Ramen: The Ultimate Snack For Student-Life?

Ramen: The Ultimate Snack For Student-Life?

Instant ramen was first invented by Momofuku Ando in the year 1958. Today, it is made in 11 countries and the dish has widened its horizons to the global community.

An inexpensive and hearty snack on its own, ramen has gained increasing popularity over the years. It has become the most favored snack of millions around the world and students in particular, love it as they can quickly ready it in the midst of their busy schedules. You can also customize it as you wish, and make it as tastier or healthier as you want.

Below we will discuss why ramen is the ultimate snack for student life:

It’s Cheap

Let’s be honest, when you’re a student, you’re almost always broke. You struggle with finances, and oftentimes, can’t afford to spend much on food. This is where ramen noodles come in. They’re considerably cheap to buy, and are all things delicious as well. They’re rich in flavor and aroma, and satisfy your appetite in all the right ways.

Instant ramen noodles mean you won’t have to compromise on taste just because you’re eating on a budget.

They’re quick to make

Student life is hectic. You’re always loaded with assignments and lectures and usually have no energy left to cook when you get home. This is where ramen noodles come to the rescue for many students who face exhaustion on a daily basis.

They’re quick to make and require no more than a few minutes. They’re a fast and efficient snack for your laziest days and give you enough time to catch up on sleep or engage in a hobby. They’re also the best comfort food for many people. And we could all use some from time to time. That’s not to say that one should have ramen daily, but spoiling yourself once in a while doesn’t hurt anybody.

They’re dynamic

Ramen are also the perfect snacks for students as they come in an array of different varieties and flavors. When it comes to these delicious noodles, one can experiment with many flavors and can even add a personal touch to them by adding other ingredients.

The four main types of ramen flavors are Shio, Shoyu, Miso, and Tonkotsu. Shio is the conventional flavor of ramen soup, and most Western broths are of this type.

ramen

If you’re a busy student looking to buy Japanese snacks online, we at SFMart.com can help. We offer a range of ramen and other Korean, Chinese, and Japanese grocery products. For more information, call us now at (714) 256-0808.

 

Taste Test: Shin Ramyun Instant Noodles

20131015-taste-test-shin-ramyun-primary.jpg

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

As a kid, my sisters and I would spend our Saturdays expanding our minds, honing our hand eye coordination, and discovering the meanings of discipline, hard work, and lost childhood through the Tiger Mom-approved double-header of Japanese school and music school. It was a grueling eight hour schedule that left me with about an hours’ worth of free time in the middle of the day, during which I’d catch up on cartoons or football with my dad while making myself lunch. Sometimes this meant frozen chicken pot pies or pastrami sandwiches from the deli down the street. More often than not, this meant instant ramen.

I wasn’t a ramen prescriptivist, but my selection usually landed upon either Myojo Chukazanmai, a premium Japanese brand, or on Shin Ramyun, the Korean brand of instant noodles flavored with beef and chili. Its fierce heat and intense saltiness has earned it some rabid followers—it was the number one response when I asked people to name their favorite ramen brand over Twitter, and it’s one of the best selling non-Japanese brands around, available in over 80 countries.

For two and a half decades since its introduction in 1986, Shin Ramyun was available in only two forms: in a packet, and in a cook-in-the-container styrofoam cup. In 2011, they introduced Shin Black, the premium version of their traditional ramen.

We tasted all four options to see how they stacked up.

BLACK VS. STANDARD

20131015-taste-test-shin-ramyun-05.jpg

Straight out of the package, there’s a pretty clear difference between the Shin Black and the standard cup: the Black version contains one extra seasoning packet. Rather than the straight-up mix of beef extract, chili, and vegetables that you get in the standard, the Black comes with one packet of chili mix, and another which has a beef and anchovy soup base.

20131015-taste-test-shin-ramyun-06.jpg

The dehydrated vegetable packet in the Black is also larger and contains bigger chunks of mushrooms, scallions, and peppers. With the packet version of Black, the vegetable mix also includes slices of dehydrated beef. More on that in a moment.

OVERALL WINNERS: EITHER RAMYUN FROM A PACKET

While tasters were divided on how the broth and noodles in the standard Shin Ramyun compared to the premium Black version, there was one clear consensus: the ramyun that comes out of packets and gets cooked in a pot is superior to the cup-style. It makes perfect sense. With the former, you’re cooking the noodles at a fast boil; with the latter, you’re steeping them like tea.

The ingredient labels on the packets reflect a difference in formulation for the noodles as well, perhaps in order to compensate for this difference in cooking method.

Overall, tasters found the packet noodles to be bouncier and more like real noodles, though Max was the lone exception in enjoying the thinner, softer noodles in the standard Shin Cup (“If you’re not going to get great noodles anyway, you might as well get ones that are better at absorbing sauce,” was his reasoning).

The soup bases for the packet-based soups were also superior. It’s tough to decipher from the ingredients lists what made them better, but they were richer, fuller, and slightly more “natural” tasting. Soups from the cups were labeled as “harsh,” “aggressive,” and “artificial.” Not so bad that we wouldn’t eat them, mind you, but enough that taking the time to make the packet-based version is a no-brainer.

