Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

Instant Ramen / Instant Noodles.

Truly if there is ever a food product in our generation that has assumed the role of the all-round cheapo student food, it is instant ramen. In terms of taste, versatility and economy, this product has no rival. However, you would be wrong to think - and probably a little disappointed to learn - that Japan is NOT a kind of mecca-like paradise of instant ramen where you can get every conceivable flavour under the sun (unlike their potato-chip industry). In Japan, there are more or less only 3 flavours to choose from. Nationally.

This, I found very strange. Coming from the UK where we import an astounding variety of instant ramen to feed people like students and gypsies - whom with actual, proper nutrition might breed completely out of control - the array of flavours in Japan was nothing less than a horrible, devastating blow to all my pre-conceived expectations. We even have some home-grown efforts in the UK, notably the love-to-hate Pot Noodle snack (which if you are completely honest, does actually taste quite good) and Super Noodles, in which an entire TV ad campaign was built around throwing the noodles on windows and racing them to the bottom - not explicitly stating that you could actually eat the noodles, most likely to avoid costly lawsuits.

The thing I loved about the two aforementioned brands was that there was literally, a really REALLY stupid amount of flavours. Pot Noodle made its name through the heavyweight stalemates of Chicken ‘n’ Mushroom, Beef and Tomato, and Sweet And Sour flavours but gradually crept into other, more esoteric areas such as Nice ‘n’ Spicy (delightfully vague), Hot Chicken Curry, Chow Mein and now a whole array of Indian-themed flavours such as Balti, Chicken Tikka and Korma. Super Noodles followed much the same pattern, starting with some standard flavours (Chicken, Beef etc) and eventually branching out into more obscure tastes such as Southern Fried Chicken and Tex-Mex. Although we never got to see flavours such as Mint Jelly with Giblet Gravy or Foie Gras ‘n’ Prawn Crackers, it became fairly obvious after time passed that they were clutching at straws after having exhausted nearly every possible flavour idea that was tolerable by the human digestive system.

Its funny to think how the manufacturers of these products are also crisp (that’s potato chip, Kyle) manufacturers too, so it can’t have taken a total marketing genius to think “hey, people like our crisps- lets use the SAME FLAVOURS in our noodles snacks which will save us all those, you know, costly research fees” then watch customers flock to buy the chemically-identical Mexican Salsa flavour crisps AND Mexican Salsa flavour dehydrated noodle snack, and laugh all the way to the bank.

Anyway - tangent over. Japan, the country dominated and largely crippled by what can only be described as “a nationwide, pointless and blindly accepted rigmarole”, has just 3 main flavours of instant ramen. Those are, in no particular order, Miso, Shoyu (soya sauce) and Tonkotsu (pork). Any attempt to deviate from the unspoken rule that your brand of instant ramen must adhere to one of these 3 flavours is pretty much the business equivalent of burning down your office building and publicly announcing that you are letting a Rhinoceros take over as CEO. There have been companies who dared to challenge the norm, for example last year there was an ‘ethnic asian’ line of noodles with Thai and Vietnamese flavours, but these have long since disappeared from supermarket shelves after proving to be massively unpopular. In stark contrast however, the array of different brands of the aforementioned Miso, Shoyu and Tonkotsu ramen is nothing short of spectacular - all tasting roughly, but not exactly, like each other.

Thus I will herein briefly review the 3 main flavours of instant noodles in what has been a 2-day instant ramen epic which my lower intestine will probably never forgive me for. We start with-

Miso. Miso, for those who don’t know, is a kind of fermented bean paste that makes its way into most Japanese foods in some form or other - most notably miso soup, but the paste is also added to a variety of sauces to give a kind of sweet-ish, salty-ish flavour. Miso is added to dashi (clear fish stock) to create miso soup, which forms the basis of the soup in miso ramen. The word ‘miso’ is also used for other pasty things, such as the ABOMINATION that is ‘kani miso’ which I will loosely, yet disturbingly accurately translate as CRAB GUNK. Kani Miso is basically the retained crap that you get after you eat all the good bits of a crab (you know, the actual meat) mashed down into a horrific, grey paste. It’s basically brains and other offal. This is eaten COLD and by people who are absolutely stark raving INSANE. Anyway, Miso Ramen is by far my favourite kind as it strikes the right balance between having some actual flavour and not being chronically unhealthy at the same time.

Shoyu. Shoyu (soya sauce) ramen tastes pretty much how you would expect ramen to taste in a soup based on soya sauce. Making a soup out of a condiment is the kind of behaviour you would expect from a homeless person or a 40-year old virgin, not something that has been adopted as a pillar of Japanese ramen cuisine. I suppose the foreign equivalent of this would be like making soup out of ketchup or Worcestershire sauce, either of which would be nothing short of catastrophically awful, but shoyu soup manages to be fairly palatable. The resulting salty brown dishwater-like liquid is probably my least favourite of the 3 types but is also by far the least oily.

Tonkotsu, the last of the 3 has the most distinctive flavour. It is made from a variety of things including pork meat and bones, which creates a soup that is wonderfully rich in taste and a creamy beige in colour. Tonkotsu soup (at least, the real stuff from a ramen stall) is also by far the worst for your health. Each bowl will invariably come with a thick layer of oil on top, along with lashings of deep-fried garlic, which whilst making it delicious, also makes it tantamount to a coronary failure in a neat, bowl-shaped package.

Real ramen in Japan adheres to the same rules as instant ramen, in that there are generally only 3 types of soup and restaurants and stalls will normally specialise in just one variety. Whilst one stall’s tonkotsu soup (for example) will naturally taste different from another stall’s, the real variation comes in the form of what kind of stuff is put on top of the noodles, and indeed, the quality of the noodles used.

And thus, instant ramen copies this idiosyncrasy. Along with your sachet of powdered sauce mix and sachet of congealed fat (no, I am not joking), depending on the brand you will get a number of other sachets to rehydrate. Some brands really go all out and include actual (well- near enough) MEAT in vacuum sealed packets that have all the appearance of muddy spam. Others are less frivolous in providing their customers with such luxuries as real food and go for dubious meat substitute-like items that have a similar consistency and taste to disposable ear plugs.

Final ratings for instant ramen:

Taste: 5 out of a possible H. Convenience: J3

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 1st, 2005 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Food Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.