Well, this is something completely different. Definitely a departure from their usual line . Maruchan’s Instant Lunch range is very popular in the United States. The flavors are generally in the domestic flavor profiles ranging from your standard chicken to California Vegetable to Cheddar Cheese.
This product, however, is new and comes at a time when they’re expanding their more regional varieties. Udon is Japanese as well as ramen, but soy sauce udon – this is more like what sounds like a shoyu ramen but with a thicker noodle. I’m very curious about this one – so much so I emailed Maruchan and they sent these samples! Thanks!
Anyways, let’s try out this newest comer to the Instant Lunch range.
Maruchan Instant Lunch Udon Style Soy Sauce Flavor Ramen Noodle Soup – United States
Detail of the cardboard outer (click to enlarge). Contains beef. To prepare, add boiling water to fill line. cover for 3 minutes. Finally, stir and enjoy!
Finished (click to enlarge). Added Salad Cosmo mung bean sprouts, narutomaki, spring onion and shichimi togarashi. The noodle is broad and thick. Derfinitely much heartier and hydrated very well. The broth is definitely a nice shoyu with a lightness to it and an interaction with the noodle which is very good. Included bits were of good quality. 4.0 out of 5.0 stars. UPC bar code 041789001697.
Today, I’m happy to be unboxing some samples from Maruchan!
Unboxing Time: Samples From Maruchan – United States
Maruchan has recently come out with some new additions to a couple of their ranges. Two new bowls from Taste Of Asia and a new Instant Lunch. Check out the video as I unbox them for your viewing pleasure! Thank you very much to Maruchan Consumer Affairs for sending these my way – really appreciate it!
Before I start, I wanted to thank Happiness Engineer Anne and the folks at Automattic, makers of the Jetpack plugin for WordPress. There was a bug in the way it handled mobile themes with their newest release and I asked for help. In less than 2 days, a fix was out and everything’s looking nice again!
You’re probably thinking “no way – this couldn’t be a new review” but yeah – it is. After reviewing over 2,100 varieties of instant noodles over the past few years, I found this was one I never reviewed. Well, let’s get to it!
Detail of the side panels (click to enlarge). Contains pork, beef and chicken. To prepare, open lid partially and add boiling water to fill line. Let steep covered for 3 minutes. Stir and enjoy!
Finished (click to enlarge). Added pork seasoned with NuTek Salt For Life, chopped garlic and spring onion I sauteed together. The noodles came out well – always kind of surprises me how many noodles fit in a little cup. The broth is a bit of an enigma to me; while it’s pork flavor, I don’t taste pork. It certainly went well with pork, but on it’s own it really didn’t taste like pork – more like beef actually. The vegetables did very well. 3.0 out of 5.0 stars. UPC bar code 041789001239.
Here’s another new one from Maruchan – Chipotle Chicken. It looks like an interesting one – let’s look inside and find out!
Detail of the cardboard outer (click to enlarge). contains chicken. To prepare, open lid halfway and add boiling water to fill line. Cover and let steep for 3 minutes. Stir and enjoy!
Wow – lots of chipotle peppers going on – very curious how this will taste.
Finished (click to enlarge). Added baked chicken and cilantro. The noodles were decent enough – the same as what you’d normally expect from a Maruchan Instant Lunch. They’re thin and flat with a light chew to them. the broth has a very good chipotle flavor – smoky and tasty. The included veggies (corn, peas and chipotle peppers) were abundant and of very good quality – I should note the amount of little chipotle peppers was extremely enjoyable and I was pleased to say the least. 5.0 out of 5.0 stars. UPC bar code 041789001567.
Here’s something new – found this at the Uwajimaya in Renton, Washington. It’s funny; we go a little out of our normal sphere of shopping and boom – all sorts of new things! Actually, found quite a few new Maruchan varieties – a Chipotle Instant Lunch as well as three new Bowl varieties – Miso, Sukiyaki and Tonkotsu! Those will be coming up for review soon. Until them, let’s check out this neat little cup.
Detail from the cardboard outer (click to enlarge). Contains chicken. to prepare, add boiling water to fill line and cover for 3 minutes. Stir and enjoy!
Some of the seasoning and vegetables loose in the cup.
Finished (click to enlarge). Added baked chicken, cilantro, baby corn and nanami togarashi. The noodles and thin and flat and went nicely in this one. The flavor of the broth was like a chili-sriracha; I found it going between a lot of cumin and then this nice sriracha taste that would kind of come and go. The vegetables did excellent – especially the peas! 3.75 out of 5.0 stars.UPC bar code 041789001505.
In the last two weeks, I’ve been reviewing varieties from far away – but today it’s time to have one from here in the United States! This is Maruchan’s new variety – chicken tortilla! Got an email from a friend at Maruchan telling me they had a new Instant Lunch variety that they’d like to send me. So, here it is! Sounds like an interesting one – let’s have a look!
