Nissin Canned Cup Noodle Emergency / Survival Ration Review

I picked up this canned cup noodle at a Tokyu Hands a couple of years ago. The best before date was coming up in December of 2017 so I decided to pop the can open and have a treat.  This is an emergency ration that you keep on hand along with a 600 ml of water so you can rehydrate the noodles for a quick meal.  Even if you cannot boil your water, you can just add room temperature water to the noodles to rehydrate them.  The noodles will take like ten times longer to hydrate and won't be hot, but you can still slurp your ramen.

The one I picked up was good for at least a couple of years, which is way over the six to nine months you usually see for instant noodles on a store shelf.  This was the original cup noodle flavour which was a soy broth with the little pork cube, egg, and shrimp.

When I was at the Tokyu Hands they also had the chicken ramen flavour and it was a hard choice to pick just one as they are both really good. I believe most of the stores like Tokyu Hands, Loft, and some department stores have a section for emergency preparedness where you can find this stuff.  Earthquakes, giant monster attacks, and typhoons are all things that occur there.  Japan also produces all types of freeze dried and canned foods that are actually pretty good.  There is even a chain of canned food bars (Mr. Kanso) in Japan you can order a drink and have them prepare some appetizers out of cans like teriyaki chicken or fish.

The Nissin Cup Noodle Canned Emergency Ramen comes in a big can with a plastic lid.  Once you remove the lid, the pull top of the can is revealed.  Having the plastic lid also means you can also reuse the can for other things later (nice touch).

The side of the can with the Cup Noodle logo.  It pretty much follows the white and red colour scheme of a regular Cup Noodle.  The can is quite large as it is wider than a cup, and taller than two cups stacked on top of each other.  It isn't something you throw into your backpack.

The back of the can.

Detail from the bottom of the front of the can.  It shows you get two servings of ramen, two satchets of seasoning and dried condiments, two cups, two forks, and an oxygen absorber (DO NOT EAT THIS).

Directions and an ingredients for the preparation of cup noodle.

More manufacturing and ingredients details.

Nutritional information.

Metal pull top of the can.  More directions on how to use a pull tab.

Pulling the tab up and partially opening the can reveals - the bottom of a a cup.

So I pulled out two nested cups, with the dried ingredients and soup powder packets tucked into them.  The two blocks of ramen were stored underneath and well shrink wrapped.

The two collapse-able forks were also tucked in at the bottom of the can along side the ramen blocks.

Here is everything extracted from the can.  Two blocks of noodles, two cups, two forks, and two soup powder and dried ingredients satchets.  Also an oxygen absorber packet to dispose of.

Closeup of the soup powder and dried ingredients.   It might be my imagination, but I think there is more here than in a regular cup noodle?  You can see the big shrimp, lots of egg and green onions, and the little cubes of meat.

This was pretty hard shrink wrap to get through.  You also didn't want to break up the noodles.  This wrapping and the oxygen absorber did keep the noodles pretty fresh.

A shot of just the cups, noodles, and ingredients.

In case you lost the can, the same instructions are printed on the side of each cup.

Add boiling water to the fill line on each cup and wait 3 minutes. Don't microwave styrofoam or plasticized paper cups.

The block of instant noodles fits perfectly in the cup - no surprise.

Looks like a regular cup noodle.

After adding the ingredients satchet in, it sure looks loke a nice cup of noodle.

You can see why I think there was a lot of ingredients for a regular size cup noodle.

So I added in the boiling water and waited three minutes for a piping hot cup of noodles.

Time to eat!

The two year old instant noodles re-hydrated up nicely and the soup smelled good.  I thought the noodles were pretty much normal in texture - firm with a nice chew and the broth was tasty with a good hit of savory soy-ness.  There was no stale taste to the noodles and this cup of noodle would have been a great morale booster in an emergency situation.  Tasty food to keep you going for the rest of the day or tomorrow.  I would keep this in an emergency food stash myself.  Two thumbs up!

More instant ramen and Japanese pop culture posts.