Maruchan Shrimp Tempura Udon Noodle Cup

This was another cup of noodle from Maruchan I tried recently.  You really can't go wrong between Maruchan and Nissin as they both put out pretty good noodles and flavours.  The udon style instant noodles are usually not thick like a real udon noodle, but are slightly thicker and broader than a regular instant noodle.

A 3/4 view of the attractively produced cup.  On the top of the cup as a flavoured oil satchet.

Another view showing more of the front of the cup.

The lid of the cup with the logo and a nice lined pattern on blue that reminds me of a fabric pattern.  The bottom of the lid has your preparation directions for the noodle cup.  Lift the oil satchet off the lid, peel the lid back to add boiling water, close the lid and wait 3 minutes, then add the flavouring oil and stir.

Another view of the calligraphic lettering for the name of  the noodle cup.  The picture shows nice looking udon noodles with a spinkling of tempura and green onion on top.

Manufacturers and nutritional information.

Ingredients and cautions.

Lifting the lid, you can see there are two kinds of tempura and green onions.

Another view of the contents.

After adding the boiling water, I put the oil satchet on top to warm up.

After 3 minutes I lifted the lid to see everything rehydrated.  The tempura was obviously damp rather than crunchy.

I then added the oil satchet and stirred to mix everything up.

The base soup was dashi based and fairly light.  The oil added some additional depth and shrimp flavour to it.  There was a pleasant aroma to the soup and it tasted like a decent dashi broth.  The two kinds of tempura - a plain, and I think a shrimp batter one were okay.  There was mix of textures between the noodles and the soggy tempura which is expected from this type of soup.  The udon style noodles broke up fairly easy and didn't have as much springiness as I would expect.  Still, this was an okay noodle cup that you could definitely enjoy as a snack or accompaniment to something more substantial like a sandwich.

Closeup of noodles and a tempura bit.

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