Country of origin: Made in USA now, originally in Korea.
Bought at: Tokyo Asian Food in Hoover, AL
Price: 99¢
This is a very popular soup in Korea. It’s made in South Korea and evidently people in the hopelessly backwards dictatorship of North Korea like it so much they illegally smuggle it into their country. Don’t believe me? Check out THIS article. Believe me now?
So let’s see what all the fuss is all about and open this bad boy up.
It’s round! They make it that way so it’ll fit all nice n’ snug in your cooking pot of choice. You get a soup base pack and a very festive looking pack of veggies too. It’s got mushrooms and crushed red pepper among others.
However, when your cooking pot of choice is a microwave bowl it’s a little big. I had to break this bigass noodle block up but I do that anyway when microwaving ramen. The noodles themselves are thicker than standard Top Ramen noodles. Time to cook it up!
If you look at the directions on the package (which in my opinion is always a smart thing to do) you’ll see under the microwave directions that this needs to be microwaved for SEVEN minutes! That’s a long time considering most ramen cooks in three minutes. I microwaved it for five minutes and checked on it and all seemed good so I went the full seven minutes. Here’s what I ended up with.
Doesn’t look like a soup, does it? More like a bowl o’ noodles. There was some soup in the bottom of the bowl but not much. The noodles weren’t dry, but had a pleasant consistency and the chunks of mushroom and other veggies are nice. Oh, and when they say “spicy” on the package they aren’t kidding. This is one of the spiciest ramens I’ve ever had, so don’t get this one if you don’t like spicy stuff. This is also one of the more filling ramens I’ve eaten, probably due to the sheer quantity of noodles. Definitely more than a standard size ramen pack.
Overall, Shin Ramyun is pretty dang good to me. Not worth smuggling, but then again I don’t live in North Korea… there’s something to be thankful for.
8/10
***AFTER THOUGHT***: I saw this stuff in freakin’ Wal-Mart the other day! How cool is that? Those crafty Koreans…
You should really try the big bowl variant that comes in a cup, I found them to be really really really good! (and you get to keep all the soup which is delicious)
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