Maruchan Seimen Hojun Koku Shoyu Bowl Noodle Review

Maruchan has these deluxe ramen bowls in Japan that are all gold in color so it must be pretty nice.  The bright colour definitely stands out and shows up on a shelf, beckoning you to pick it up to eat.  If this was a dungeon, it is definitely a trap, but in a convenience store it is going to be tasty!  Maruchan has been making instant ramen since 1961 so they are an established company with plenty of experience.

The lid of the bowl showing a big picture of a very tasty looking bowl of shoyu ramen.  The noodles look great with some chashu pork, some menma,green onions, and a piece of nori in the background.  The package positively glows from the gold foil.

A 3/4 view of the bowl showing how deep and wide it is.  This is a flagship product from the packaging, not your cheap instant ramen.

Nutritional content, cooking directions.  11.4 grams of fat, less than deep fried noodles as these are dried noodles.  The soup base is going to have fat and oil in it to give it body and flavour to make up for it.

Hojun Koku Shoyu labelling.

Manufacturing information, ingredients.

After peeling the lid back, you see a noodle disc, a package of seaweed (nori), a liquid soup base, and a package for dried pork, menma, and green onions.

A closeup of the noodles.  They are a slightly wider than normal noodle but are thin to rehydrate quicker.  The noodles are dried and not fried, something you can always tell from visual inspection.

Closeup of the soup base and ingredients.

All of the ingredients added to the noodles before adding in the boiling water.  That is a nice dried piece of pork.

Boiling water was added and I waited for 4 minutes.  Dried noodles take a little longer to rehydrate.  They often are chewier and firmer than the fried noodle, having more of a natural noodle texture.

After stirring things up a little to reveal the noodles and toppings better.

This bowl of instant ramen smelled like a really nice shoyu ramen, with rich, savoury soy smell.  The soup itself was a nice rich brown colour with some bubbles of oil on the surface.  On first taste, the soup had a nice deep flavour to it, living up to the aroma coming from it.  The noodles rehydrated nicely and became thicker and had a nice chew to them.  The pork slice was nice and meaty, but thin.  You could tell it was a real slice of meat.  This was a really nice bowl of ramen that I would gladly buy again.

Closeup of the noodles and the chashu.

More cup noodle / ramen reviews and Japanese pop culture.