I saw this frozen ramen at H-Mart a few weeks ago. It was on for a slight sale and I picked up a couple to try. It says Japanese style ramen with chashu pork on the package and it has a tonkotsu pork bone soup base. The frozen ramen seems to be a Canadian product from the information on the back and Canda Six Fortune also has a frozen udon noodle in similar packaging. These weren't cheap as I think I paid $8 or $9 for this on a slight sale so I certainly hoped they would be good and tasty.
 |
The front of the box showing a nicely composed bowl of tonkotsu ramen soup. You can see some nice big slices of chashu pork with corn, kale, bamboo shoots, and black fungus. Fairly common ramen toppings (other than the kale). The presentation graphics are plain, but show the product.
|
 |
Back of the box showing nutritional information, cooking instructions and ingredients. Everything is in written in English and French as this is Canada.
|
 |
Opening the box reveals a massive disc of frozen soup and toppings along with a package of frozen fresh noodles. The box weighs in at 800 grams so it is well over a pound of food, much of it is the frozen soup.
|
 |
The package of frozen noodles. Looks like typical ramen noodles.
|
 |
The top of the disc of frozen soup. You can tell that there are plenty of toppings and that they really haven't skimped on them. It is premium product in this sense.
|
 |
The side view of the disk. The bottom 2/3s is soup. It is a thick disc which is why the box is quite thick.
|
 |
The directions say to just put the big disc into a pot and bring it to a boil. I put the heat on an let it melt the frozen soup just like the directions mentioned.
|
 |
After the soup has been brought to a boil then you put in the noodles to let them cook for 1 to 2 minutes. It doesn't take long at all for the noodles. It takes longer to melt the soup.
|
 |
The finished ramen soup poured into a bowl. The ingredients and noodles tend to be mixed up during cooking so I didn't bother trying to separate things too much.
|
The cooked/reheated soup had a very mild aroma and you can tell from the photos that it isn't the creamiest tonkotsu style broth. The flavour of the soup was mild and it wasn't strong enough or creamy enough for my taste. It is hard to compare this soup to some of the Japanese tonkotsu instant noodles I've had as some of them have had more flavour than this one, but this is a real soup, not some condensed or powdered soup base, so it has that going for it. The noodles cooked nicely with a medium firmness to them, and there was a decent amount of them too. The toppings are where this bowl really shines. There were three slices of chasu pork which was decent, there was plenty of corrn, bamboo, black fungus, and kale. The kale was pretty cool as you don't usually see that as a ramen topping, but it works pretty good (like a choy), but kale holds up much better than some leafy vegetables when frozen so it is an excellent choice for a topping. Overall, the bowl was fairly good, but I'm not sure if I would get this again myself, even though it is a complete ramen bowl in a box which is a big plus.
 |
Closeup of some noodles and a piece of tender pork.
|
Follow me on Twitter a @Tostzilla or my feedburner.
More cup noodle / instant ramen reviews and Japanese pop culture.
Comments
Post a Comment