Let me start off by saying that the more I read through the actual cookbook, the more I was dreading this experiment. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of care taken into making each of these recipes unique, but just by looking at the ingredients, I can tell that I’m not going to enjoy a large majority of them.
But whatever. Let’s just dive right in and start working on our first recipe which is…
Butt-Naked Ramen Soup
… This is just straight-up ramen my dudes. Literally just regular ramen with no alterations. Which isn’t a bad thing. It’s never a bad thing. I was just expecting… A bit more. But I guess it makes sense to give the audience a baseline comparison. At least it’ll be easier to determine what the baseline “3” rating will be like.
Because I’m not debasing Shin Ramen for this experiment. I’m going to be using what I think they used in all the recipes which are the cheaper, lower-grade ramen blocks that you’d get at an American grocery store. I feel like that’s a fair assumption to make. In this case, it was…
Gasp.
Yeah, I know that I made an uproar about Japanese vs. Korean Ramen in my last post, but at this point, I’m just going for cheapest here. Not so much quality.
Now, the recipe for this particular ramen had me just pour boiling ramen over the noodles and wait for them to be ready. And I’ll admit that I’ve never made packaged ramen in this way before. I’m a stickler for instructions, so when they tell me, so I generally follow directions like a mindless robot until I’ve become comfortable with the recipe to make my own tweaks to it.
What really confused me was that they asked for one cup of water. Now, if you’re an “advanced” ramen chef (read: have made ramen once in their life), you’ll know that you’re going to need a bit more than one cup of water. But because I’m stubborn, and wanted to do things as authentically as possible, I went ahead and just used one up of water.
One cup is pretty pathetic.
This caused a paradox within the instructions of the “Butt-Naked Ramen.” See, while it said to use only one cup, it also said that the ramen brick should be submerged in the water. So, which is it Prison Ramen? Are we supposed to use one cup or submerge the ramen? I can’t do both.
Like... What did they expect me to do?
In any case, this confusion in the directions led me to cook the ramen in a more abnormal way. I added the one cup (which covered about half of the ramen brick) and then added more water I could get more boiling. This caused my ramen to be inconsistent not fully cooked in some parts of the ramen.
Regardless, I went ahead and just added in the spice packet, mixed, and let it sit for 5 minutes. And let me tell you… It was ramen.
This was my exact face while eating this entire ramen.
Despite the improper cooking method, the noodles were still pretty tantalizing, and the texture was inviting. It’s kind of like being invited to a house via the side or back door instead of the front on a cold winter night. Like… Why wouldn’t you just invite me through the front door? Was there something wrong with that door? But I mean, at least I’m inside, so I guess that’s the most important part. It just feels like there is something missing.
One thing that I didn’t notice until after eating half of the ramen is… How salty it is. I know it sounds silly, but whenever I eat ramen, I always make sure to add at least one egg, and I’m only now realizing that it cuts the saltiness of the broth for a more enjoyable experience. It also means that if I did make my broth with only one cup of water, it would have been a severe salt bomb, and I don’t think I would have recovered.
Final product... It's ramen folks.
All in all… It was ramen. I think the way that I make it and the brand that I use makes for the perfect ramen experience, but it’s clear that something is missing. Or at least this method is strange, but I’m fairly confident that I’m going to be utilizing the same method for pretty much all of these ramens.
But this is my baseline ramen, so the remaining ramen is going to be compared to this one. It’s a pretty low bar, but having just read the next few recipes… I don’t think anything is really going to change.
Final Rating: 3/5
Note: I would have made another ramen, but unfortunately, I fell a bit sick due to allergies. Next week, I will be trying out two different ramens. Unless something horrible happens to me. One can only hope.
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