Anti-Ramen Noodle Soup

[silvercaladan]

For lunch today, my roommate ate one of those cardboard containers of instant beef ramen. Less than a dollar for the entire crate! I took one look at his meal and decided I didn't want to turn myself into dried meat from the ridiculous salt content. 

So, I made this: http://www.acozykitchen.com/anti-ramen-noodle-soup/

Its got some ingredients I wouldn't have expected, and the version I made was a little bit different, but mmmmm so good.


Serves 2
2.5 tablespoons soy sauce
2.5 tablespoons ketchup
0.5 tablespoon rice vinegar
1/2 lb (8oz) egg noodles.... or noodles of any kind
Sliced green onions (optional)
Chili sauce (optional)

In a large pot of boiling water, cook the noodles. Drain in a colander, and while the noodles were still steaming, I stirred in some fresh spinach... just cuz I had it, really. Any veggies or no veggies would work here. I put it in while the noodles were still hot to cook the spinach mixed in. After about 30 seconds, I rinsed it off with cold water, to stop the cooking, and then dumped it back in the pot I'd cooked it in.


In a separate, tinier pot, bring 3 cups of water to a simmer. Pour in the soy sauce, vinegar, and ketchup, and stir. Simmer for like, 5 minutes, stirring somewhat vigorously. We want the ketchup to mostly break up and dissolve into the mixture. Then, I simply poured the mixture into the pot with the noodles and spinach, and got a ladle and doled it out.

I like spicy things, so I topped the bowl with a healthy amount of Sriracha, being careful to stir it into the mixture. That paste's hot, and I wanted to get it on all the noodles. I really enjoyed this lunch, MUCH better than the awful, salty packaged stuff!

Comments

[merrycaepa]

Oooh, I can't wait to try this. I'm a broke college kid armed with a microwave, and my current meal about four nights a week is to drain the raman, toss on a lot of canned garbanzo beans, toss with olive oil and/or a packet of 'sauce' from taco bell (or mustard, last night, but that didn't end well) and assorted spices. Oh, and some of those crushed pepper flakes that come with pizza (I finally got sriracha about a week ago, so I may be phasing those out...but my roommates order a lot of pizza, so there's a zillion of the pepper packets). It's quite excellent.

[silvercaladan]

If you're looking for other ideas for dorm life cooking or generic cheap cooking, there's a blog called thestonesoup.com that focuses on 5-ingredient meals. There's even a free .pdf cookbook of recipes.

There's also a specific subculture about cooking with a microwave; I looked it up when I first moved to a dorm, but can't remember any of the sites.

I'm glad you like the look of the recipe! I really enjoyed it :D

[serene]

This has more sodium than packaged ramen, unless my math is off.

[silvercaladan]

It all depends on your ingredients, and how your sauce/spaghetti ratio is. Also probably on the packaged ramen you buy.
This recipe has about 1000mg of salt per bowl, with the specific ingredients I used, versus the packaged stuff in my house at 1800mg. Its still a lot of salt, but also a lot less than the packaged stuff.

Of course there are ways to make it friendlier; typically this involves using something other than soy sauce, like sesame oil, or low sodium soy.

[silvercaladan]

It's also important to look at serving size. If you have a recipe that has 4000mg of salt total, but you get like 7 bowls out of it, the salt content per bowl is likely in the 650mg range. And serving size is one trick that the food companies put to good use on labels. It can make the math kinda complicated. A package of ramen billed as one lunch actually has two servings inside, and the like.

[serene]

Right, so here's my math; correct me if I'm wrong:

2.5 tablespoons soy sauce, 1005 mg. per tablespoon = 2512.5
2.5 tablespoons ketchup, 167 mg. per tablespoon = 417.5
.5 tablespoons rice vinegar, 530 mg. per tablespoon = 415
48 mg in the noodles; none in the scallions

So that's 3393 per recipe, or almost 1700 per serving. All the ramen in my cabinet is between 700 and 900 mg per half packet.

[silvercaladan]

See, our ingredients are vastly different. My soy sauce has about 250mg less than yours per tablespoon, my rice vinegar is more than half less, and my ketchup is nearly nil. I also got like three bowls out of the recipe; half a pound of spaghetti is quite lot.

It's all about ingredients and portions. Your math is mostly right if you stick strictly to the recipe and large portions, except half a tablespoon of rice vinegar would be a little less than 415mg. Also, packets of ramen typically come in at around 900mg per serving, but come with two servings inside. The maruchan ones in my pantry do anyway, lol.

So in your case, there's more sodium, but in my case there's not. It's all dependent.

[serene]

(By which I intend to say if packaged ramen has a "ridiculous" amount of sodium, this recipe isn't far from ridiculous, though I'm sure it's super-yummy.)

[stultiloquentia]

I am excited to try this. :)