It’s widely known that instant noodles are bad for you, but you won’t find me hand-wringing about it. Repeating information about its dubious nutritional value to people, with increasing faux-concern and food-piety, won’t discourage them from eating it: I can’t imagine that we eat instant noodles with the conviction that it will whack an extra score year onto our lifespans. I’m aware that there are high-end instant noodles without questionable additives and production methods; I’m not talking about those here. Anyway, it’s important to consider that instant noodles are hot food which is widely available, cheap, quick, and easy to make.
Instant noodles can be a delicious thing that are warmly nestled in the hollows and dells of childhood memory in spite (or because of) their perceived “trashiness”: echoing Kenji Alt-Lopez, they give a pang of nostalgia for me. I was raised on packets of British Supernoodles and Thai Mama brand instant noodles. My parents, far from sighing over my refusal to eat proper food, freely admit to crunching up uncooked Mama noodles when they were young, regard friends who make a point of saying they don’t eat instant noodles with suspicion (Mama consumption is a very Thai thing, like it or not!), and continue to eat the cooked stuff now. We’ve always added extra stuff to the noodles, ostensibly to increase its nutritional value, but mainly because it’s tasty.
So, what’s in the noodle bowl? We had some fresh chicken stock left over, so I used that – with the addition of a squashed garlic clove – as the soup base. There’s leftover poached chicken, watercress, spring onions, a fresh bird’s eye chilli for fresh heat and a good chopstick pinch of ground dried chilli for depth. I also added a sprinkling of the flavour packet for extra flavour. Sometimes I also like to add some simmered pork or fishballs, fresh prawns, boiled wontons, chopped ham, a poached egg, a dollop of gochujang or chilli oil, or just the plain, boiled packet – artificial flavouring and all.
How do you like yours?
Holy crap, those noodles look amazing! I’m a total sadsack, I’ve never done anything to my noodles more interesting than adding hot sauce.
My favorite brand of instant noodles are the Nong Shim Bowl Noodles, kimchi flavor. The sodium content is legitimately horrifying and it mostly tastes like salt and hot, but I kinda love it.
Hee, thank you! It also tasted amazing. Like salt and hot, in fact, which is the best flavour. I try not to think about horrifying sodium content and drink a lot of water to try to compensate, which I suspect is futile.
It’s so bad but it feels so right.