt…

It’s not edible!

Here’s the contents:

As with all Bandai plastic kits the engineering is astonishing, and the pieces went together easily and almost seamlessly:

I particularly liked the lettering, which was made of plastic rather than used a sticker:

That’s not to say the kit had zero stickers. In fact it has a lot, but they’re easy to attach and make the finished product look incredibly lifelike:

Here’s a shot of the contents (pre-cooking, of course):

And here I faced a choice. Display it with the contents showing, or attach the lid? I chose the latter, and the contents of my cup will therefore be sealed away forever.

Here’s a shot showing scale next to a toy car I just happened to have:

It’s a fantastic kit, and I’ll be keeping it on permanent display 🙂

Ramen 5: Chicken Forever!

March 23, 2021

More ramen; you know the drill by now…

Kusari Noodles Chicken Ramen (280 Calories, 3 g fat, 1440 mg sodium)

Surprisingly this UK import is on shelves at Walmart. KLS had one of these flavors on one of our holidays and given I’ve found cup noodle products to be of general high quality in the UK I was hopeful about this one. I prepared it as instructed and opened my mouth…

And it was awful! The uncooked noodles were weirdly long and plastic, and when cooked were fibrous and difficult to bite through. But this was nothing compared to the taste, which was of effluvia and regret. I only managed half a spoonful before pouring the broth down the sink and tossing the ‘noodles’ in the trash. An easy score of 0/10

Chef Woo’s Roast Chicken (330 Calories, 14 g fat, 1220 mg sodium)

Another chicken flavour from this overpriced brand that recently found its way into our local supermarket. If you read the last installment you’ll have learned that these ramens were notable only for their blandness, so my expectations weren’t high.

But it was different… in a very bad way. Weirdly brown noodles with the consistency of rotten flesh floated limply in a briney broth redolent of decay. The rehydrated vegetables added nothing at all to an experience that started at the bottom and quickly descended. I’ll never eat this again, and I shouldn’t have even eaten the spoonful I had today. Score: -10/10

Gefen Ramen Noodles (392 Calories, 17 g fat, 1337 mg sodium)

Luckily, after the previous two horrors, I had a stash of God’s Own Ramen to fall back on. Back in my third installment I gave the cup noodle version of this 10/10 but KLS has maintained this brick ramen version to be even superior. Could that be true?

Preparation is easy and the delicate white noodles seem the same as those in the cup. There’s only one flavor packet here (no veggies) but it’s easy to prepare and you’ll be eating in no time. And the taste… it’s just sublime. This is without question the best brick ramen in existence and it’s hard to imagine how it could be improved. Does it surpass the cup version? Only a supertaster could decide! Another easy 10/10!

Amazingly this is (still!) not the final ramen post. Watch this space in a month or so for the next installment 🙂

Robot Claw