So you want to make some awesome Ramen. Instant Ramen is cheap, and as important, Free. How do you make your ramen awesome? Well, here are a few tips every college student or young person living cheaply should know. Actually, chances are most of you know lots of tricks to make instant ramen more enjoyable, but I thought I'd share my favorite method. I largely try to avoid adding meat or fresh vegetables to my ramen, because I want to be able to store the uncooked ramen and all its ingredients for long periods of time. I don't eat ramen as often as I used to, so it's nice to not have to head to the market to get what I want. Here's what I put in my fancy instant ramen:
Ramen "Blazinghand I alredy knew u put this in" well okay dude I had to list it sometime right? In any case, I like this brand because it's salty and not too expensive. I think there's cheaper ramen as well, and if you're adding stuff to it cheap ramen is fine. I wouldn't use an expensive ramen for this just because expensive ramens often go better with vegetables or something fresher. of course it's your call either way.
Eggs So, like I said earlier, I don't want to add meat or fresh veggies because they can't store for long periods of time. So what gives with the eggs? Well, I eat eggs all the goddamn time, so I always have them in the fridge. I don't need to go to the store to get eggs. So eggs are in. Also Eggs are fucking awesome and I need protein in this so stop questioning me dickhead
Not Salmonella After you add the eggs you need to continue cooking for the amount of time listed on the package. If you added your egg(s) at the time you added your noodles, they'll be cooked by then too. If you didn't add your eggs right away or undercooked your ramen, you'll probably die of some horrible undercooked-egg-disease. Once your ramen has finished cooking, pour it into a bowl and mix it with the flavor packet that came in the package.
Delicious Corn To cut the saltiness and add more body a can of corn (or half can) is usually added. Any brand is fine, but make sure to drain the liquid the corn comes in or you'll be diluting your soup. Corn adds much-needed sweetness and body. It also gives you an excuse to eat all the broth as you fish around for corn with your spoon when all the noodles are gone. Eating all the broth is important because it provides you with like 80% of your daily value of salt.
Kim I personally like to add a few slices of seaweed to my ramen since it's inexpensive and salty and salty things are delicious. I use this brand but I have no idea what it's called. You can find it at a korean grocer/market near you, or use your own favorite brand. I had the Japanese stuff once and it was hideous and sweet. Ew. Use Kim imo. This is like one of the last things you add actually, because it gets soaked fairly quickly. You don't need to cook it: just put the slices on top right before you eat.
Eating! Ok, yes, eating isn't an ingredient but I needed an excuse to show the finish product. The final step is: enjoy your ramen! This should be more filling than normal ramen, though also more expensive. The most important addition is the egg, but the corn adds lots of sweetness which I really enjoy as well. Friends of mine also like adding chopped green onions and other spices but that's all much higher-effort than this. If you want to make it super cost-effecient, just add an egg and don't worry about the other stuff. But this is really quite a treat as far as ramen goes.
On September 14 2012 05:58 starfries wrote: sesame oil! it keeps forever, and makes it taste incredible. adding sesame oil transforms you from a starving college student into an Iron Chef.
The ramen gods are going to hate me but I smash the noodles before cooking, add a half of bullion cube of flavoring (along with the regular packet it comes with) and then eat it with a spoon.
On September 14 2012 06:22 kollin wrote: Help I died of some horrible under-cooked egg disease, what did I do wrong?
Under the circumstances, it appears you failed miserably at being dead.
That's purely a guess, however. It could actually just be that you did a poor job of the diagnosis, and are, in fact, actually still alive.
On topic, am I the only crazy person who strains the noodles before adding the seasoning, and eats it that way? Occasionally with a bit of soy sauce added for that beautiful extra salty goodness?
This might just be a stupid white person question, but can you add milk to ramen at all? Might add a bit of viscosity to the broth, as well as milk's awesome nutritious power. So a protein-ramen could have eggs, milk, and some meat added to it, would that work?
I do pretty much the same thing, I add eggs if its spicy shrimp ramen then i add a can of tuna. I also add mushrooms and kimchi (only if it isn't spicy ramen). However right before I eat my ramen i put a slice of munster cheese or haravarti and wait like 30 seconds. Then i Eatz it.
On September 14 2012 06:41 Chocolate wrote: This might just be a stupid white person question, but can you add milk to ramen at all? Might add a bit of viscosity to the broth, as well as milk's awesome nutritious power. So a protein-ramen could have eggs, milk, and some meat added to it, would that work?
On September 14 2012 06:33 JingleHell wrote: On topic, am I the only crazy person who strains the noodles before adding the seasoning, and eats it that way? Occasionally with a bit of soy sauce added for that beautiful extra salty goodness?
Yum, Sodium.
I do that sometimes too. if you do it with Shin ramen it's spicy as hell and even better :D and if you like strained noodles, then you should try this out: OH MY GOD SO DELICIOUS.
