100% official GBAChef: Instant noodles

[Veho]

With FAST's blessing, look, it has the logo and everything:

Ramen! (The instant kind.)

Convenient quick and easy meal for the culinary deprived, horrible salt-laden grease-filled MSG-infested heart attack in a bowl, or salvation to the starving (drunken) college student and bachelor masses, there are few who at some point in time haven't tried the ubiquitous 3-minute miracle meal (or 5 minute, for the fancy stuff).

Oh suck it up, you big baby, just remember to drink a gallon of water with each bowl and you'll be fine.​

So a few cents* will give you a bowl of warm broth packed chock full of delicious flavor enhancers and a handful of noodles for the carbs and fat content, making the trifecta of salty greasy carby goodness that hits all the right spots and makes you happy... for about half an hour, and then you're hungry again.

*(Cut-throat competition in the instant noodle world has kept them at ridiculously low prices (by replacing anything remotely resembling actual food with MSG) that make them (seem like) a viable meal or cooking ingredient.)

But one can (and often does) get sick of the plain ramen pack, and countless ways to upgrade, boost, enhance, spruce, spice and ramp up, and dare I say "hack", your noodle ( ) are a thing, ranging from adding a few more bottled sauces and spices, via simple fats and acids, boiled eggs and spring onions and leftover meats, assorted vegetation, cheese and nuts, to elaborate meals where the original brick of ramen is just a long distant inspiration, to the point where people say "take instant ramen and throw away the flavor packet-" and that's where it gets a little bit silly because a) they make plain instant noodles if you don't intend to use the flavor packet, and b) if you have access to the range of ingredients and cooking space and apparatus (not to mention budget), and the skill to chop and cook, why not just make a noodle soup from the get-go and avoid instant ramen in the first place? I appreciate that "spicing up" instant ramen is, for some, a stepping stone towards learning how to cook, but when you reach the point where you're replacing the flavor packet with actual flavor, and instant noodles with regular noodles because they are cheaper and better, then the dish has become a stone soup and you realize you didn't need the instant noodles at all, the soup was inside you all along. (Ew.)

The Holy Grail;

alt caption: You VS the guy she told you not to worry about​

So, Temp: do you ramen? If so, do you hack, boost or upgrade the ramen? And if so, how?

 

[Dionicio3]

I normally add some tomato, chicken flavoring thing to it and it tastes gud

 

[fvig2001]

I just drown it in vegetables, add a poached egg and some sesame oil then top it with toasted sesame seeds.

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

I leave out the packet lol add veggies and eggs and soy sauce sometimes some fresh chopped onion and maybe beef bullion hmmm some shrimp or chicken lol

https://www.mattfischer.com/ramen/archives/248

 

[PrincessLillie]

Convenient quick and easy meal for the culinary deprived, horrible salt-laden grease-filled MSG-infested heart attack in a bowl, or salvation to the starving (drunken) college student and bachelor masses

Yeah, fuck you too.

So, Temp: do you ramen? If so, do you hack, boost or upgrade the ramen? And if so, how?

I eat ramen with Chicken flavoring.

 

[iAqua]

do you ramen? If so, do you hack, boost or upgrade the ramen? And if so, how?

hot oil and a egg, nuff said.

 

[rouge2t7]

I like chicken flavouring and sometimes soy sauce- I'm a very simple human.

 

[johnbus]

Regular chicken flavoring with some cayenne pepper.

As far as I can tell, cayenne is the only truly universal ingredient.

 

[Ritsuki]

Ohhhhh I love that ! I love food and cooking, and actually, giving advices or easy recepies for geeks like us would be a nice touch !

Actually last time I ate ramen at home, I did the broth from scratch (pork broth with miso and soy sauce), added fresh spring onions, an egg, seaweed, and pork slices cooked in the broth then grilled in a pan. Not very difficult to do, but quite time consuming.

 

[YugamiSekai]

Drain the soup, add the packet, add some BBQ sauce, tear up a slice of ham in it, along with some cheese

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Spoiler

I usually follow that for the most part, though I add in more veggies than just the recommended. I like using two eggs when I make packet ramen, one soft boiled and one poached with the noodles. Depends on the particular flavor I'm going for if I use the seasoning packets, with chicken I don't bother and make my own, with beef I'll usually use like half and then soy sauce. Don't eat oriental or shrimp too often, so I haven't developed a custom flavor for those so I just use the seasoning for them.

For those cheapo packaged Yakisoba noodles I do the same, generally, though I usually always use the seasoning packet provided. I mainly stick to chicken there, but if I have some pork chops or something leftover from dinner I'll use that, too.

 

[Sathya]

I normally add some tomato, chicken flavoring thing to it and it tastes gud

you are not normal, guys.... so dont say normally and say

 

[Veho]

Yeah, fuck you too.

