Survival Sunday 245: Missing the Point of Vegan Noodz

In Which I Make Vegans Very Unhappy - Sorry!

Let me begin by saying this: I love vegans. I love vegan food. I love the tenets upon which veganism as a cultural movement are based. I am not, however, a vegan myself. I enjoy too many animal-based products and legitimately cannot afford to enjoy a 100% plant-based diet without being 100% miserable and living entirely off of tinned veggies, which... aren't ideal.

So when we wound up with the Samurai Ramen - a 0 animal ramen with no garlic or onion or msg (the last three of which I actually quite like) - I was a bit skeptical.

Because for me, garlic and onion are nearly my lifeblood.

And generally, "healthy" ramen is pretty bland even with the addition of either garlic or onion.

But it did look pretty amazing...

So we decided that the best way to round out this wonderfully well-intentioned noodle concoction was to add both deli chicken and egg.

Which is pretty morbid when you think about it...

Deli chicken breast, which I sliced up and soaked in the egg

I enjoy the occasional vegan ramen, to be certain - they're usually beautifully put-together with some really fascinating soup bases and flavor combinations. However, I was... incredibly hungry the day we made this, and I find these ramens to be usually a little hard to fill me up. So I decided that the animal proteins would serve as filler here. Delicious, delicious filler.

The noodles were thin and only lightly salted, and the soup base
was liquid, so I couldn't open it ahead of time to check how it smelled.

I was very, very excited to try this ramen, so I started up a pot to boil on the stove with about 1.5 cups of water for each sheaf of noodles (3 cups total). Meanwhile I grabbed a small knife and sliced the chicken into thin strips and cracked a pair of eggs into a bowl with them. Then I broke the yolks and got everything mixed together. At this point, my partner decided that the "no garlic/onions" thing was not for us, so in went some garlic powder and a little curry powder as well. I loooooooooove curry, so I was all for that.

No joke, I actually kind of wanted to just... dig into this as it was.
And I'm paranoid about raw eggs.

So here's the thing about adding eggs into ramen while it cooks: The water immediately clouds as the proteins in the eggs meld into the boiling water, and the noodles become coated. This means that every bite is filled with eggy goodness!

Though it does look a bit... nightmarish.

I really liked how the boiling action changes the texture of the chicken lunchmeat! Like with ham or roast beef, boiling the precooked chicken breast toughens it and makes it stand up better against the smooth slickness of the noodles.

I mean, look at this... it's gorgeous!

The soup base was very flavorful - almost intensely so. It had a lot of soy sauce flavor and was filled with umami. I may have to cry bull on the "no MSG" thing, since MSG comes from soy sauce (and mushrooms, and other umami foods). That's like saying there's "no vitamins" in orange juice...

Regardless, it's a really good ramen even on its own, but making it a ramen egg drop soup makes it even better! Since there were so many ingredients, we only wound up with maybe a half cup of liquid out of three cups of water! I cannot believe how good it was, too. Warm, rich, and incredibly satisfying, if you can get your hands on some Samurai Ramen, then you absolutely should.

So thank you, Umai Crate. That was awesome!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC