When you write a food blog, you find you get to know lots of other food bloggers. Alex, the author of the Gingey Bites blog is one of my online friends, who I came to know through Kavey of Kavey Eats and our many interactions on social media.
I was very pleased when Alex agreed that I could contribute an review to her blog, as I have followed her blogging and foodie social media content for a long time. She and I share a love for instant noodles and Japanese instant ramen in particular. My original guest review can be found here: https://gingeybites.com/2023/07/nissin-x-shoryu-the-ramen-masters-cup-noodles-review-by-snigdha.html
Alex was kind enough to allow me to share my review here on my own food blog. Thank you very much, Alex!
Do check out Alex's guide to Instant noodles here: https://gingeybites.com/guide-to-instant-noodles You will find all her noodle reviews indexed there!
Nissin x Shoryu “The Ramen Masters” Cup Noodles review
Instant noodles are, for me, a lunch-in-a-hurry godsend. Perhaps we’re running out of ingredients at home, or perhaps I am in a rush at work, and didn’t have the chance to bring something in to eat. Have noodles, no worries! I always keep a pack in my desk drawer and a couple of packs at home.
The thing about instant noodles is, if you manage to find the good ones, you have an instant meal which is hot, slurpy and comforting. If I plan ahead, I add some chopped spring onion, chopped fresh coriander, or toasted sesame seeds to the noodles. I know that Kavey (of the excellent Kavey Eats blog) adds homemade ramen eggs to her instant noodles. You will find her recipe here; https://www.kaveyeats.com/how-to-make-ajitsuke-tamago-ramen-eggs. MiMi Aye, author of the sumptuous Burmese cookbook Mandalay recommends adding things like cooked ham.
The product
Nissin are famously the inventors of Cup Noodle, having been founded by Momofuko Ando, the inventor of instant noodles. So famous and popular are Nissin’s Cup Noodle products that cult Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo have made Cup Noodle T shirts and you can even visit a Cup Noodle museum in Yokohama Japan.
Here, Nissin have teamed up with ramen restaurant Shoryu (famous for their tonkotsu ramen) to make an instant noodle product which reputedly took 9 months to develop. That’s a lot of dedication to noodling!
What’s inside
As this is a pot noodle style product, there are no fancy packets of flavourings. Everything is under the lid, dry in the pot, waiting to be brought back to soupy life. All I could see on lifting the lid was the powdery stock and the cake of noodles.
Because this is a Nissin Cup Noodle product, the lid is easy to partially lift off, and the fill line is clear to see on the inside of the cup, so making the instant noodles is an absolute doddle. I filled the pot up to the line, and replaced the lid, folding the foil pull over the ridge of the lid, so there was minimal loss of heat during the rehydration process.
What does it taste like?
This product is not cheap, selling at £1.99 in the Japan Centre in Central London. It boasts “restaurant quality” ramen on their website. My expectations are therefore high.
The noodles themselves are Ganso ramen, beautiful curly noodles, with a decent bite to them. The soup base was quite a surprise, it tasted meaty, with discernible pork bone and chicken broth flavours and the creaminess reminiscent of tonkotsu broth. How they have done this in powder form leaves me puzzled and full of admiration. I have eaten at Shoryu a few times, the broth being a particular highlight, and this is a good attempt at recreating the soup element in an instant product. Another treat is the veggies in the pot; spring onion, red ginger, and kikurage mushrooms, these add another element of texture to the experience (although my rating for texture below will only be for the noodles themselves).
Using Alex’s rating system I would rate this product as excellent all round:
Texture 8/10
Flavour 9/10
Ease of making 10/10
Would I buy again – yes!
This review represents the genuine opinions of Snigdha, who has
received no incentive to write this review, and who purchased the
product with her own money.
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