So anyway.
I rarely eat instant noodles at home, but I have a huge stash at work for when I get a hankering around 3AM and haven't brought a packed lunch from home. I also have a bunch of bits and bobs and stuff to add. Since I'm limited to an electric kettle and ingredients that can keep in a cupboard for months (i.e. dried, powdered and/or bottled), and anything that requires more prep than "add hot water and let rest for 5 minutes" is right out (although I suppose I could chop some shallots with a pocket knife on a hardbound copy of office regulations; said regulations explicitly forbidding food prep in the office, which would make it a delicious (HAH) irony). So as far as ramping up one's instant noodles goes, my recommendations are a little specific.

I have a bag of dehydrated vegetables, they're a must. They add vegetably flavor and the chunky bits give texture because I like to chew on something.

(Often times what's advertised as "vegetable soup/stock mix" is only 15% dried vegetables and the rest is salt, which is fine elsewhere but not if you're adding it to a dish that already has 75% RDA. Other thing to look out for is dried potato, that is commonly used as filler in dried vegetable mixes. It needs to be simmered for a while to be edible. Dehydrated vegetables are hella expensive, relatively speaking, but that's understandable seeing how 80-90% of a piece of veg is water so when you dry it you get left with nothing.)

Crispy fried onion is also great, if you add them at the end they're crispy, and if you add them at the start they dissolve in the broth and thicken and sweeten it up a bit and add great flavor. #FrenchOnionSoup, #masterchef

Maggi Liquid Seasoning (or a generic equivalent). It's wheat-based, flavored with with "flavouring" (Maggi refuses to elaborate), and tastes something like a vegetable stock cube dissolved in soy sauce. It goes in pretty much anything, it's pretty good.

Satay seasoning / satay sauce. Nice and peanutty. On that note, plain peanut butter goes great in ramen but if I ever did bring a jar to work I'd just eat it outright and not save it for ramen.

Other than that, I have a few stock cubes and instant soup packets, and a few bricks of plain instant noodles, and a package of couscous (instant). I can mix and match

Now that I come to describe it, my powdered pantry might seem weird

 

[Hanafuda]

I eat ramen with Chicken flavoring.

I've lived almost 2 and 1/2 years of my life in Japan and have eaten some extremely good, real ramen. I know what the good stuff is.

I've also eaten quite a bit of the instant ramen, and they have some far superior varieties in Japan that blow away the stuff we get here.

But I gotta say, as simple as this is, it's pretty tasty.

Cook up a pack of "creamy chicken" cheap ramen. Maruchan brand. Then add about 1/4 teaspoon of curry powder. A little less maybe, but no more. S&B curry powder is the standard, easy to find.

Trust me.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

I leave out the packet lol add veggies and eggs and soy sauce sometimes some fresh chopped onion and maybe beef bullion hmmm some shrimp or chicken lol

You said eggs, how does that work?

 

[Youkai]

Nah, actually Ramen isn't to my taste even though my GF said the original one in Japan is really good ... never tried it there.

I usually eat instand Yakisoba made by Nissin (big Campany selling their instand stuff world wide)

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

You said eggs, how does that work?

Usually I crack the eggs open in a bowl and whip them up, then as the soup is boiling and almost done, I pour the eggs into the boiling soup.

It comes out like egg drop soup but more creamy. If your looking for exact egg drop soup consistency you put in a spoon full of white vinegar in the soup before the eggs

Other times I will hard boil or even soft boil the eggs before hand. and just peel and cut them in half to add to the soup.

 

[fatsquirrel]

Homemade Yakisoba bois, thats the shit right there.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Usually I crack the eggs open in a bowl and whip them up, then as the soup is boiling and almost done, I pour the eggs into the boiling soup.

It comes out like egg drop soup but more creamy. If your looking for exact egg drop soup consistency you put in a spoon full of white vinegar in the soup before the eggs

Other times I will hard boil or even soft boil the eggs before hand. and just peel and cut them in half to add to the soup.

I had fried and scrambled eggs on pizza.

But not how you described it. First of all I eat ramen with tomato sauce cause I save the actual seasoning packet for other stuff. That is just in a container in my room.

Usually save it for something else Like Linguini noodles. Anyway I add some adobo, curry powder, 4 Cheese tomato sauce, pepper, onions, garlic, parsley flakes, bacon bits, hotsauce and soysauce. (Sometimes that store bought sweet and sour sauce or General TSO chicken sauce) then I add any meats I want like vienna sausages, Frankfurter, hamburger or chicken nuggets with cheese inside and vegetables. I wanted to try alfredo sauce though.

 

[Deleted member 408979]

>grab seasoning packet.
>empty out the packet.
>inhale flavor powder.