Yamadai New Touch Kyoto Backfat Soy Sauce Instant Ramen Bowl Review

This was the third of the ramen bowls I had from the "Yamadai New Touch Amazing Noodles Summer Fukubako Western Japan" ramen box of six kinds of instant ramen bowls.  You expect a tasty bowl of ramen any time it mentions shoyu and backfat, and I wanted to find out if this Kyoto Backfat Shoyu ramen lived up to that!

Kyoto is a city rich in history, a former capital of feudal Japan, and it is known for fine cuisine, but it also has its own varieties of down to earth ramen.  One of these varieties is a shoyu ramen with a soup made of pork and chicken with a soy base.  One enhancement of this dish is the addition of pork backfat (aka seabura) to make a tastier and heavier dish.  The city is a college town too so you have students who would enjoy cheap and filling food.

The lid of the New Touch Kyoto Backfat Shoyu Ramen Bowl.  The big characters in the middle mean Kyoto.  The picture displayed shows a pretty tasty looking bowl of ramen soup with pieces of menma, green onions, noodles, and a round piece of chashu pork.  I kind of like lids like this as they set the tone for your dining experience.  Little pieces of back fat are floating in the soup.

A 3/4 view of the bowl.  Looks like a white ramen bowl.  These bowls are like an actual ramen bowl in size rather than a cup.

Ingredients and producer information.

Nutritional information on the left and directions, warning, and contact information on the right.  Despite having backfat, there are only about 17 grams of fat, like a regular instant noodle because the noodles are not fried.  If you want less sodium and fat, don't drink all the soup.

There were three sachets inside the bowl.  From the left.  The pink sachet is a dried menma (bamboo shoots) and dehydrated chashu pork.  The middle is a big sachet of green onions.  The red sachet is the liquid shoyu soup base.  Liquid soup bases are the best!  The noodle disc is of thin dried noodles.

I added in all the dried ingredients and poured in boiling water up to the fill line.

Information about the Kyoto shoyu back fat ramen.  The backfat is firm and provides a natural richness.  There are two types of oil in the tare for the soup and garlic and chili pepper are added to give the soup a bit of punch.

The rehydrated noodles and ingredients after the required 5 minutes of soaking.  I then added in the liquid soup base which is the brown cloud on the bottom left.  There are a lot of green onions, but I think ramen and green onions go hand in hand.

I stirred in the soup base to produce this tasty looking broth.  There is a thin sheen of oil on the top and little particles of backfat.  It looks good!

My impressions of this ramen bowl started with the herbal smell of the green onions.  The scent filled the air when the packet was opened.  This is a good thing and the amount of green onions was generous.  I noticed the noodles were thinner than usual, but expected it would go well with the soup.  

The soup was a rich brown colour that smelled deliciously savoury.  The scent of onions, shoyu, and pork were very nice blended together.  The taste of the soup had a nice hit of umami followed by the salt in the broth.  The backfat added a richness to the soup and any texture adds a silkiness to the soup.
The bit of pepper and chili pepper added just a bit of zippiness too. You had green onion with every mouthful.  The noodles had a decent bite and a slightly easier break than some, but they were still good noodles.  The pork was tasty and added a nice meaty bite to things and the menma added a bit of slightly crunchy chewiness.  This was an excellent instant ramen to try.  Too bad I only have one!

A closeup of the noodles and chashu pork.

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