#040 NISSIN UFO Big
After my first failure attempt in making the regular UFO noodles, I think I’ve officially redeemed myself this go around. The portion size of these noodles are indeed BIG! It was a little hard to finish towards the end. When I peeled off the outer plastic wrapper, there were cooking instructions on the lid…in Japanese of course…but….dun dun dun….there were pictures! So no excuses for effen up this time. I’m not sure why I find it so much fun when there are extra steps in the cooking process. I call it faux cooking….no long prep time, no messy clean up and you get instant satisfaction. So after the noodles cooked in the package, there is a nifty spout on the opposite corner of the package where you can pour the water out without sacrificing a single noodle. Genius. Then, the entire lid comes off, pour the liquid yakisoba sauce, mix and top it all off with the garnish packet. I really liked how easy it was to mix the noodles up and was able to coat everything with that one little packet. Oh! Almost forgot about the dehydrated cabbage and bits of chicken underneath all the noodles. You’ll find them after mixing everything up. The texture of the noodles are fantastic…soft and spongy and absorbed the perfect amount of sauce. Nissin UFO noodles rock.
#039 SHIRAKIKU Sanukiya Somen
Today was a sad day. I don’t often meet a noodle that I don’t like….but unfortunately, I met one today. Excited to try somen for the first time and intrigued by the word “fresh” on the label, I had high hopes for this noodle. When I opened the lid, I was delightfully surprised to find a vacuumed sealed package of what looked like rice noodles (so this is what they meant by “fresh”!) and a seasoning packet. As soon as the hot water hit the seasoning, the savory scent of bonito wafted up my nostrils. The noodles turned out tasting like mushy rubberbands which was a bummer because the soup was pretty tasty. The flavor of the broth was on the milder side as with most bonito soups and had hints of seaweed and green onion. The huge bowl is misleading because the actual serving size of the noodles are teeny! Even for me! Bit of a disappointment…perhaps it was user error?
#037 SAMYANG FOODS Pojangmacha Oriental Style U-Dong
I began another afternoon standing in front of the noodle closet trying to figure out which noodle to try. Finally, this udon…or U-dong as it says on the packaging caught my eye. I put a bit of a chinese twist on these korean noodles by adding a tea egg. There were also some tasty looking mushrooms in the fridge (I think these are trumpet royales?) so I decided to add to the udon as a meat substitution. When I opened the noodle package, it was the usual, there were two packets, one seasoning and one dehydrated assortment of veggies and sesame seeds. And same cooking routine for all korean instant noodles, I cooked the noodles for an extra 5-7 minutes because I like the noodles more tender (korean instant noodles tend to be thick and chewy.) I had no clue what “pojangmacha” means so I did a little research on the web and found out that a pojangmacha is a small tented restaurant or a restaurant on wheels that sell a variety of inexpensive snack foods. Most popular as a late night destination for snacking and drinking. FUN! I wish there were pojangmachas in the states. Now that I know what pojangmacha is, I still can’t figure out exactly what makes this “oriental” style though. Well, whatever it is, it’s mild and a bit seafoody. Definitely has a strong onion taste as well.
#036 MARUCHAN Tempura Soba
Often times, the deciding factor on what noodle I’ll eat is dependent on what ingredients I have available in the fridge. Then I try to match it up to the the serving suggestion pictures. On this particular day, I had left over chinese broccoli in the fridge that I wanted to use up, so I went to the noodle closet and searched for a package that had chinese broccoli or something similar. As you can see, there are some greens in the picture of this maruchan tempura soba so this was the winner! I also had some cooked frozen shrimp and thought it would go nicely with the noodles and inadvertently created my own version of de-constructed shrimp tempura soba!