Weird Ramen Noodle Flavours

After the article For The Love Of Ramen there was something nagging at me. After eulogizing about the glories of the instant noodle snack, the dark-side of them was hanging over me. Personally unimaginative and quite frankly weird British noodles, are what turned me off the snack originally. I mean for example the Bacon flavoured ones from Batchelor's for example. Now we Brits do love our bacon. But that's just it, we love "bacon"! Thick rashers of the stuff, slammed between crappy white bread. Bacon flavoured Super Noodles are by no way a replacement for a good bacon buttie. What were they thinking?

Other odd, bizarre and down-right weird flavours I came across in writing the article about my purist views on ramen, boggled the mind. How about the "soupless" teriyaki flavoured ones from the United States, by a brand called Mexi-Ramen?! Soupless?!

Just to reiterate, and Japanese flavoured ramen by a US company with a Mexican based brand-name selling instant noodle missing half of the whole point of ramen, the soup! The global brand Knorr, decided that releasing a Pizza flavoured ramen in Pakistan was a good marketing move. Now obviously some brands are trying to cater to the tastes of the country they are selling into, and that flavour doesn't translate over into other culinary cultures. For example Batchoy, a dish from the Philippines, may only appeal to them. Seeing how Batchoy is mostly made of pig internal organs! Then there's "foreign" flavours sold internally in some countries, in the hopes of giving an international flavour to your choice of ramen. If you live in Japan, the rivals to Cup Noodle called Maruchan produced a New Orlean's Gumbo flavoured ramen, only available in Japan. To be fair over the years pretty much every flavour combination has been rolled off some production line in the world. The one that seems to weird people out though, is any ramen that has cheese involved. Something I would too have recoiled at, until I moved to South Korea. There it is normal practice to add a slice or processed (American cheese) to your ramen. As odd as that sounds, it really does work. And hey, it's extra protein in a pretty mush wholly carb based snack food. And after all ticking off those food groups is just as important to us late-night fast-food snackers.

Read the In-Flight Magazine article For The Love Of Ramen.