[[As for the cholesterol - if you don’t add meat to the mix it’s probably not any more than the average American meal.]] Cholesterol is not the issue here - saturated fat is. Cholesterol only comes from animal products (meat, eggs and dairy). Ramen is usually fried in palm oil, which is high in saturated fat… the bad kind.
Oh, alright, it’s saturated fat and not cholesterol! That’s what I get for posting at 5 am I suppose!
Either way, a small amount of any sort of fat is not going to harm you, and I would find it hard to believe that a bowl of ramen is anywhere near as fat-laden as a cheeseburger or eggs-and-bacon breakfast.
In fact, too little fat in the diet can be damaging. Not that many Americans have that problem! But if you don’t add anything else with fat to the noodles (such as meat products) even the fact it’s Evil Palm Oil is unlikely to result in horrible effects.
I can vouch for instant ramen not being good for you. When I moved to Japan 6 years back, I was in a tiny town with hardly any restaurants, and a very small supermarket. But they had Cup Noodle! Without much choice in stuff to eat before going to work, I opted for convenience, and ate instant ramen almost every morning for weeks. I stopped when I noticed my hands wouldn’t stop shaking and my teeth felt loose in my head.
However, now I live in a city where Momofuku & Buttafuoco would feel right at home: Fukuoka. We also have some of the best ramen in Japan–not the instant crap, either. Yum!
Hmm, maybe we have a new religion here! Obviously we need an altar made of one contiguous Ramen block so the followers can gather and “worship”.
BTW, I’m enjoying my morning Ramen right now. Beef flavor, my favorite…
Hey everyone, I actually live in Ikeda, Osaka, Japan - the home of that ramen museum (and unfortunately, also the home of those elementary school stabbings a few weeks ago). Anyhow, I hopped down there and took some pictures for y’all. Enjoy!
Oh, excellent tour, btribble. Thanks for posting that.
Can anyone point to a site which lists all the available flavors? That photo of the various kinds was impressive, and it has my curiousity piqued.
I hereby nominate btribble for the Best First Post Ever award. Neat.
Seconded. I didn’t realize when I first saw it that that was btribble’s first post. Really great pics! Maybe we could nominate his tour as a Wierd Earl.
What the heck? I went ahead and emailed Tuba myself. Good luck, btribble, and let us hear from you again, even if you don’t have pics!
I third the nomination.
Wow, isn’t that rather expensive? how do you get those gold ingots to dissolve anyway? 
Anyway, re sludge water: if you get the amount of water just right, the noodles absorb nearly all of it and the rest evaporates, so you end up with the noodles coated with a sort of sauce.
I’m waiting for four other people to back up the nomination, so I can come back and say, “I eight it.”
(Everybody groan together now…)
I also think that splinky had one hell of a first post in the OP. Beauty in the simplicity, ya know?
Amen, brother.
Shouldn’t boiling the coconut oil fried noodles free the oil and allow us to pour it off?
Wa la no more colesterol.
Oh Ya great first post btribble
There are ramen shops popping up in major cities around the world, and I suggest that anyone who has only tried the instsant stuff hie themselves of to one ASAP. Here in Japan ramen is one of the major forms of sustenance, and the top ramen restaurants have a cult-like status. The most popular ramen shops tend to have a long line of people outside and a no-smoking, no-alcohol-served-on-the-premises policy to ensure quick customer turnover. If any of you ever visit Tokyo, my personal reccomendation would be Matsumaru Ramen in Ogikuobo. (You can smoke and buy beer there, but the proprietors don’t speak English and the menus are all in Japanese. Just ask for “Matsumaru ramen”, their own special recipe."
Instant ramen is to real ramen what instant mashed potato is to real mashed potato (only in spades and doubled).
Eventually I hope to understand what that last part means.
By the way, though it’s spelled “Nissin” it’s pronounced “Nishin”.
It may not be healthfood, but 1.3 billion Chinamen seem to be doing OK, though they eat a lot of this stuff.
I also have my doubts about it’s Japanese origins, almost everything (especially noodle related) was invented in China in 3000 B.C.
— G. Raven
“Wa la”? You don’t know how to spell it, but I shouldn’t talk. I was ridiculed recently for pronouncing “voila” like how it looks.
Btribble, thanks for the pics. Maybe you should be our staff report photographer. Sorry you weren’t around when I did the hippo piece.
Just wanted to report, that mostly out of curiosity and in honor of this topic, I went out and bought and am currently eating a Nissin Cup Noodle. (Not “Cup O’ Noodle,” as I formerly thought.)
The flavor? Salt, basically. Nothing else is discernible. Essentially, it’s like eating a cup of warm, soggy potato chips.
Mmmmmmmm.