Comment by Magi604 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Magi604 | Hacker News Reader

Time to share my ultimate home instant noodle "recipe"

- 1 pack spicy noodle (whatever brand you like)

- 1 can mushroom soup

- 2x eggs

- Meats (I've used bacon, hotdogs, smokies, pork slices, whatever is available)

- 1 slice sandwich "cheese style product"

- Frozen veggies

Use 1 can of mushroom soup and 1 can of water. Mix it and get it to boil, then put the noodles in. Let the noodles soften for a while. Add your flavorings and meats and the cheese slice when the noodles are soft enough. Then put 1 egg in and stir it right away so it blends with the soup and thickens it. Once it goes back to a boil add the other egg, but immediately turn the heat down and let the egg just cook in the broth. It takes some experimentation but I can get it to where the yolk can still maintain its shape but is still runny.

When you're ready take the pot off the stove and set it to cool somewhere. Add the frozen veggies at this time and gently stir them in. The heat from the noodles helps cook them and the veggies helps cool the noodles so you can eat it faster.

This is a heavy bowl but sometimes I crave it and it really hits the spot.

Dumping frozen vegetables in hot water will just cool it and leave the vegetables mostly raw. I mean I understand Americans like raw broccoli and stuff but... I don't understand the self deprivation.

And as someone else asked, is that a clear kind of mushroom soup or broth or the creamy kind?

You can make your own broth too; get some regular mushrooms or ideally, dried shitake mushrooms and just boil them for an hour or two. Removing the mushrooms is optional. You can freeze the result if you have extra.

Same for chicken; get cheaper chicken on the bone, cook it in the oven as normal, put the bones in a pot and boil for two hours to make chicken broth. You can add mushrooms to that too, and / or said frozen vegetables to let it cook properly and release the flavours.

Raw broccoli is a method by which we can have an excuse for eating copious quantities of ranch dressing. We don't just eat the broccoli by itself, we dip it in something that has flavor. Same thing with french fries.

It is the creamy kind.

When I make these noodles it's so I have a relatively quick and hearty meal. Prepping things for an extra 1-2 hrs defeats the purpose of it all.

I've moved onto refrigerated udon noodles.

- 1 pack of udon noodles

- a bunch of broccoli rabe or kale sauteed with garlic

- 1 egg

- chili crisp

- sesame oil

Sautee the veg while boiling the water, cook the noodles, drop in a beaten egg and the udon seasoning stuff, stir and add the cooked veg, pour into a big bowl and adorn with sesame oil and chili crisp.

Sodium for days, but delicious.

> Sodium for days

What is the meaning of this statement?

There is salt in every ingredient and step

There’s enough sodium in this one dish to fulfill multiple days worth of the daily recommended value.

"X for days" just means "a lot of X".

There was a bit of a fad a year ago with Cooking YouTube and improving instant noodles:

NYT Cooking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pFTJN1tF8A

Binging with Babish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCW1hVAebWU

Bon Appetit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwjT8n3Yw4c

Joshua Weissman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7XDdXdap4w

I'm sure there are a lot more of them. I agree with some of the other commenters that your recipe is probably too salty for most. Also I don't really see the reason for using egg as a thickener besides maybe adding protein? Just soft boil both eggs if you want 2 eggs and do something like add a little starch slurry if you want to thicken up the soup. Also the cheese just feels wrong but to each their own I suppose.

One thing I should have added in my OP was that I only use maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the flavor packets provided. Still provides plenty of flavor but helps cut down on the salt consumption.

That's probably 250% of the recommended daily intake of sodium in a single bowl. I'm not even sure it would be edible at that level of saltiness.

Cheese???

Korea at least adds cheese to lots of stuff and it seems to work.

Kraft singles in instant ramen is a great thing in Korea!

Budae Jjigae specifically is similar to his recipe, and also has an interesting history.

I grew up (as a white American kid in Virginia) often adding a slice of American cheese to instant ramen, and I can confirm that it’s delicious.

Parmesan cheese works too.

A slice of american cheese in instant ramen gives it some body and adds a bit of extra fattiness that's often missing. At least in flavorful, spicy ramen it really doesn't add much cheese flavor. Try it out.

