One of my favourite things about Paul Gannon and Eli Silverman's hilarious Cheap Show podcast is Eli's obsession with noodles, and Paul's performative weariness with this obsession. The result is that, on a semi-regular basis, the pair provide some reviews of a wide variety of different noodle products, and these have helped me — and doubtless many others — to discover things so far beyond the humdrum Pot Noodle that you wouldn't believe. It's a wild and wonderful world out there, so I thought today I'd share some personal favourites.
Samyang "Buldak" noodles
These are the famous Korean "fire noodles" that were probably some stupid TikTok trend a while back. They're a stir fry-type noodle, which means you boil the noodles without adding any seasoning, then drain most of the water and add sauce and a sachet of goop before "frying" (actually just stirring around in the pan a bit for about 30 seconds while the heat is still on) and serving immediately. The result is a generous portion of glossy, medium thickness noodles, an angry red in colour thanks to the notoriously hot sauce, with no "soup".
These noodles come in a variety of different flavours. All of them claim to be "HOT chicken flavour", plus something else in the case of anything other than the regular ones in the black packaging. Don't be too concerned with that, though; a bit of investigating revealed that the "Buldak" part of their name is a reference to a Korean street food dish that involves chicken served with incredibly hot sauce, and the sauce is based on… well, the sauce, rather than the chickeny bit.
I've tried a few different flavours of these. The basic black ones are nice enough, so long as you can handle the heat, but my favourite remains the first one I tried: the "curry" flavour. Sadly, this particular flavour appears to have been discontinued, which is immensely disappointing, but the "Spicy Seasoned Chicken" flavour was also very nice, and a tad milder than the regular black ones. I have not, to date, tried the "2X spicy" ones that come in a red package, but apparently these are so spicy they are banned in Denmark. I don't know if that's actually true or not, but given that the regular ones will present quite a challenge for the uninitiated, I suspect a "2X" version will blow most people's heads off, and I've heard rumours of a "4X" variant, though I'm yet to see those anywhere.
On the milder end of the spectrum there are flavours such as "Cheese" and "Carbonara", both of which come with some cheese powder to mix in along with the spicy sauce. These were… okay, but I didn't love them. The Carbonara seems to be a favourite of a lot of people, but I didn't personally rate it that highly. The cheese one also absolutely honks while you are preparing it, leading my wife to brand them "Feet Noodles" and prohibit me from cooking them any time she was in the house for a good few months. She eventually relented because she was fed up of seeing them in the cupboard.
I also tried a habanero and lime flavour variant. These are my least favourite of the range to date, as the lime flavour is quite artificial. They weren't unpleasant, but I wouldn't choose to have them again when other flavours are so much nicer. From the currently available range at the time of writing, I recommend the Spicy Seasoned Chicken ones above all the others.
Anyway, whether or not you will like these noodles is entirely dependent on whether you can handle the spice — and, perhaps more relevantly, whether you enjoy the spice. My wife can handle a spicy dish, for example, but she doesn't enjoy anything over a certain heat threshold, and as such these noodles were not to her taste. Although the flavoured variants are noticeably milder than the regular black version, they're still pretty danged hot, so you better be ready for that.
If you are on board with the spice, however, an enjoyable noodle experience awaits. The sauce goes glossy and sticky with barely any provocation, lending a nice sweetness to the overall dish, and most come with a little sachet of miscellaneous dried bits to add a bit of texture. You can, of course, also customise these as you see fit; I've never actually done this, but I can imagine dumping a fried egg on top would be rather lovely.
A conditional recommend for these, then.
MAMA Shrimp Creamy Tom Yum Noodles
MAMA noodles provide a complete contrast to what we've just described. These come in a somewhat smaller package and thus provide a slightly smaller portion, but they make up for this by being soup-style noodles. For the noodle newcomer, this means that you add the various seasonings to boiling water when you're cooking the noodles, and this means you infuse the noodles with flavour and have a delicious soupy broth to enjoy both with and after you have consumed all the noodles.
MAMA do several flavours of noodles, all of which that I've tried are very nice indeed, and curiously they have two separate "Tom Yum" versions — one comes in a silver packet, and the other comes in a shiny orange packet. We're concerned with the shiny orange version today, whose sole distinguishing feature is that it is, supposedly "creamy Tom Yum" as opposed to just "Tom Yum", but the silver variant is nice, too. I think the orange one has the edge, though.
These noodles come with a sachet of powder and a sachet of goopy paste. As everyone knows, the best noodles have at least two pouches of Stuff with them, and this is certainly true for MAMA noodles, because they are delicious and flavourful. The creamy Tom Yum flavour is ostensibly "shrimp" flavour, but its more of a hot and sour, vaguely Thai curry-esque flavour with hints of lemongrass and a thoroughly pleasing richness to it that combines sweetness, sourness and saltiness together in each mouthful.
My top tip for these is to ensure that you put enough water in the pot for there to be some nice, vibrantly coloured soup along with the noodles. When cooking noodles, it's very easy to accidentally boil off all the water, and with noodles of this type, that means the majority of the flavour goes with it! Give them about 300-350ml of water, boil it, immediately bung in the noodles and flavourings, then serve after just 3 minutes of simmering. The result is delicious, and comes highly recommended for those who enjoy Asian flavours.
We discovered a while back that one of the side streets in the town centre now plays host to a wealth of "Asian supermarkets", and this is a good source for trying new varieties of noodles. I will be trying plenty more in the near future, and will do my best to report on my adventures as and when they occur. Until then, happy noodling — and if I catch you settling for the dirty pond water that is "Naked" or "Kabuto" noodles, we are going to have words. Words that conclude with me boiling up a big pot of MAMA Tom Yum for you.
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