It’s only the second week of this project, and I’m already regretting all my life decisions. Like I said in last week’s post, I decided to just suck it up and make two ramens this week. Which I think was a huge mistake since I think it’ll make me burn out from this project even faster than I originally thought.
But honestly, everyone in my life has been telling me that this was a mistake to begin with, but I ignored them all and decided that I was just going to suffer. Anyways. Please sympathize with me as I take you on my culinary journey nightmare.
Hot Chili Corn Chip Pie
I hate beans. I hate beans so much. Beans have the absolute worst texture because they are smooth on the inside, but once you bite into their weird, thin flesh, a disgusting, grainy texture emerges. I just can’t really understand the appeal to beans. It adds literally nothing to anything other than disappointment and protein. Disgusting.
Needless to say, a few of these recipes include beans in some variation. So, I guess I’m just going to be disgusted for the next few months.
The entire cooking process from start to finish... Commiserate with me.
This recipe also called for sausage, and if you read any of my previous posts related to meat, you’ll know that I can’t really eat beef or pork, so I opted to go for the definitely worse Impossible Sausage. Which was… Probably a horrible idea. I greatly dislike anything “Impossible” brand, but I needed some kind of sausage.
Actually, the actual recipe calls for Summer Sausage. But I couldn’t find summer Sausage. I literally spent 30 minutes trying to find Summer Sausage in my local grocery store, but I guess it’s out of season or something? I guess it is called “Summer” Sausage for a reason. But luckily for me, there was a small note at the bottom of the recipe that said I could use whatever sausage I wanted. Unluckily for me, I didn’t read that note until much later. When I got home.
Making the ramen made me… Really upset. It was disgusting, and I hated every minute of it. The mixing of beans. The cooking of sausage. The combining of all the putrid ingredients. I think I actually had to hold back my puke several times while hearing each of the ingredients smoosh together. I cannot express how much I hated every moment of this.
Maybe you thought it would at least look appetizing.
No. Just no. Why would you even think that. It looks like a disaster.
And the flavors? Disgusting. I cannot believe that I tried to ingest so much of this. Listen folks. I really tried to eat, but in the end, I was left with a bowl filled with beans and some leftover ramen noodles.
My face the entire time I was eating this.
I will say that the only thing I really liked about this dish was the corn chip portion. It added in a change of texture that I needed to stop me from throwing up. Legit, if this wasn’t in the mixture, I think this post would have taken a very dark turn.
But unfortunately, this wasn’t able to save it.
Final Rating: 1/5
PB&J Ramen
Another fun fact about me: I love eating raw bricks of ramen. When I was a kid (and if I’m being honest, as an adult), I would take the raw brick and break it up in the package. I’d add a bit of the spice packet and shake it around… And voila! A perfect snack for doing work or watching a movie.
Part of me wonders if I did this because I’m pretty lazy when it comes to food preparation (Note: I have eaten several frozen foods without cooking them for convenience’s sake. Which does include Hot Pockets, chicken nuggets, taquitos… pretty much any cooked, frozen food is fair game for me) or if I actually enjoy the rough texture and raw flavor of the spice packet.
Regardless, when I first read this recipe, I was… Concerned to say the least. It calls for you to just slather a raw ramen block with peanut butter & jelly.
That's it. That's the entire recipe.
At first, I was confused as to why this was a thing. Was bread really that rare of a commodity in prison? The answer is… Probably? I did a bit of research (Note: one quick Google search), and I found that while bread was given with meals, three packs of ramen only costs $0.70 for three packs. Which means that if you really wanted a peanut butter & jelly sandwich and didn’t want to wait for it to be on the menu, ramen blocks were going to be your best bet.
So, while I understand the need for this recipe (which the book never explains btw), please note that there is a very simple way to improve this recipe.
The fatal flaw with this ramen is… The ramen. Which is something that I didn’t know was possible. Because the ramen block was so thick, it was hard to chew, and I wasn’t really getting any of the classic flavors of peanut butter & jelly. Instead, I just got a huge chunk of flavorless ramen with little to no other flavors attributing to the combination.
It was just too much. I couldn't handle it.
And maybe I just didn’t have enough peanut butter & jelly, or maybe if I put the jelly on first, the flavors would have been more distributed throughout the block since it was less viscous than peanut butter. I dunno. What I do know is that this recipe could have been easily enhanced if you used half of the ramen block.
Most (cheap) ramen blocks are easily split in two horizontally, so using half of a ramen block would balance out the flavors so well. And, it also solves the accessibility issue associated with this recipe.
Overall, there are many adjustments that are needed for the recipe, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. Would I do this again? Probably not. But it’s good to know that there will be some versatility to this cookbook instead of just additions to already existing flavors of ramen.
This is as much as I could eat.
Final Rating: 2/5
Just as a heads up, I feel like I already need a break, so I’m going to delay the next recipe for just one week… But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop my ramen content… Next week, I’ll be going over my favorite ramen variation. Stay tuned.
Comentarios