Do you love instant noodles, but not the extremely high sodium or overly-processed ingredients? Making your own instant noodles isn’t as hard as you might think! Plus, there are significant advantages to cooking your own food whenever you can: picking the ingredients yourself means you’re more likely to choose healthier ones, it’s often better for the environment, and it can even save you money. Also, fresh ingredients make everything taste ten times better.
So who says instant noodles have to be processed beyond recognition? Try some recipes from Serious Eats in their DIY instant noodle feature. Here’s a snippet of their “Spicy Kimchi Beef” recipe below, check out the article for full instructions:
The Food Lab: Make Your Own Just-Add-Hot-Water Instant Noodles (and Make Your Coworkers Jealous) | J. Kenji López-Alt
How to Make Spicy Kimchi Beef Flavored Instant Noodles
According to the article, this instant noodle recipe is inspired by “Shin Ramyun, the spicy Korean instant noodles flavored with kimchi and beef”. They have created their own DIY version of the popular flavor for a perfectly zesty and quick lunch you can bring with you.
The Ingredients:
The recipe includes shiitake mushrooms, beef jerky, kimchi, chili-garlic sauce, scallions, noodles (of course), and beef base with a personal recommendation for which base to buy from the author. Of course, you can skip or substitute as you need!
The Flavor Base:
Forget flavor powder, apparently a moist flavor base is the way to go. They recommend using a moist flavor base “made with a high proportion of real meat” like Better Than Bouillon. A tablespoon of the stuff is all you need to get amazing flavor.
Build the Flavor Packet
More delicate (read: easy to wilt) ingredients that add the finishing flavorful touch, like chopped scallions, are hard to keep fresh in the container. The author solved this problem by putting their herbs and veggies in a separate ziplock baggy, then folding the baggy and stuffing it into the jar. You’ll simply take the bag out when you’re ready to eat and mix the herbs and veggies in.
Pack it for Lunch and Add Boiling Water
When you’re ready to eat your delicious noodle creation, all you have to do is open your container and pour in some hot water. If you have no hot water machine at your office or any way to boil water yourself, the author suggests trying the nearest deli. If you ask nicely, they will probably give you some hot water to use for your noodles.
Eat
Yum, the final product looks genuinely delicious. You’ll make all your co-workers jealous.
Featured photo credit: DIY Noodles/J. Kenji López-Alt via seriouseats.com