Detail from the side panels (click image to enlarge). Contains chicken. To prepare, open lid halfway. Add boiling water to fill line and cover. Let steep for 3 minutes. Stir and enjoy!
Detail of the lid (click image to enlarge).
Seasoning is infused with the noodle block. Noodle blocks sit midway on the cup so that when the boiling water is introduced, it reaches every noodle evenly.
Corn and bell pepper pieces from the cup.
Finished (click image to enlarge). Added white onion, red bell pepper, baked chicken and cilantro. The noodles hydrated quite well; always surprises me as to how much food is in one of these cups. Decent texture and springiness. The broth has a kind of spicy chicken taste which was quite nice! The corn and bell pepper hydrated just right. 4.0 out of 5.0 stars.UPC bar code 041789001499.
I want to send a special thank you to Craig Y. over at Maruchan for facilitating the process of getting Instant Lunch California Vegetable into my hands! Much appreciated! I hunted high and low for these and couldn’t find them! There are lots of products sold around the United States – and some do better in some areas than others. A good example would be the King Cake. Most people where I live don’t know what a King Cake is, however folks in Louisiana definitely do – it’s a special cake enjoyed around Mardi Gras. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about King Cakes:
A king cake (sometimes rendered as kingcake, kings’ cake, king’s cake, or three kings cake) is a type of cake associated in a number of countries with the festival of Epiphany at the end of the Christmas season; in other places, it is associated with the pre-Lenten celebrations of Mardi Gras/Carnival.
What started out as a dry French bread type dough with sugar on top and a bean inside 30 years ago, is now a sweet, sugary and iced Danish type dough that is braided with cinnamon inside and a plastic doll underneath. King Cakes are made of a cinnamon filled dough in the shape of a hollow circle. They have a glazed topping and are sprinkled with colored sugar. Hundreds of thousands of King Cakes are eaten in New Orleans during the Carnival season.
The cake often has a small plastic baby (said to represent Baby Jesus) inside (or sometimes placed underneath), and the person who gets the piece of cake with the trinket has various privileges and obligations.[1]
A company that makes cakes would probably not focus their King Cake varieties in the northwest as it would make more sense to sell them in Louisiana, right? Well, when companies like Maruchan decide where to sell which varieties, it goes much more deep than that, but it’s the same kind of thing. One might say ‘but hey – you were looking for it; they should sell it where you’re at!’ Although that’s a nice thought, I only eat one of each variety usually, so my single Instant Lunch purchase probably wouldn’t sway the distribution of a large company. But thanks, hypothetical person! Anyways, let’s have a look at this interesting instant noodle cup!
Here’s the back of the cardboard outer (click image to enlargContains chicken broth. To prepare, open lid halfway and add boiling water to fill line. Cover and let steep for 3 minutes and stir. Enjoy! One thing though – a LOT of people like to mention to me that they microwave these things. No! If you add water and microwave, you’re doing it wrong. If you want to include a microwave in you noodle-preparation doings, just take a cup and add water and heat that, then add it to the cup. This has been a public service announcement from The Ramen Rater – helping you correctly prepare your instant noodles since 2002.
Here’s detail from the lid (click image to enlarge). Notice what it says here – boil the water in a separate container! Also, don’t give it to little kids – you wouldn’t give a toddler a latte from Starbucks, would you? It’s hot stuff – use common sense!
The cup, exposed from the cardboard outer.
The noodle block. They’re pre-seasoned.
Here we have some of the loose California vegetable mixture that was loose in the cup. What is in the California vegetable mix you ask? Carrot, green peas, green beans, onion, celery, cabbage and garlic.
Finished (click image to enlarge). Added sweet onion, bell pepper and peas. The noodles are flat and narrow. They hydrated perfectly and didn’t have any inkling of sponginess. The broth is that of a vegetable flavor; kind of a melange that I think most familiar with prepared and processed foods would sum up as ‘garden vegetable.’ The supplied veggies hydrated extremely well – especially the peas, which often can go one way or the other – these were just right. 3.5 out of 5.0 stars. UPC bar code 041789001260.
You can find Maruchan Instant Lunch California Vegetable on Amazon!
Here’s a video showing how to do up a fusion recipe with Maruchan’s Roast Chicken Yakisoba.
Woo-hoo! I’ve been looking for a couple varieties by Maruchan for a while and this is one of them. I want to thank Craig Y. and all the nice folks at Maruchan for getting this one in my hands! I’m sure someone out there is going to say ‘Hard to find? It’s at every store around me!’ One thing though is that not every product is marketed or distributed to every area. One example of this kind of thing is a soda called Cheerwine. It’s quite popular and easily found in the southern United States, but it’s relatively unknown on the west coast. Anyways, Jalapeno Cheddar noodles sounds pretty neat! Let’s have a look at this one.