What is "american cheese"? Do you mean plastic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cheese

you're behind schedule on your food hipsterism. american cheese has passed through the unironically bad phase, the ironically bad phase, and ironically good phase, and is now back to unironically good.

I am not food hipster, I am french. ;-)

that makes you the ultimate food hipster

It's so sad to me that American cheese is only associated with the shitty kraft singles. White American cheese is such a good melted or sandwich cheese.

It's processed (not aged), high fat, low protein cheese. Invented by James L Kraft (yes, that Kraft) and is the basis of Kraft Mac & Cheese, elsewehere called Kraft dinner. It melts perfectly and is shelf-stable. Fun fact: for a time it was called Government cheese. USDA used to buy surplus milk in glut years to stabilize prices, mass produce this cheese product, and give it out as part of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program/'food stamps'). The phrase 'government cheese' became a pseudonym for welfare and uttered by ('compassionate') conservative types to belittle the food insecure, so they rebranded it and voila! Now it's 'merican!

I bet it works wonderfully. American cheese is essentially salty cheddar that melts real nice. That's why it's the best cheese for a hamburger.

It is nothing like cheddar, certainly not a 'salty cheddar', it's most obvious deviation perhaps is the mildness/lack of saltiness.

Maybe what's called 'cheddar' in the US is different too though, I don't know? It's not PDO (and the US doesn't respect them anyway I think?) but I'm comparing to British if not Cheddarian cheddar.

In this usage, salt is anything but lacking. Americans do know what cheddar actually is and indeed make a shitload of it in a wide range of qualities. Tillamook out of Oregon and Cabot out of Vermont are commonly available and pretty good.

I looked up Tillamook, first reaction was that it doesn't even look like cheddar - but then I noticed the 'Maker's Reserve White Cheddar'. Why is artificially coloured the default?! 'white cheddar' makes it sound weird/fake/some strange variant, when all it is is that they haven't added colouring to ingredients list.

The non-'white' ones look like red leicester, which is a bit like a mild not very salty cheddar, and that colour.

Cheddar cheese is indeed white, unless annatto (a tree nut) and sometimes paprika are added for flavor. Tillamook makes both.

Yeah cheesey ramen is the best

Usually people use one of processed cheese, a very very mild mozzarella or a cream cheese

So it's mostly just a source of fattiness and creaminess to add that velvety texture to the sauce

I've seen people just add butter to ramen as well for the same effect.

Sounds like salt soup! Not surprised it tastes OK.

I find that I crave the salt in certain conditions, like on hot days when I drink more liquids than usual. A cup of Ramen really does the trick then. A matter of taste perhaps but the default recipe on Maruchan pouches is a bit too salty for me, so I have it dilute. This doesn't change the absolute quantity of salt ingested but just tastes better.

> - 1 can mushroom soup

I hope you don't mean a creme soup?

Except it's not instant anymore *shrug_emoji*

Ha I think the instant bit for many of the Asian diaspora I grew up amongst is that you don't need to make your own noodles or soup broth. (and it's all there in one package)

It can be fun to do the whole shebang but it's usually a whole day affair. Growing up my dad's secret mix of ketchup with chilli sauce was often the meal I was most excited about for the weekend

> you don't need to make your own noodles

Shower thought: spaghetti is like ramen, but straight.

A notable difference between spaghetti and ramen is the addition of an alkali to ramen which has a profound effect on the texture. Ramen fit into the group of Alkaline Noodles[0].

So more different than just the shape.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_noodles

You can (sort of) turn thin dried spaghetti into ramen by presoaking it in a strong solution of sodium carbonate.

A long time ago I visited my ex-gf family in Guangdong and they were making "炸酱面" with homemade la-mian. The sauce didn't really have much black bean and it was mostly just minced beef and tomatoes with noodles. I was like, hang on a second...

In general - pimping up ramen like this doesn't take much longer than the time you need to wait for the noodles to cook. I usually start soaking the noodles and then grab another pan to cook the extras. It's one extra pan and very little extra time.

> pimping up ramen

*snort*

But yeah, if you need more than 5 minutes to cook instant anything, then it's no longer instant.

OTOH there are definitely some US/non-US shenanigans based on 110V.

we invented "In a moment Ramen"

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