Interestingly, cost had virtually nothing to do with our preferences. When you buy the make-in-the-cup style ramyun, you pay double the cost for the convenience of not having to use a regular pot. Similarly, the Black versions of both the cup and packet soups cost twice as much as the standard. All told, people were pretty evenly split on naming the $.24/ounce standard Shin Ramyun Noodle Soup packets and the $.47/ounce Shin Ramyun Black Premium Noodle Soup packets as the winners.

Here are some more tasting details.

SHIN RAMYUN NOODLE SOUP PACKET ($.24/OUNCE)

20131015-taste-test-shin-ramyun-09.jpg

This is the classic flavor of my youth. Salty and spicy with a mild ocean aroma and bits of rehydrated shiitake mushroom and scallion floating in a thin but flavorful broth. The noodles are better than your average packet of ramen (I’d put them on par with our top-rated Sapporo Ichiban), but by no means mind-blowing. As Jamie put it, this is something “I’d want when I was sick.”

Max, on the other hand, says that he’d “like to dip [his] dosas in it.” I’m not quite sure what that means and I’m a little scared to find out.

SHIN RAMYUN BLACK PREMIUM NOODLE SOUP PACKET ($.47/OUNCE)

20131015-taste-test-shin-ramyun-10.jpg

The first thing you’ll notice when comparing the Black version to the standard is the larger chunks of vegetables. Real-sized slices of shiitake mushroom and slivers of hot chili peppers float around the opaque, mildly creamy broth. The front of the package shows thick slices of real beef. What we get instead are these little nubbins:

20131015-taste-test-shin-ramyun-11.jpg

Sort of like the bits you find at the bottom of a bag of beef jerky that you resort to eating when you’re at mile 169 of a road trip and the real food ran out a few miles past the last rest stop. We could’ve just as soon done without them.

The broth for the Black contains dehydrated beef stock and anchovies in addition to the “beef extract” and “beef fat” that flavors the standard version, creating a more subtle, balanced broth. It’s heartier, but also milder. If you’re looking for more of a salt and spice punch, the standard packet is the way to go.

SHIN CUP NOODLE SOUP ($.47/OUNCE)

20131015-taste-test-shin-ramyun-07.jpg

The overall loser, the Shin Cup had both the thinnest, harshest broth, as well as super-thin, soggy noodles that are very similar in texture to those you’d find in other cup brands like Nissin’s Cup Noodles. The dehydrated vegetables were also the smallest—little bits of scallion, hot pepper, and shiitake mushroom add a bit of interest, but not much. As far as instant soups go, we wouldn’t kick this one out of bed, but we wouldn’t feel the need to put on a new shirt before meeting it at a bar either. Even if we’d spilled some ramen on the old one.

SHIN CUP BLACK PREMIUM NOODLE SOUP ($.89/OUNCE)

20131015-taste-test-shin-ramyun-08.jpg

A big step up in noodle and broth quality from its less premium cousin. The label on the top of the box claims that the Shin Black Cup is “Spicy Pot-Au-Feu Flavor,” though an examination of the ingredients doesn’t reveal anything special as far as unique flavorings go. Like the Black packet version, the Black Cup has a creamier, milder broth with a more “real” flavor, though this guy doesn’t have the dehydrated beef chips you’ll find in the packet version. No big loss.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at@thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

Shin Ramyun Noodle is available to purchase at SFMart.com

This article is originally posted on Serious Eats

Samgyang Food’s “Fire Noodles” Become Popular Overseas

Buldak Bookeum Myun, affectionately nicknamed "Fire Noodles" in English.

Buldak Bookeum Myun, affectionately nicknamed “Fire Noodles” in English.

Samyang Food’s Buldak Bokkeum Myun, which records monthly sales of 6 to 7 billion won (US$5.56 to 6.49 million), is getting popular not only in the domestic market but also globally.

In February last year, a British man by the name of Josh filmed and posted a video clip on YouTube titled Buldak Bokkeum Myun Challenge in London with his friends. The clip showed the reactions of British people after they tried Buldak Bokkeum Myun. It had been posted on the YouTube and went viral.

On Jan. 14 of this year, Josh uploaded the new clip titled Buldak Bokkeum Myun Challenge in the US, which shows reactions of Americans after they tried the product during his U.S. road trip, attracting attention once again.

The product’s popularity is also spreading rapidly throughout the markets of Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, the company said. Stir-fried noodles without broth are very common in Southeast Asia, so Buldak Bokkeum Myun fits right in.

In Indonesia, when people eat fried foods, they have it with Cabe, which is similar to the Chungyang Red Pepper, and Sambal sauce, which is similar to Korean red pepper paste. Since they have a food culture accustomed to spicy foods, it was even easier for Buldak Bokkeum Myun to advance into local stores.

Samyang Food obtained a halal certificate for Buldak Bokkeum Myun in November last year, and the company is making every effort to open up more markets to Muslim countries.

 

Buldak Bokkeum Myun is available to purchase at SFMart.com

This article is originally posted on Business Korea