Nongshim Shin Ramyun Red Super Spicy

Tagged: Arugula, Nongshim, Spicy, Seafood sticks, Beef flavour

I picked this one up in the limited offers middle aisle at Lidl, which is how you know it's going to be either amazing and you'll never find it again, or there was a good reason why they had excess stock of it.

I like it when a pack of instant noodles follows The Standard Process. This one plainly states you just pour boiling water in with all the contents and wait. Some noodles' preparation instructions way overhandle it, with multiple steps just to get to some average grub. Would you believe the audacity, one time I found a pack which even called for stir-frying the noodles after draining them! If I wanted to bring out the cooking gear, I wouldn't be having instant noodles.

I haven't had these before, so in the interest of scientific fairness I had a few forkfuls before adding anything else extraneous to what comes in the packet. Now, I'm a fan of spicy food, but more often than not unless we're talking Buldak and a few others the package is deceptively disappointing in how spicy they claim their noodles are. Or, other times, like Buldak, they're far too spicy for spicy trend's sake and don't really have anything else good to offer in terms of flavour.

Not this one.

One bite. WOW! What a kick! This definitely clears the bar for spiciness. And the flavour? Let me tell you about the flavour.

Many years ago when I was a much younger and dumber Ramen Scientist, I had a regional exclusive spicy smoked sausage flavour instant noodles that Nissin once did. At the time it very quickly became my favourite, to the point that it was the first impetus for me to want to write a quite regrettable blog reviewing spicy food all those years ago. This was back in the Blogspot days, and I've checked, I'm pretty sure all traces of it are gone now. (Probably for the best.)

The Shin Red noodles have a flavour resemblance to those Nissin ones so strong I ran into the living room to tell my wife about it. I felt like a kid again! They're a bit more spicy than I'd like for a regular eat but if I don't find these again next time I go into the limited offer section at Lidl to stock up on I'll be very sad.

To round out a meal out of these, I'm adding some arugula for greens (sorry England, "rocket" is a really silly name for them) and seafood sticks for protein. The noodles do come with some dehydrated vegetable and and mushroom flakes, but not nearly enough to bulk out the bowl. The slight sweetness of the imitation crab and bitterness of the arugula really balance out the spicy flavour of the noodles, too.

Meal Components

The Scientific Method

• Dump all contents into a bowl as instructed.
• Pour enough boiling water to cover noodles, stir once softened.
• Try some of the bare noodles, immediately get transported back in time.
• Add some veg and protein to make a meal out of it.
• Enjoy!

This was an exceptional bowl of noodles, I could barely stop eating to write this post. Note from the future: Since originally writing this post I have indeed found more of it in the shop and have already had another bowl of it. It's a real winner!