The Definitive Source For Instant Noodle Reviews Since 2002
Yeah it’s June – mid june. Mid towards later June. But I don’t care about your temporal insecurities. ANY TIME IS TIME TO USE PUMPKIN SPICE CUP NOODLES. Period. Chronometrics be damned! I figured cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg, pumpkin spice cup noodles. I know a lot of people don’t get the bread thing, but it seems to me that bread will be the gateway drug that leads to pizza, and maybe other stuffed bread? Let’s do this.
Recently, I thought it would be interesting to revisit my fascination with bread – and ramen. I’ve found that baking bread with a bread machine isn’t all it’s cracked up to be – but using one to make dough is very cool! In the past, I’ve infused instant noodles directly into the dough; something that produced something a little funky. In my last endeavor, I used a mold shaped like a fish and we took the dough out, put it in, filled it, then added more bread on top. Since then, I’ve tried making a pizza – which had excellent results! I even used gluten free pizza dough to make my wife a pizza and that honestly was even better.
The day before Thanksgiving I didn’t have anything ready to go for review, so I decided why not crank out a loaf of bread? I used Lai Noodle, a product from Hi-Lai Foods of Taiwan. They’d just sent a ton of great samples and so I thought it would be interesting to try. Here we go!
Now I know what you’re thinking. ‘He’s gone mad, The Ramen Rater, he has.’ Not in the slightest. No more than usual, at least. I thought I would try something and see what would happen. Making bread is a lot of fun and I’ve never made any kind of really sweet sugary bread before and kimchi ramen would have a tangy and acidic bump to it, right? Well, so here we are. Tons of candy in the house and a bread machine wanting to make ramen bread. Let’s give it a try!
Well, shoot. This was going to be super awesome – at least that was the plan. I had a box of nice Aces Sriracha Ramen Noodle Soup bowls and I thought hey – let’s make some flour out of the noodles and a neat load of pure #ramenbread. Well, it didn’t work out and when I realized that, I started adding things…
After our last bread experiment went horribly wrong, I decided to regroup and make something that seemed like it could not go wrong. Also, it’s curry. Curry bread! This is going to be good, right? It must be!
So. If the noodle is fried, an emulsifier is needed to release the oil from the noodle. However, if they’re air dried… Hmmm. Let’s see, then we… wouldn’t? Let’s make this stuff into bread!
I left it up to the wise folks in the Ramen Junkie group on facebook (you should really join if you haven’t) and of two choices they picked this for me to make into bread. It didn’t go as planned, but it was addictive and tasty and so here it is in all of it’s glorious ingloriousness.
The last ramen bread I made was 100% instant noodles, however had more moisture than I wanted it to have, so I thought perhaps lighter on the eggs and liquids would prove for a more loafy loaf – less cake like. Well, what happened was nothing short of a Christmas miracle really and something new. What if I told you you could take a few packs of Top Ramen and turn it into popcorn chicken? That’s like diamonds in the microwave but it actually happened! Let’s give it a whirl, Earl!
At the outset of my bread making journey, the idea of making a loaf of bread by grinding up noodle blocks was always in the back of my head. Literally transmuting instant noodles through kitchen alchemy into a loaf of bread. I tried it once and it failed miserably. I wanted to find out why and I asked an expert in the field of wheat and noodles. Well, he said I needed an emulsifier – that would release the oil from the ramen ‘flour. Huge thanks to Dr. Gary Hou!’ Well, let’s see how it went this time – spoiler alert – it worked!
Yeah I’m back at it. I saw a Zojirushi bread machine at a thrift store the other day and thought ‘man, this thing looks cherry,’ so I carried the thing to the grocery store where I got a gallon of milk and other stuff (which was my original reason for venturing out) and then had to carry everything home. This bread machine isn’t small or anything so yeah – it was a battle I fought and won which I enjoy thoroughly.
I did say my last loaf of bread would be the last for a while, but then I saw that Nissin Foods was doing a contest (#USEYOURNOODLECONTEST) having to do with innovation for their 50th Anniversary of the introduction of Cup Noodles. I really like making bread from instant noodles; some of you might think I’m a little off my rocker, but it’s fun, completely different from what I’ve been doing, and it’s really neat to put a bunch of things together and have something come out nicely. Whether I win the contest or not (it would be nice to win), I’m happy with what I did here. Let’s check it out =- I used one noodle block and the seasoning from 10 Cup Noodles Chicken flavor! Let’s go!
Yeah, after the last attempt at making bread out of South Korean instant noodles, I needed to explore further. Today, I’m going to infuse a loaf with a block of instant noodles, a can of corn, and chicken, and a wallop of sesame seeds! One thing to note – in the video I mention the dates this one will release on YouTube – I made a mistake. It’ll release on September 20th, and it will also release on December 24th – I thought it would on September 23rd. So, that was a mistake. Let’s take a trip down Corn Lane!
Thanks to a nice shipment from the folks at Red Chef in Malaysia (you’ll see the unboxing soon), some Spicy Sakura Prawn Soup Noodle came and that was what I was waiting for! I thought a prawn mee from Malaysia in a loaf of bread could be interesting – especially if I dump a ton of shrimp in with it! Did it work? Of course it did! Check out the video and the recipe is down below.
I left it to the folks over at the Ramen Junkie Facebook group to pick which #ramenbread would be next for me. I really wanted to do something that incorporated a South Korean variety – last time I tried that though, it was a big fail as I tried to make flour with the noodles. I’ve learned that is definitely NOT the way to go, but using cooked noodles and bread flour in a good mix makes for a nice moist cake and crisp crust. Well, here it is! Best loaf yet and infused with chashu, cheese, and egg. Let’s see what happens when I try to put a ton of stuff in a little loaf of bread with a big block of ramen in it!
