Copycat Oriental Flavor Top Ramen

Copycat Oriental Flavor Top Ramen

Anyone else get through college on Top Ramen? I know there are a lot of us out there. Lurking in the dark. Afraid to admit our culinary past. Or lack thereof. I know I can’t be the only one. It was the way to stretch the dollar. Back in the day you could get 1o packages for $1, so for $0.10 a meal, most of us were all over that. It even made for some quick pre-kid meals in the early years of our marriage.

But as we learned more about food and the need to avoid MSG and reduce sodium and limit the ingredients we couldn’t pronounce, we ended up with some Top Ramen in the depths of our kitchen cabinets that were forgotten (and not missed) for years. Did you know that the Oriental Flavored Top Ramen contains 29 ingredients? Yikes! You can go here to see all of the ingredients. Finally after deep cleaning the pantry a few years ago I tossed the last few of the decade-old packages. Some packages even had holes in them hanging head in shame. Who knows how? I don’t want to know.

Not knowing what had come over me, last year I had the desire for some ramen. I don’t know if it was something in the water or what. Anyway, I thought I’d try to make it from scratch to somewhat healthify it, if you will. I found this recipe and thought it gave a good start but needed to be tweaked out. Equal parts ginger, and onion powder, and garlic powder AND black pepper, with salt to taste. All of those are really strong flavors. Woh…try it, and you might say the same thing or stronger. So I reduced reduced the amount of ginger and black pepper, and really ALL the ingredients. After months of testing it on the kids (who were new to ramen and love it, by the way), I’m finally pleased with the balance of flavors.

I got these Hakubaku Organic Soba Noodles, Udon Wheat Noodles, and Somen Noodles (this is not a sponsored post). For a frugal choice in noodles with only 4 ingredients, I get Gold Key Chuka Soba Japaneese Style Noodles at Winco for about $1/6oz. package. Currently Amazon sells the Chuka Soba  48 package batch for $40, AND the packages are bigger at 7.05 ounces each. So even though Top Ramen can be cheap, we can still make it frugally with way LESS ingredients AND way BETTER ingredients.

This feeds 6 adults generously. I love to top the noodles with raw carrots, bell peppers, green onions and the like because I like to get those veggies in my family. I’m the mom; what can I say? We often eat it vegan, but sometimes we add chicken to make it more hardy. Shrimp would go fabulously with the dish. Some of my kids like me making it soupy because they LOVE soup. Hope this gives you a few ideas for a frugal and quick meal.

GO HERE FOR THE COMPLETE LIST OF RECIPES.

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