Dressing up ramen

Adriaan - October 8, 2022

I’m looking for ideas on how to dress up Ramen to make a healthy meal. So far I’ve tried an eggs with a little sauerkraut. Anyone else?

6  

egg, not eggs

 

Oh the many meals of ramen I have dressed up! 

Here are some of the things I have done:

• Probably the easiest and most nutritious thing you can do to spice up ramen is to use real bone broth instead of water. You can buy this at the grocery store but need to make sure it is really bone broth and not just flavored that way. That might have enough flavor in it to not need the little flavor packets with way too much sodium in it.
• Get one of these packs of mixed veggies. At only 88 cents a pack, they are about as cheap as ramen but add some texture and nutrition, and should last you a few meals. You can either microwave a cup and add to your ramen or if you are cooking your ramen over the stove top, you can cook both at the same time.
• Saute some onions and garlic in a dash of oil and add for some great flavor
• A dash of soy sauce adds a different flavor
• A bit of lunch meat, spam, or bacon adds some protein and flavor.

 

I love Ramen noodles but I buy the real, unflavored ones… not those little packs of curly things in the stores.  I use them for noodle dishes, along with Udon noodles.

For a very healthy meal, I start a broth using dashi packets.  Dashi, by itself is extremely nutritious, as it has dried fish and kombu seaweed in it.  If you ever have had a Japanese soup, dashi is the broth.  Miso soup is simply dashi broth with the addition of some miso paste.  The packets look like big tea bags & I use one for every cup of water.  After the broth boils for about 5 minutes, I take the dashi packets out and then add some chopped veggies.  I like to use combinations of cabbage, mushrooms, green onion, carrot, broccoli and red bell pepper.  Use what you have.  Maybe 2, 3 or 4 veggies.  I then add shrimp or fish to the broth and cook a few minutes more.  In a separate pot I boil the ramen or soba noodles for about 4 minutes.  I then drain the noodles, put in the bottom of a large bowl, and then cover with the soup.  We have a version of this once a week.

Another dish I make is a stir fry using the Ramen noodles.  Like above, I boil them for about 4 minutes and drain.  I put maybe a Tbs of oil in a skillet, or wok if you have one, and fry the noodles for a few minutes.  I take the noodles out, and cook some sliced meat, such as steak pork, chicken or shrimp.  Once almost done, I add some of the veggies listed above for a few minutes, add back the noodles & fry for a few more minutes.  I then add Yakisoba sauce or Japanese BBQ sauce.  It is so good!  If you like Japanese flavors but don’t wish to stock all the special ingredients, I highly suggest getting you some Japanese BBQ Sauce.  It is very authentic tasting and is amazing on almost any dish or veggie.  You can get it at Sam’s club but I get it at Amazon.  Links below.

 

Dang! You guys sure are making me hungry. I didn’t know that ramen noodles were sold separately, and they seem like they would taste better than the 10 cent packs. Will definitely need to try those out!

 

Assuming you’re looking to dress up the dry noodles, the Budget Bytes website has some great recipes for this. I generally try to make fast versions of ramen with broth/better than bouillon, sautéed mushrooms and tofu, gojuchang. I like the Budget Bytes fast peanut ramen–I make the quick peanut sauce white heating frozen broccoli and tofu in the microwave, stir with cooked noodles.

 

It’s not much of a “dress up” but we use dehyrated green onions pretty much any time we make ramen.  Scrambled eggs on occasion.