Growing up in the 80s and 90s in the midwest, my exposure to Japanese food was on the level of Brock's jelly donuts. My first time trying "ramen" was Top Ramen "chicken" flavored boiled on stovetop that was so horrible I never wanted to try ramen again. To this day, I don't know if that was Dad doing something to it or if it was just bad back then (he did that to rice for me, so it's very possible). So all through college, my low-quality foods of choice are Chef Boy-are-cheap off brands and single serving microwave pizza.
My first exposure to ramen not being inedible squares was Naruto, where a grand bowl of well cooked soup was called "ramen". It had shown up in other anime before that, but never so grand and heavily emphasized. In 2019, my brothers separately both plan trips to Japan in early 2020 (yep) and they both convince me I should try "real" ramen which is that expensive soup. One of them had his trip get cut short while he was in Vietnam before he even got to Japan and the other had to leave Japan early, but he came back with stories of how good the ramen was. And so I thought I'd test the water with cheap Cup Noodles ramen - conveniently just when lockdown began.
And it was shockingly not awful. Not great, but good enough to be a snack. I quickly got tired of it, but it was clearly because of the low quality rather than something with ramen itself. Since I had time to actually cook during lockdown, I started making better things and eating healthier, but returning to in-person work ended that and I decided to give better microwave ramen a try. I don't remember which Cup Noodles flavors I tried originally, but they would be alongside the one Cup Noodles ramen I do recall trying.
I've been taking notes lately on the ramen I've liked and disliked and made something of a tier list:
Great:
- Nissin volcanic Mongolian beef - Entirely flavored by the spice packet, but it's a good mix of spices and a decent heat with my favorite noodle texture.
- Nissin molten chili chicken - I can tell the difference from the beef version which is why this is a step lower, but that's not very much of the flavor profile.
- Shin black - Decent heat but less spice flavor, rich broth, and a mild flavor. A lot more of a "soup" than most, with actual broth left over after eating the noodles.
- Tapatio extra spicy - Decent heat, heavy Tapatio flavor, good noodles.
- Tapatio original - Same thing, slightly less heat.
Good:
- Maruchan spicy miso - Not much heat, but the miso flavor gives a rich brothy flavor and again my favorite noodle texture.
- Buldak 2x spicy chicken (not-microwaveable) - Hot enough that I think some people will dislike it but it's in my range. There is a sour, acrid note to the flavor that doesn't compliment the rest of the flavor, but adding a little egg fixes that. Noodles are too stretchy/sticky.
- Shin regular - Much less rich broth, mediocre heat, but still a very strong "soup" ramen.
Decent:
- Maruchan fire yakisoba spicy beef - Decent heat, strange tangy notes that make for an interesting flavor, terrible instructions, container has too much wasted space below water line so it will never cook right, either soggy or half-dry.
- Maruchan hot & spicy beef - Ok heat, very generic flavor.
- Maruchan hot & spicy chicken - Ok heat, very generic flavor.
Meh:
- Snapdragon Tonkotsu Ramen - Heat is barely noticeable, broth has the flavor of a pork bouillon cube, noodles are too thin and don't hold flavor well. Side note - if you try it, the tiny packet is the "oil"...they don't label it.
Edible, but I liked the water flavor better:
- Maruchan Chicken flavor (stovetop) - Very artificial tasting "chicken" with artificial orange taste to it. Ok substitute for chicken noodle soup.
- Cup Noodles stir fry fiery Korean chicken - The vegetables were mixed in already and they don't rehydrate to anything good, the heat sort of existed, and the flavor didn't impress.
- Cup Noodles ??? (those two I tried in 2020) - I don't remember what flavor they were aside from one having a single tiny dried shrimp in it, which says it all really. The noodles were decent and the vegetable pieces were gross but could be ignored, but the lack of much flavor made me get bored of it fairly quickly.
- Annie Chun's Japanese Style Shoyru Ramen - The container held too much water for the flavor packet, dilluting it and leaving a lot of not very broth-like water to dig flimsy noodles out of. Overall flavor was soggy noodles.
Inedible:
- Nissin Top Ramen Chicken flavor (stovetop, 1990s) - The traumatically bad ramen from my youth that is why I'm only now trying ramen.
I don't plan on updating this with every ramen I try, but I do plan on trying "real" ramen someday. The ones I've been recommended shut down before I could go or are too far to travel just for soup, though. My brother also has a frozen ramen he says I should try.
