Yamadai New Touch Nara Tenri Stamina Ramen Review

This was the fifth 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.  Like the Kyushu Marugoto Ramen Pack By Marutai I reviewed years ago, this set of ramen bowls has been like a tour around Japan and a noodle education.  There have been many good varieties of noodles introduced to me!

This Yamadai New Touch Nara Tenri Stamina Ramen is a ramen specialty from Nara Japan, the ancient capital of the country that predates Kyoto becoming the capital.  Like Kyoto, Nara is full of UNESCO World Heritage sites.  I had a very brief visit to Nara here in 2022.  Nara has a ramen battleground of shops in the area of Tenri that compete and one of the established types of ramen is Tenri Stamina Ramen.  Here is a link to a popular Tenri ramen shop in Nara.

Lid of the Tenri Stamina Ramen bowl.  The design with the orange to red elements ensures you understand that this bowl of soup will have some heat to it!  The soup is prominently shown and you can see big pieces of cabbage in a spicy looking broth. The big black characters say "Nara Tenri" and the red characters say "Stamina Ramen".  The characters in the yellow patch say "big crunchy Chinese cabbage".

A trip over to the ramen battlegrounds in Nara should be on the list of those seeking to taste the truly popular ramen bowls found in Japan.  The locals call it Ten-sta and this is a popular ramen topped with pork and Napa cabbage.  The soup is mildly spicy blend of soy sauce, tonkotsu (pork bone), and chicken stocks.  It is full of nutrients and give you stamina to complete your day.

3/4 view of the ramen bowl.

Preparation directions at the top.  It takes 4 minutes to rehydrate the cabbage and the noodles.  Ingredients and manufacturers info underneath.

Nutritional information, preparation warnings, allergens listing, and company contact info.

Another view of the side of the bowl.

Inside the bowl are three sachets and you can see the noodles are of a thinner variety.  The big green packet is a freeze dried block of cabbage and green onion.  The blue sachet is a liquid soup base, and the pink sachet is red pepper flakes.

Closeup of the block of freeze dried Napa cabbage.  It looks like an awesome amount of cabbage is included.  I'm looking forward to this.

A nice writeup of product info.  It talks about how they tried to recreate the flavour and texture of freshly stir fried Chinese cabbage and a tasty pork and soy type soup.

The dehydrated cabbage really expands in the boiling water I poured in to rehydrate the soup.

The soup broth was then added.  You can see it produces a slightly cloudy, reddish golden soup.

The finished soup with everything mixed in and pepper flakes added.

This was a well done instant noodle with a cloudy soup that was like a miso soup and I think there was a bit of miso in it.  You could smell the cabbage and spicy peppers quite clearly.  The soup had a definite heat to it from the first taste, but it wasn't extreme by any measure.  The block of cabbage rehydrated and separated nicely.  The cabbage was crunchy.  It was a very savoury broth with a low medium heat.  The noodles rehydrated perfectly in the 4 minutes and had a nice bite them.  They did clump together in one spot and needed to be separated more.  The pepper flakes added some extra heat too.  These noodles get a big star as they have a lot of vegetable compared to most instant noodles and it was a tasty bowl of noodle soup.  If you get a chance to try this, I would.  I don't think I would rank it up in my most favourite, but I wouldn't turn a bowl away if it was offered!

Take a look at that crunchy cabbage!

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