Tasting Nissin Big Cup Noodle Mexican Chili Cheese and Samurai Don Instant Kettle Rice with Tofu

I tried a couple of Nissin products from Japan in the last couple of weeks.  They were an instant noodle and a instant rice.  A friend of mine went to Japan and brought me back a limited edition cup noodle from Japan (all gone by summer of 2016 for sure).  She went and found the Nissin Big Cup Noodle Mexican Chili Cheese flavour easily at a 7-11 and even gave it to me in the original plastic bag (no change though!).

Big Cup Noodle Mexican Chili Cheese
I was wondering if it was like their tomato ramen and it has some similarities, but it definitely is chili-like in a good way.  I was pretty eager to try this cup noodle as flavour was New World different and it looked tasty. 

The cup is very attractive with a nice deep red color with bold yellow print and green lettering.  I like the picture of the Mexican wrestler on the cup who is about to drop kick you with the flavour of a beef chili bowl.  The lid has a photo that shows lots of ingredients and there is plenty of stuff inside.

When I first popped open the cup there was a strong waft of the chili spices - like crushed chiles, paprika, tomato powder, and peppers.  It was much like what chili should smell like and it was a promising start.  The poor cup had been bounced around a bit and only the bigger freeze dried ingredients had stayed on top of the noodle block though. 

The picture above shows the big blocks of meat and cheese blocks.  You have to love how the intricate patterns of windy noodles appear on the noodle blocks.  A dusting of the chili powder was on the noodles and I figured most of the veggies (cabbage, red bell peppers, and seasoning) had fallen underneath.  I poured in boiling water up to the fill line and settled back to wait three minutes for it to be ready.

Popping open the top you can see that the noodles and meat had rehydrated well and a nice chili aroma was in the air.  These noodles are like their curry noodles where the soup is thicker and you need to stir the noodles really well to make sure you mix in the seasonings at the bottom.  You can see that the cheese blocks melted down and as soon as you stir, they vanish into the soup to provide some rich background flavour. 

Tasting the noodles was like having a thinner version of a thick chili, but it is a soup and it was a very pleasant eating experience.  It wasn't too spicy and it is pretty much true you can mix instant noodles with a huge variety of flavours and ingredients and have something delicious.  I'm pretty sure that the cabbage might have been pickled or something, but it was all very nice mixed together.  While I don't think this is one of my absolute favourites, it is something I would definitely have again.

Samurai Don Instant Kettle Rice with Tofu
I've tried a couple of these instant rices before and they can make for a nice change of pace from a cup of noodle.  This particular instant box of rice is from their Donbei line (as in the udon noodle bowls) for the flavouring.  I figured this would be a nice savoury rice dish and I wasn't disappointed.

Unlike the cup noodles which come in a plasticized paper cup with a cool foam insulation on the outside that allows you to hold the cup without burning yourself, these instant rice boxes are a double layered plastic that also provides insulation for when being held.  The Donbei style logo and green color are similar to their fried tofu udon (which is really good) and it clearly shows that is is a rice dish from the pictures on the lid and the side of the box.

Unlike the instant noodles, instant rice is a little more complicated.  You need to put water up the the fill line and then figure out how long to microwave the rice to rehydrate it properly.  The cooking time at full power depends on the strength of your microwave.  I've always thought this was way less convenient than an instant noodle which can theoretically be eaten without hot water as the noodles are already cooked.

The inside of the rice box shows pieces of carrot, little cubes of chicken, green onion, shiitake mushrooms, some fish cake, and some pieces of deep fried tofu mixed in with the rice.  Deep fried tofu has a rich sweetish soy flavour and doesn't taste like tofu all that much, and it is a nice spongy food I quite like.  This rice box resemble a rice pilaf with a soy-based stew flavour.

The cooked rice looks quite nice and you can see all of the ingredients re-hydrated nicely.  I've found that the rice is mostly soft, but there are more al-dente type grains here and there.  All mixed together it is like a fried rice or a pilaf in appearance.

As you can see from the photo below, it looks quite good and it was a tasty dish to munch on.  I liked the tofu quite a bit and was sad to not have more after eating all of the pieces.

I'll still prefer cup noodles over these rice boxes, but as I said earlier, they make for a nice change.

More noodle reviews here.