Over 5,000 Instant Ramen Noodle Reviews Since 2002
I received this as a gift from a representative of the Little Cook brand in Taipei, Taiwan at the Taiwan International Food Expo! Thank you very much! She also accepted the third place award from The Ramen Rater’s Top Ten Taiwanese Instant Noodles Of All Time 2017 Edition – Little Cook Green Curry – at the awards show. I’ve been waiting for the right time to have this one! Let’s take a look!
It’s time for another top ten list and this time it’s The Ramen Rater’s Top Ten Instant Noodle Bowls Of All Time 2018 Edition! The first list debuted in 2013 – I can’t believe this is the sixth list! As always – if you are a company who would like me to review your products, please contact me via the contact link – I want to talk to you! These are my favorite instant noodle bowl selections from my over 2800 reviews to date. Let’s get started!
I found this one on my trip to Taiwan in November 2016. It was at the Jason’s Market at the bottom of the Taipei 101. That was a cool day – here’s a little about the Taipei 101 from Wikipedia –
Something I found at the local HMart a few weeks ago. I went out with my wife this week for tom yum at a local restaurant – good stuff! Some rice on the side to mix in – really tasty! Tom yum has a strong lemongrass and spicy flavor to it which is really great – let’s check this one by Little Cook out!
Got an email a few weeks back from Gemini Food Corp. about their instant noodles. They’re a distributor in California.
This year, we’ve got some new fiery additions to this list of spicy and burning hot varieties. If you can find them, you’ll be feeling quite the burn! If you think you’ve found anything hotter or noteworthy of being on this list, please comment below or send me an email. Without further adieu, here’s the 2013 picks for the spiciest instant noodles I’ve found after 1,128 reviews!
Stewed duck flavor time. This one came from Michelle L. of New York – thanks again! This is the last of the ones she sent – let’s give it a try.
Here’s another onbe sent by Michelle L. of New York – thanks! This is made in Thailand and says it’s mushroom flavor. Well, let’s give it a go.
* UPDATE * See here.
A couple of days ago, I received an email from a man who was angry. He was angry that the instant noodles he bought said that they were spicy Chicken flavor but weren’t spicy whatsoever and that I needed to change the seasonings ASAP. Every once in a while, I get a comment or email from someone who thinks that I make instant noodles or am affiliated with an instant noodle company. I decided to reply and do a review of the product he had problems with, adding some hot spices, sauces and peppers from around the world to really heat it up. It then occurred to me that a lot of people really like spicy instant noodles and that there’s really no list of the hottest ones out there. I figured I’d better do something about that, and so here’s the Top Ten Spiciest Instant Noodles Of All Time!
Here’s one that Michelle L. of New York sent a while back. Looks like it should be good!
Here’s another one that was sent in by Michelle L. of New York, New York – thanks again! TVP? What’s TVP? Well, I’ve had it quite a few times before. TVP stands for ‘textured vegetable protein’ and is basically fake meat. Usually you couldn’t get pork in a packet coming from Thailand into the states – fake pork on the other hand is doable.
Here’s another of these Mee Jang Noodle Soups. I like the label – if you aren’t keen on reading and just scan a bowl of instant food and decide to eat, watch out for this stuff! So far I’ve found these to be quite spicy! Let’s see how this one comes out!
Here’s the first review I’m doing with my new camera! No more Blackberry 8900 camera – now I’ll be using a Sony Cybershot 14.1MP! Should look better now, hopefully! Today I decided to dig out this bowl – it’s one my wife got for me for my birthday at Uwajimaya. Let’s give it a looksie!
This is a pretty generic looking bowl of instant noodles. However, they’re from Thailand and boast a hot and spicy Tom Yum flavor – Hopefully they’re really good!
Here’s another from Michelle L. from New York! Spicy beef from Thailand eh?
The side panel was really red (click image to enlarge).
Here’s another sent by Michelle L. of New York – thanks again! Send pics of where you put the stickers! This one looks interesting; on top as an afterthought is printed ‘ARTIFICIAL FLAVORED,’ although I do see dried onion in the ingredients. Weird. That said, here’s the noods.
#601aq? What’s with the ‘a’ crap? Well, I was looking over the last few reviews. As it turns out, I reviewed the Nong Shim Ansungtangmyun eons ago… Instead of reshuffling everything, I decided to just have a do-over. So here’s review #601a. This is another from Michelle L. of New York – thanks!
This was a neat find at a local market I don’t go to very often. There’s a long aisle of instant noodles and I noticed a single instant noodle cup that didn’t seem to have any place where it would go. So I went around to the other side of the aisle and was hoping there’d be more. Well, there wasn’t a continuation of instant noodle aisle, but I did find this one in a weird spot, again with no correlating spot on the main aisle. With that, once again I bring you what you want.
Wow – what an inviting variety! Wheat gluten stewed duck flavored!
So this is a big bowl of the Little Cook stuff – Namchow makes it. These are always interesting.
After spending a few days on it, here’s the list. If you have anything you think should be added, please let me know – II’d love to make this the most complete list on the Internet of instant noodle information! You can find it in a tab on top of the site as well.
So the idea of a seafood noodle soup with fake seafood has been kind of daunting for the past couple months. However, today was the day. I must fear no ramen! So, here we have some seafood tom yum from Thailand.
Here’s another Namchow Mee-Jang variety, this time its artificial beef. So far, these have been pretty good.
So some noodles from Thailand. I have no idea what to expect from this one… Let’s see what’s inside…
So this looks really interesting. Upon tearing off the outer cellophane, i notice that where it says NEW TVP SPICY BEEF FLAVOR is actually a sticker. In fact, on the sides there were stickers as well – ingredients, nutrition facts and direction on preparation.
Little Cook: Pork & Mustard Stem Bowl Stars: 1/2
Notes: This stuff is bad – very bad. Boasting great flavor because of fresh meat and
vegetables [retort pouch], the freshness wasn’t there. As with many bowl noodles,
the ramen’s quality is overlooked and the retort pouch is added. The pok was
spongy, like wet pork rinds and had a bitter, almost sour coffee taste.
Namchow: Tom Yum Shrimp Bowl Stars: *** 1/2
Notes: Just polished it off a minute ago. Not extremely complicated but a very satisfying bowl.
Upon opening the packaging, the consumer is greeted by two small but very clear pouches
of which one contains a mix of chili oil/seasoning oil, and the other a base with
dehydrated meat ad vegetables. After leaving it to steep with some boiling water, the
end product is a bowl full of bright red broth and some really greasy noodles. Wasn’t a
really hot bowl; on the contrary, it was very citrussy flavored. But very very greasy. I
can’t begin to describe how greasy it is! A worthy bowl of noodles on it’s own.
