Maruchan Yakisoba: Cheddar Cheese Flavour

25 March 09

So at the grocery store, in the ramen aisle, I notice there's a new product.
Enter: Maruchan Yakisoba.



I decide to grab 2 flavours, Cheddar Cheese (oh America....) and Teriyaki Beef. The tag-line for our cheddar cheese noodles claims "It's Cheesy, It's Easy !". Maruchan hit the nail on the head, it is cheesy and it is easy.

Price: So first off let's talk price. This was purchased at a Basha's with a standard price of $1.39. I would never buy an instant noodle dish for this price, especially not a cheese flavoured one. But as always, there was a promo deal for these, 5 for $5. How could I resist.

Time: 4 minutes. Now these always have directions for "microwave" or "boiling water". No one boils water to make instant noodles. So I microwave it for 4 minutes. Not terrible but I have found that 2 minutes for normal packaged ramen in a microwave is plenty. This is twice the time for about the same amount of food.

Filling: This was actually fairly filling. It comes in a fairly deep dish and it's all noodle, very little water. I'm guessing this will keep me full for the next few hours.

Preperation: To make Maruchan Yakisoba noodles you need to peel the top seal off half way (in case you don't know how much half is, Maruchan has a dotted line for your convenience). Then you remove the flavour packet and add water to the fill line. It's a little hard to see as the packaging is black and the fill line is about at the same height as the noodles. I'd suggest adding a little more water than that as my first attempt turned out a bit rubbery. Cook for 4 minutes, add the flavour and stir.

Taste: Well the smell from the flavour packet and the noodles instantly made me think of Kraft Mac 'n Cheese, only this flavour packet was enourmous. Maruchan doesn't lie, this is cheesy ! In fact, I would suggest you add the flavour to taste, starting at half. As a poor college student I have 3 seasonings which I will continually refer to throughout the blog. They are salt, pepper, and hot sauce. I decided to add a little bit pepper to this one. It wasn't salty to the taste but the nutrition info tells me otherwise (480mg) so I stayed away from the salt. I only add hot suace if something is absolutely nasty, so I guess props to Maruchan this time. Over all it just tasted like mac n cheese with about double the cheese and a bit wetter.

The consistency of the noodles was a little iffy. Yakisoba is similar to udon but I'm pretty sure this is just thick ramen. The cheese sauce probably didn't help the texture at all. I found it to almost taste a little dry even though it looked very saucy. I even started to feel a little sick to my stomache afterwards. Again, go easy on that powdered cheese.

I'm going to rank each criteria on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 being worst and 5 being best.

Score:
Price: 4
Time: 2
Filling: 4
Prep: 3
Taste: 2

Total: 15/25
Final notes: I've had much better but considering it's only a dollar and fairly filling it's worth a shot.

Introduction

25 March 09

Introduction:

I'd like to use this first entry as an introduction of myself and what I intend to do here.

I'm currently a 21 year old college student living somewhere around Phoenix, Arizona. I am not a food critic. I am not a writer. I am not a photographer. But I am poor. And I do need to eat.

Over the years of shopping for myself, I've noticed that I'm always drawn to "instant" foods that are sold in most grocery stores. I'm talking things like Cup Noodles, any instant soups, basically anything that can be prepared in a microwave in under 5 minutes.

Instant meals are always in colourful packaging, always look delicious on the outside, and usually always have promotional sales such as "2 for 1" or "buy 2 get 1 free", you get my point.

So I've decided to start a sort of food review page for cheap, college oriented meals.

I have worked out a grading criteria for the foods in question which is subject to change but will follow a format like this for the time being.

Price: This is the most important factor. These food products are aimed at those without a lot of money. If it costs 10cents but tastes like garbage, at least it fed you for a few hours.

Time: The time to prepare the meal isn't the most important thing in the world, but these are "instant" meals after all. I don't want to toss a frozen lasagna in the microwave and have to wait 12 minutes for my food. Part of being poor and in college means I'm impatient and don't have the foresight to cook that lasagna 12 minutes BEFORE I'm hungry.

Filling: If you're to survive in this world you need bang for your buck. If it's cheap but you need to eat 5 of them just to feel full, that's garbage. These are instant meals and my personal requirement for something to be a meal is that I need to feel full afterward.

Preparation: I want food that's easy to make. Instant right ? A lot of these meals have many packets that need to be added in a certain order. Other times you are asked to open the microwave, stir, and cook again.

Taste: Finally taste. To some this is the most important to you and I personally agree that I would rather something taste great than be cheap. But in the real world, when checks bounce and you can't even afford the gas to get to school, taste hits the back burner. However there are some excellent tasting instant meals out there that are definitely worth the price. I'd like to make you aware of them.

I'll try and prepare 1 of these a week until I figure out a consistent day that works for me to update.

Thanks for reading and hopefully you enjoy and find something useful in my posts.