Survival Sunday & Spice of the Week 1 (Genmai Ramen)

The S/O and I get Umai Crate, which is a subscription service which sends you a box of ramen and other delicious soups or noodles every month. We made a couple packets recently, so I decided to record our experience.

I had the Genmai ramen, which was a delicious mild sesame broth with brown rice noodles.

Oh hey, there's a caption button!

Umai Crate always sends these helpful pamphlets with their noodles

We forgot to add corn this week :|

I like to crack an egg into mine, so the broth thickens as the yolk (which I prefer to have firm) slowly dissolves into it.

both the spoon and the chopsticks came from Umai Crate, too!

It's just a simple white egg. Any egg will do. Also, more stix from UC.

If you can't tell, that's me holding a slowly cooking yolk out of the water.

The froth is from the egg white

This would probably go better in the next section, but I'm lazy. That's the broth.

It came with a bunch of sesame seeds in the broth, which was nice, since I was about to go grab our sesame seeds, which I try to keep on hand, and dump a bunch in.

The noodles have just softened - soggy noodles aren't as good, in my opinion.

A completed bowl of genmai ramen! It was amazingly subtle & delicious!

There’s not much to say about the process of cooking up instant noodles, to be honest, but this is as decent a segue as any into the other part of my new cooking updates – the Spice of the Week!

This section is here to encourage people in trying new spices and building up a spice collection. There will be herbs and possibly other ingredients here, too over time, I’m sure.

This week’s spice is: Onion Powder.

Thanks Google...

Not to be confused with onion salt, onion powder is nothing more than ground up freeze-dried onion. It adds a powerful onion flavor to anything you add it to, and it helps punch up soups and other noodle dishes. You wind up with a stronger chicken flavor if you add it to chicken noodle soup. Just be aware that it can get overpowering quickly, so add it only a little at a time (like, pinches of it, not scoops or dumping a bunch on) until you get the taste the way you like it.

I understand that some people may not like onions, or they may be allergic, so I’m just going to put this here: In no way am I telling anyone that they absolutely have to own any spice or whatever I’m talking about. These are suggestions for people, especially those just starting out, to slowly grow a collection of ingredients so they don’t have to run to the store every time they cook. You don’t need any one of these to be a good cook. Just because I like something doesn’t mean everyone will, and just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean everyone else won’t.

I mean… I don’t like lobster, avocado, or cilantro, so clearly my tastes aren’t the same as the average.

Now, go out and enjoy something!

FC