Trader Joe’s MISO RAMEN SOUP (cup)

My wife bought this “MISO RAMEN SOUP”. Now she loves ramen and will usually buy her favorite, Korean Shin Ramen, which is very good. It costs more. She made this and when I asked her what she thought her review was pretty short: “I’ll never buy this again”

Inside the cup there’s some noodles which don’t look like the dried ramen you are used to. These are straight wheat noodles which look semi-dry (pre-boiled?). There’s not a lot of noodles. There’s a dried packet of stuff (the soup) plus a little clear packet, which we thought was one of those drying packets and almost threw it away. Nope, its part of the ramen set; The clear packet contains a little bit of oil you add along with the dry packet of miso soup.

I tasted her ramen and here’s what I thought of this product.

The Good: The broth was actually pretty decent. Better than I expected. It tastes like a Japanese miso soup broth. There was even a piece or two of wakame (seaweed) floating around in the soup. Some umami from seaweed and mushrooms. The Ingredient list reads fairly natural; you don’t see wierd names of chemicals just dried ingredients. Broth 7/10

The Bad: Ramen? Well they really messed up the “ramen” part of this “miso ramen soup”. Noodles are lousy. We both thought the noodles were not very good and to add insult to injury they are very skimpy with the noodles. These noodles are not dry but a little flexible, like a semi-dried, pre-boiled noodles? They barely had any texture or bite to them after the recommended six minutes. Very MEH as they should be the star. Noodles 5/10

The Sodium content is listed as 870, which is almost 40% of your daily recommended level of salt. We cut that down by only using about 3/4 of the packet. Naturally that will make the broth a little less strong. It was fine for us. All instant ramen tends to have quite a bit of sodium. Always check the labels. This really applies to all the Asian products at TJ’s.

If you decide to actually try this, it may be better if you try adding a poached egg and chopped scallions as they suggest.

$1.89

I had an idea that since the broth was not bad but the noodles are Meh I thought one might combine this with the packet of cheap ramen dried noodles you might have in the house. I used to get them 5/$1 a few years back!

If you want good ramen, Korean Shin Ramen runs rings around this and most instant ramen though it costs more.

We would not buy this again.