Happy New Year!
If you celebrate it, I hope your Christmas was merry and bright. Ours was plagued by baby illness and family drama but such is life. We move on and I for one am feeling mighty positive about the year ahead! So much so, I’m sat down to finally write up one of the 18 draft reviews of instant noodles reviews I have half written. So, here we go! My first post of 2023 and we’re talking all things Paldo Jjajangmen Chajang Noodles.
In case you missed it previously, I’m a big fan of instant ramen. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea. I guess there’s just something fun and super comforting about a fast and hot bowl of noodles. Last year I began collating instant noodle reviews into one handy place and I’m adding new ones all the time so do take a min to check them out here.
Paldo Jjajangmen Noodles
According to their website, Paldo is the No.1 brand in Korean noodles. I’m not entirely sure that’s true. Perhaps in Korea itself but certainly not here in the UK where brands like Samyang and Nongshim are much better known. That said, they certainly have an impressive list of noodle products so I’ll be keeping my eyes out for more!
Tell me about the flavour!
Jjajangmyeon is a really popular noodle dish in Korea. It’s actually a mash up of Chinese and Korean flavours with a thick black bean sauce and often things like seafood, pork or potato, cabbage and peas thrown in too. As far as jjajang goes, these instant noodles were never going to be the unctuous (yes, i went there), bold affair you’d get in a restaurant but you know what? They were still pretty good!
The noodles were chewy and cooked well in the time allocated. After boiling them for 5 mins you pour out almost all of the liquid (saving 3-4 tbsp according to instructions) before adding the sachet of sauce and mixing it up. I prefer my noodles dry so this really appealed to me although, I would pour away even more of the liquid next time to help keep the black bean sauce really thick and gooey. It was good but too watery to really coat the noodles and get the black bean flavour I wanted.
Scores on the doors
- Flavour – 4/10
- Texture – 5/10
- Ease of making – 8/10
Total: 18/30
Buy again? No
Black bean noodles are a great option if you don’t like spice and their sweet, earthy flavour is really moreish. I don’t know if I’d buy these Paldo Jjajangmen Chajang Noodles again but will continue to try other black bean (jja jang) noodles to find one that gives me the thick and gooey consistency I really crave. Onwards and upwards!
Nice