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.