Here’s the detail from the cardboard outer (click image to enlarge). Contains chicken. To prepare, add boiling water to inside fill line. Cover and let sit for 3 minutes. Stir and enjoy!
The noodle cup, sans cardboard outer.
Detail of the lid (click image to enlarge).
The noodle block. All seasonings are infused into the block.
Finished (click image to enlarge). Added bell peppers and beef sauteed in a little Worcestershire and some sliced green onion. The noodles are broad and flat – which lent well to the flavor I think. The noodles are just chewy and crumbly enough – definitely in the comfort food range of texture. The broth is of a creamy jalapeno cheese flavor. After 3 minutes of steeping, the broth is, well, brothy. After a stir and another minute to cool, the broth gained more of a sauce kind of thickening. The jalapeno flavor is there, however the heat is very, very mild. so if you like the flavor of jalapeno but not the heat, you’ll like this one. 3.5 out of 5.0 stars.UPC bar code 041789001673.
I think this is my favorite Maruchan commercial – it’s kind of fascinating to see the melding of such divergent cultures – Japanese ramen absorbed into Mexican culture. Besides, I think Mariachi bands are pretty awesome.
I sent an email whilst down in California to a friend at Maruchan USA as to where to find a couple varieties I couldn’t find here. He was kind enough to arrange some samples!
…and here they are! On the left we have Maruchan’s California Vegetable Instant Lunch – I figured I’d find it in Northern California, but I couldn’t. On the right, Jalapeno Cheddar Instant Lunch! Thanks to Craig Y. and everyone else over at Maruchan USA! Really looking forward to trying these!
Maruchan Instant Lunch is one of those products you see everywhere in the United States at grocery stores. Maruchan makes these cups as well as packs of ramen. They’re popular in Mexico as well – people refer to soup a lot of the time as ‘maruchan’ as it has become so popular and intrinsic to daily life. A month or so ago, I saw a post on Instagram. This guy was saying how he could eat these Instant Lunch cups (this flavor in particular) for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week. I thought to myself, ‘have I reviewed this one?’ Well as it turns out I had – but it was way back in June of 2011. I’m always on the hunt for instant noodles that cannot be found within the United States – the more exotic the better. This guy’s enthusiasm about this little cup that can be found virtually everywhere here in the USA piqued my curiosity; is it worth another try? So when out grocery shopping, I decided to get one. After two weeks of enjoying varieties from Southeast Asia, I think this should be interesting. Let’s check it out!
Here’s the detail from the cardboard outer packaging (click image to enlarge). Contains beef. To prepare, open lid halfway and add boiling water up to the inside line. Close lid and let sit for 3 minutes. Stir and enjoy!
The iconic Instant Lunch cup in all its’ glory.
Detail of the lid (click image to enlarge).
The noodle block, infused with flavoring.
These Maruchan Instant Lunch cups don’t include a sachet; the seasoning and vegetables are all in the cup. Here are some of the vegetables.
Finished (click image to enlarge). Added a green onion, thin sliced sukiyaki beef, Texas Pete Hot Sauce, and an egg fried within a red bell pepper ring with a dash of Jane’s Krazy Mixed Up Salt. The noodles were thin and light. They were almost fluffy and although not spongy or crumbly, offered little chewiness and a kind of ready to swallow mouthfeel. The broth was alright – had a nice little hit of spiciness and a good beef flavor. The vegetables hydrated well for the most part. 2.75 out of 5.0 stars. UPC bar code 041789001420.
Nothing more awesome than a maricahi band enjoying instant noodles – Awesome!
Here’s one of the new Maruchan Bowls that they recently sent samples of. The only Maruchan bowls I’ve had before were only made in Japan – like the Midori No Tanuki and the Akai Kitsune Udon, both of which are in the Top Ten Instant Noodle Bowls list. Today I’m having the chicken variety.
The side panels (click image to enlarge).
The noodle block.
The seasoning powder packet. Note the ‘2’ – it is added after cooking.
Has a really nice chicken flavor!
The vegetable packet.
Corn and other type of veggies are here.
Finished (click image to enlarge). Added broccoli, sweet onion, green bell pepper and oven baked chicken with italian seasoning and Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning. The noodles are great – thin and flat with that ‘comfort food’ niceness that instant noodles for the US market sometimes have. The broth is great – has a very nice chicken flavor that I thoroughly enjoyed. The veggies? More than expected and hydrated well. It certainly seemed like a lot of noodles in this one – quite filling! This is a great noodle bowl – 4.0 out of 5.0 stars.UPC bar code 041789003011 – get it here.
A video on fusion cooking using Maruchan instant noodles.
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