On September 14 2012 06:41 Chocolate wrote: This might just be a stupid white person question, but can you add milk to ramen at all? Might add a bit of viscosity to the broth, as well as milk's awesome nutritious power. So a protein-ramen could have eggs, milk, and some meat added to it, would that work?
Mmm this makes me want ramen now.
you can add cheese. sometimes I throw grated cheese on top of the egg, tastes great
Um, yes please! Instant noodle prep is one of my favorite things to discuss -drools-
I usually prepare my noodles (use shin ramen or neoguri spicy, large serving size and thick noodles, also really spicy) with an egg thrown in and green onion and fish balls if I can find any. I also have it with canned roasted eel, so good!
On September 14 2012 05:58 starfries wrote: sesame oil! it keeps forever, and makes it taste incredible. adding sesame oil transforms you from a starving college student into an Iron Chef.
I don't get it. You said you add a half can of corn to cut out the saltiness. But then later you add a big slab of salty seaweed. So you don't like salt directly in the soup, you just want salt slabs to dunk in it later?
On September 14 2012 17:25 Fumanchu wrote: I don't get it. You said you add a half can of corn to cut out the saltiness. But then later you add a big slab of salty seaweed. So you don't like salt directly in the soup, you just want salt slabs to dunk in it later?
YES
EDIT: salt is delicious and salty slabs of seaweed make for extra salty bites to mix in with the sweet corn bites, giving you the full spectrum from kind salty to super salty
There's four parts to a successful Ramen for me. Vegetable, Meat, Egg, Sauce. If you have those three things then most often you're sitting pretty and bathing in the deliciousness of a quality instant noodle session.
Noodles.
Ok, let's start with the base, the carrier for your delicious endeavour. Honestly, this is the least important part of the meal. Like I iterated before, it is just a carrier for everything else, and although delicious, is not especially important as far as it's quality. Being a snob I like to splurge and buy the Noongshim Shin Ramyun. Not only are the noodles superior, which again is nice but entirely unnecessary, but adding a bit of the spicy soup mix and dehydrated veggies adds a little bit. Really though, any noodle brand is fine.
Veggies
Next up is your greenery. I use this word entirely with purpose as I do believe the best, and really only, type of veggie you should be putting in your Ramen is green stuff. What this is depends entirely on you. My number one recommendation and preferred choice is this stuff. A Choy, directly translated pretty much means 'A' vegetable. Wilts fairly fast, but maintains some nice crunchiness and soaks up tons of broth. A good substitute is actually just romaine lettuce. Chop it up into smaller chunks and throw it in just at the end of cooking. Other options that are good are watercress, spinach, and bok choi, but last one is a little tricky to get the consistency right. Seaweed is also not a bad option as outlined by Blazinghand, and green onion is also an option a lot of people like. The last one, but honestly not my favorite is actually steamed broccoli. I like broccoli fried and flavorful, so in ramen I find it too bland and mushy.
Meat
This one is actually the easiest. What I do is go to my local chinese super market, there's about 30 in a ten minute area of me so it's quite easy, and buy up a big package of super thinly sliced Hotpot meat. It doesn't matter what kind of meat to be honest, but I like Pork and beef, Pork a little ahead because of the amount of flavor I find it adds to the broth. Just throw it in towards the end of cooking and enjoy. The stuff cooks ridiculously fast. You can also use fish balls, or those processed fish sticks, just chop them up thin and throw it in. Also fake crab, shrimp and dried fish is sometimes a good choice if you're in the mood for seafood. I don't like complicating things, so I stick to the meat. Also pork is just really delicious.
Egg
Again, really straight forward. Just throw it in about half way through or to the end of cooking. You can either leave it as is to get a bigger, lumpy egg, or mix it in so it becomes one with your broth. Either way works deliciously.
Sauce
This is where a lot of divergence comes in. Personally I like adding only like a quarter or less of a package of the instant noodle mix to my soup. Half to spare my stomach the pain of MSG and half because I find a lot of the mixes to be way to strong or overpowering. I like to add in my own flavors from other components or from sauces. For sauces there's a wide array of stuff I like to use, but the go to's are a dash of soy sauce, a dash of sambal or siracha, a tiny bit of sesame oil, either garlic oil or chopped garlic. Other things I've tried that you can throw in are oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, some vinegar for freshness or acid, mirin for sweetness, chilisauce, tabasco, and I've even tried Worcestershire sauce when desperate (don't do this). The holy trinity for me though is still soy, siracha, and sesame. After experimenting considerably I've settled on that with the garlic.
So there you go, my own delicious Ramen formula. Enjoy.
EPT
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It doesn't matter what kind of meat to be honest, but I like Pork and beef, Pork a little ahead because of the amount of flavor I find it adds to the broth. Just throw it in towards the end of cooking and enjoy. The stuff cooks ridiculously fast.
