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My latest simple and good ramen solution is Rice Ramen from Lotus:
https://shop.lotusfoods.com/Rice-Ramen/c/[email protected]
I love raiding the local Asian supermarket for ramen oddities, but my wife has two food allergies: artificial preservatives and MSG…and that puts basically every pre-packaged ramen out of commission for us. The Lotus offering was a godsend: good ingredients, nothing artificial, and affordable. My favorite is the millet/brown rice with miso, but they’re all good. It’s easy to add whatever you like to this one, and it’s vegan-friendly right out of the package. I like a little bit of pork or chicken or beef in mine, but you can add anything you like. Tofu and dried shiitake would probably be amazing. Either way, it’s good stuff.
There are dozens of kinds of packaged ramen in Chinese supermarkets if you are interested in visiting one. Searched on Amazon, they are way over priced. After reading posts from Back Country Foodie (https://backcountryfoodie.com/), I started to add dried veggies and nuts&seeds in plain ramen, the variety to add depends on the mood each day. Most of dried stuff from Mother Earth Products (https://motherearthproducts.com/). Nothing is tried on trail yet, only at work where lunch break is about 30 min. Are you vegan? I am vegan, too! Happy trail and happy ramening!
If it’s good enough to be Korean street food, it’s good enough for me!
[Note the NongShim packet; sadly non-‘Black’, but redeemed with veggies, an egg, baby dumplings and American cheese!]
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We had a very successful combination this weekend when testing a meal: Rice Ramen’s Jade Pearl with lots of fun stuff added to it. I posted the image in the meal-test thread, but here are the details:
- Jade Pearl noodles from Rice Ramen; this is a rice-and-bamboo-juice noodle with a white miso soup base, with some nori thrown in for good measure. Yummy all on its own!
- A few scraps of leftover teriyaki venison jerky.
- Dried mushrooms.
- Dried shrimp.
- Half a sheet of water-soluble nori, cut into small strips, to give the base a bit more seafood-ish flavor.
We soaked the jerky, mushrooms, extra nori and shrimp for about ten minutes in the pot; it could have used a few more because a few pieces were a bit tough, still. Brought it to a boil, added the ramen and soup contents, and let it simmer for about five minutes. Shut down the stove and closed up the pot after that and gave it a few minutes to soak and blend, and then dove in. Quite good! Next time, however, I’ll tenderize the jerky that I want to use for soups, and I think I’m just going to dry my own shrimp from now on; I’m still not really satisfied with any that I’ve purchased. Overall, we were pleased…and it went really well with a good Altbarisch Dunkel!
+1 Lotusfoods. I don’t do MSG, avoid onion powder, and my wife can’t do garlic. I sometimes add a miso pack and odd vegetables. Ramen is among the most satisfying but least caloric backpacking meals. Of course, it gets pulverzied before going into the bear canister. I assume that the pulverization results in faster hydration, but I am not quite motivated enough to do exhaustive at-home testing on this matter.
+1 Lotusfoods. I don’t do MSG, avoid onion powder, and my wife can’t do garlic. I sometimes add a miso pack and odd vegetables. Ramen is among the most satisfying but least caloric backpacking meals. Of course, it gets pulverzied before going into the bear canister. I assume that the pulverization results in faster hydration, but I am not quite motivated enough to do exhaustive at-home testing on this matter.
I’ve never noticed a difference in hydration times, but that’s mostly because 90% of my total ramen-hydrating time is spent hydrating things other than ramen; if crushing the noodles – <shiver> – saves ten seconds, I’d never know…but it seems like my ramen crumbs from the bottom of the bag are just as cooked as the longer noodles, each and every time.
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