the ramen blog & other goodies!

A few weeks ago I promised to review Nissin’s new health-conscious instant ramen. According to Nissin:

…eating healthier doesn’t have to feel like a punishment. Choice Ramen is 80% fat free with 25% less sodium than typical instant ramen. How’d we do it? The secret rests in a special air-drying process. It yields a healthier noodle with the delicious taste and texture you’re looking for.

Is this ramen healthier? According to the Nutrition Facts info on the package, definitely! Does eating it “feel like a punishment”? Definitely! Oh wait…(rereading Nissin’s blurb)…oops, my mistake. It’s not supposed to feel like a punishment…sorry.

It took a few sips of the soup to establish the flavor: it’s extremely bland. Even then, I still have trouble describing it. It certainly smells beefy. But it tastes more like…a watery light gravy? Watered down au jus? Juice left over from the “slow stewed beef” added to water mixed with water and topped off with water? I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.

As for the noodles, unfortunately the “special air-drying process” seemed to have also blown away any flavor as well. The noodles tasted amazingly like water and flour.

At least there were a small handful…maybe 5 pcs of green onion bits, not that you’d notice.

Health benefits aside, it’s hard for me to find anything positive about this ramen. It does have less of a MSG bite than other instant ramen, so that might also be a plus for the MSG-adverse. Other than that, I can only recommend this to people who like very lightly flavored food. I’m glad to see Nissin trying to make instant ramen healthier, but I’ll wait for the next version. Nissin’s Choice Ramen, Slow Stewed Beef flavor gets a 3 (It gets a bonus point for being healthier).

(As we’ve pointed out before, heed the “Serving Size” when evaluating nutritional value. Note that the nutritional values shown are for “one” serving size, which is *half* the block of ramen.)