I can’t believe that its not only been a year since we moved into our ‘new’ house. It’s also now been a year of working from home. It’s certainly been a strange one with some real downsides but also some positives. One of those positives has been lunch times. With a bit more time to make something nice and no need to buy slop from the work canteen, we’ve been eating really well. I always used to try my hardest to take pack-ups to work but you know what it’s like, often you just don’t have the time! But anyway, one thing I’ve really been enjoying at home is my once a week bowl of instant ramen!
As you know by now, I do have a not so secret love of instant ramen and have begun building a guide to the best ones out there, which I’ve lovingly called my Noodle Reviewooodle (no comments please!). Why not take a look and see what else I’ve been reviewing lately?
Samyang instant ramen
Samyang make some brilliant noodles and products – including the Buldak range. This is a super spicy chicken flavour (translates as fire chicken!) and they do all sorts, from a wide range of noodles to sauce and even frozen dumplings. Whilst I really love them, they’re pretty hot. Worth checking out though!! I’ve not reviewed them as we ate a lot of them before I started reviewing instant ramen but I’m sure they’ll make an appearance here soon.
Anyway, back to this one. It has both powdered soup seasoning and a separate packet of dehydrated veggie bits. I think that’s what made this more superior than other basic instant ramens I’ve tried because once the flakes had rehydrated in the hot soup, the cabbage and onion pieces tasted like kimchi and gave more of the texture you’d expect.
The stock itself was quite salty on this one with an almost sharp fermented flavour to the broth. I ate these as they come straight from the packet but in future these would make a great base for a budgae jjigae or pimped up bowl of noodles – especially if your spice tolerance isn’t enough for Shin Ramyun which is my usual go to.
Scores on the doors:
- Flavour – 7/10
- Texture – 7/10
- Ease of making – 8/10
Total: 22/30
Buy again? YES.
We got this ramen from Oriental Mart online. In February 2021, it cost 89 pence! The Samyang brand is also widely available in Asian supermarkets and on Amazon.
Dave
Hi,
Just wanted to follow up on your review. I respect and your reviews are awesome. Of course everyone has different taste and tolerance when it comes to flavor especially when it comes to spicy levels. I have been a chef for over 45 years and my cooking specialty is Japanese Sushi (Omakase) and Korean foods. The original Samyang Ramen is not spicy at all, none !. Even a 5 year old can enjoy the ramen. If you believe this is super spicy, oh man, you need to get out and start eating what “spicy” food is all about. I’m just imagining what regular Sriracha’s spicy level is for you. About the Dehyrated flake that you mentioned it taste like kimchi? I beg to differ. How does the flash dried onion, carrot and bok choy vegetable taste like kimchi? You got it all wrong. Flash frozen veggies are just veggies, definitely does not taste close to kimchi. Respectfully, if you are going to review a product, please kindly do it right bro!
Hi Jin,
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I definitely do have a good spice tolerance, which you’ll see if you take a look around at my other blog posts and see the type of things I cook and review. If you read the review properly you’ll see that when I talk about heat, I’m referring to the Buldak range (which I assume you wouldn’t feed to a 5 year old) and that this is a good alternative if you don’t do spice.
I also say that once the veggies have rehydrated into the stock, it is reminiscent of a kimchi flavour but not that the veggies themselves taste like kimchi. Otherwise, ‘respectfully’ back at you I’ve been writing reviews for 10+ years now and am fairly sure I know what I’m doing.
Cheers,
Alex
If hot spice endurance was an Olympic event, I’m confident I’d be on the podium. I felt ripped off when I tried the curry one. It was bland and more sweet than hot. The 2x spicy chicken version was almost worthy of the name. The only product I found that warranted using “Hot” was Mad Dog’s Revenge Habañero & Chile Extract where it takes 12lbs of peppers to make a bottle the size of what white out or liquid paper came in. I remember having to use the men’s room after putting some into soup. 90 secs later, it felt like someone poured a mixture of diesel and napalm down there and lit it on fire. It took 10 min of a cold shower to make the burning stop. I went to the kitchen to inspect the bottle and saw there were traces of an oily red substance on the bottle. After that, I purchased a pack of surgical gloves for the next time I use the bottle.
Oh wow, that sounds insane! I’m not sure I could tolerate that and would definitely need the gloves!! Good work!!