Survival Sunday 249: Bibim Men!

In Which I Try Some Instant Bibim-Men!

Some friends dropped off a package of Instant Bibim Men, and I was eager to try it. What's Bibim Men? Well, imagine if you took Bibimbap and Ramen and made them have a baby.

What's Bibimbap?

IT'S HEAVEN IN A BOWL!

This is Bibimbap

Korean cooking has mastered the art of "I have it, so I'll eat it" in a way few cultures have quite approached. Bibimbap is basically several veggies and/or meats, stir-fried, and placed in a bowl. A runny fried egg is placed on top. There might be rice or noodles on the bottom. And then there's the sauce.

Korean sauces are notoriously delicious. Korean barbecue is some of the best on earth, so of course I'm going to love a Korean breakfast with a barbecue-style sauce that you pour on top!

And then there's Bibim Men.

See, Bibim Men takes that sauce and pours it onto ramen. Perfection!

But perhaps not enough for a single meal.
We had some yuzu soba left over from an Umai Crate, and had that as well!

Unfortunately, it being winter, veggies are harder to get hold of (plus, I was feeling lazy), so I had some leftover chicken that I added to the mix.

The Chicken.

I boiled the chicken and noodles together - can't remember if I did an egg, but I don't think I did? I should've. Regardless, I boiled the precooked chicken to heat it up.

It smelled great!

I also used the chicken noodle water to reconstitute the soba, but that's not really important right now.

The Bibim Men Sauce.

Once the noodles were cooked, I drained all the water and put all of the noodles and chicken in a bowl, where I eagerly snipped open the sauce packet and began to pour it out.

Apologies for the autopsy photo quality, but it was dark in the kitchen...

Thick, dark, fragrant sauce spiraled down onto the bed of noodles and chicken and my eyes widened significantly as I took it all in. Oh. My. God.

This is an amazing dish.

It's so amazing that, yeah, it didn't even quite make it to the table to get photographed before we dove in!

The sauce is sweet, spicy, savory - delicious. It buoys the noodles from bland to grad and pairs so perfectly with chicken that it was as though it was preordained! Honestly, I'd pay money to eat this at a restaurant, it's that good. I can only imagine what a 100% home-made version would taste like, and that's without veggies. Ideally, I'll get more and make it with bean sprouts, some stir-fried spinach or collards, carrots, mushrooms, peppers, etc. And I'll put the over easy egg on top and let the yolk soak through.

Just thinking about it is torture.

And yes, the soba was never more than an afterthought, which is a pity.

Because yuzu soba is always good.

If you've been wondering what yuzu tastes like, it's basically what happens when all the citrus fruits get together and create a Frankenflavor. It's... citrus. There's not really any other way to describe it. It has the freshness of grapefruit, the zing of lemon, and the mellow juiciness of oranges, and it's delicious. It pairs so well with the earthy flavors of a chicken-tinged soba broth and the thin-but-firm noodles. Definitely worth making up, but it does pale by comparison to the Bibim Men, which was the absolute star of the show.

I think that'll do it for me today.

I've made myself hungry :P

Go Enjoy Something!
FC