麺づくり Men Zukuri Cup Ramen - Rich Tonkotsu (Maruchan)

It's not often that I eat or blog about cup ramen, but like the GooTa I ate while in Japan, this looked like something worth trying. Men Zukuri is a cup ramen that contains dehydrated nama-style noodles which are suprisingly not fried. Oh yeah, and it's only 327 calories...if that means anything.


The contents include:

• Powder soup
• Kayaku
• Special Oil
  
• Non fried noodles
  

The kayaku and powder soup go on top of the noodles followed by the boiling water. Then after 3 minutes you add the special oil and mix it around a bit before you begin slurping. For some reason it doesn't look like the picture on the lid (I guess it never does). Anyway, the soup was very sweet and creamy, but not quite as rich as I was expecting. There was also a strange underlying flavor that insinuated a bad aftertaste. I still don't know what it was, but I hope I never taste it again.


I was looking forward to the highlight of this ramen, the extra-fine noodles, but unfortunately they were also a disappointment. They practically tasted like thin plastic tubes. Fried or not, I won't be wasting 327 calories on this again.


FYI, the chashu tasted like an eraser. Too bad I can't erase this post from my mind...

GooTa 煮玉炙り叉焼 Cup Ramen (Day 6)

I needed something else to satisfy my ramen craving for day 6 so I picked up this 4 minute instant ramen at the nearby conbini. Apparently, GooTa has been popular with the salary-men who want more than just cup ramen but not have to pay the price of real ramen. An instant ramen that has real egg and chashu was enough to convince me to give it a try.


This instant ramen was slightly more complicated to make than just adding water and it went something like this. Open the bowl halfway. Take the purple pouch (menma, egg, chashu) and boil it separately in a pot on the stove. Then take the turqoise pouch and add it to the noodles and fill the bowl to the line with boiling water.


Rest the dark blue pouch on top of the bowl as you wait. After 4 minutes, add the blue pouch and the purple pouch to the rest of the ramen and enjoy!


Can you believe that this is instant? And not even nama? I can understand why the salary-men like it. If I closed my eyes it almost tasted like real ramen-ya ramen.


The noodles would have given it away though. They are slightly chewier than cup noodle and have instant written all over them.


This fresh-looking chashu didn't taste bad either, although it seemed to just evaporate in my mouth.


Now the egg was just disgusting. It's rubbery crunch will not join the rest the next time.


Overall (minus the egg), this GooTa was really good for being instant.