5 Creative Ways to Cook Instant Ramen | NYT Cooking

Eric Kim is here to show us five fun ways to unlock the potential of a simple pack of instant ramen. Up your instant ramen game with these recipes and tips!

Quick Kimchi: https://nyti.ms/3nRYn7P
Ramen Carbonara: https://nyti.ms/42UYIek
Crispy Sheet-Pan Noodles With Glazed Tofu: https://nyti.ms/40RbvNa
Gochujang Buttered Noodles: https://nyti.ms/3zkYHTq

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Tell me how you do instant noodles in the comments does that actually work to be honest I would love to know how you make your instant noodles hi I’m Eric Kim I’m cooking columnist for the New York Times today I’m going to show you five creative ways to use instant noodles

My whole life I have had instant noodles at my fingertips it’s something that’s always in the pantry most people will go into their pantry and there’d be cereal and potato chips we had instant noodles in college it’s something I used to eat like maybe twice a week now I eat it

Once a week life is so hard already it’s incidentals are just like there and when the quality is so great and especially when you do little things like this picture shows you’re adding whatever crisper drawer vegetables you have scallions egg like it’s a really substantial meal what I grew up with is

Shane Ramen I love this thing not necessarily just for it’s like flavor or anything but because I watched it go from like my childhood snack to being this like Bodega Staple in New York it’s really cool anyway my point is that these are all really readily available

Anywhere so today I kind of just want to show you different situations in which instant noodles can be considered a really useful Pantry item in the same way that you would be boiling spaghetti on a Tuesday night this is sort of just my like kibon in Korean just means like standard this is

My way of making instant noodles when I want to eat and I’m really hungry usually it’s midnight and this is a pot that’s kind of like a great pot and it’s something you can get the houseware section of most Asian grocery stores and it’s a Ramen pot the noodle fits

Perfectly into it isn’t that great how like perfectly it fits one thing my mom used to do is boil from cold water and as soon as it comes to a rolling boil she would stop and it would be like this very chewy noodle because it’s been like

Cooking very evenly I asked her about it once she was like I never do that I always wait for the water to boil first I was like it’s just like gaslighting me it’s like my mom doesn’t remember teaching me that but she does that a lot

Of people put the soup packet and the vegetables in with the water first and make the broth I don’t like that because it’s not like pasta where you have to like season the water I like to flip it and what that means is all the seasoning is now dispersed into the water most

People will probably put the little crackery Parts into the water as well but I find that kind of annoying they make the broth a little like cloudy so usually I just eat them they’re very crunchy and delicious and these noodles are fried so it’s nice it’s like a little snack while

You’re waiting okay Now’s the Time I would probably add the egg I don’t like to touch it you could like do the egg drop soupy thing and like you know swirl it around but this is the way I like to do it because I like having like a nice

Piece of egg at the end I actually don’t it means to loosen the noodles but I like to keep it in its shape it keeps it pretty Al Dente the noodles are definitely not cooked all the way but they’re still nice and chewy the egg is cooking by the time the egg finishes

This will be done okay that’s definitely done I take the bowl that I want to use for the soup and I take a colander and I drain it into the bowl and then I put it back here and this is just like a weird thing I do but

Teeny bit of sesame oil not much and what that does is it glosses it up it also adds a nice nuttiness it’s like a deeper flavor that makes it go huh what is that and then these gorgeous scallions and that is my 12 a.m dinner this is the best part actually you take

The egg you pop it and all that yolk oozes out and you kind of like use it as a sauce and look at that eggginess that’s the real bite sorry I buried the lead that’s a great bite I’m excited about this one because sort of a little like callback to my very

First byline at the times when I was a baby like two years ago uh it was a quick kimchi story oh there’s a video flashback to that video it’s sort of a muchim is a Korean like dressed salad and this is a dressing made up of kochugaru vinegar sesame oil I haven’t

Made it in a while I’ll send it again garlic fish sauce yeah you could do soy sauce if you want this dressing is gorgeous it’s like really really special and you don’t want to waste it one thing that I was doing a lot was mixing the

Noodles into it and it kind of becomes this like nice noodle salad I want to toss this into here you can just drain the noodles you can run them under cold water if you want to stop the cooking sometimes I’ll actually just add the hot noodles straight in and I’ll eat the

Salad kind of like lukewarm that’s like a it’s a whole whole thing it’s like a whole other dish I found that cilantro is really good with this actually you could do scallions you could do nothing but I like a little cilantro action very like roughly chopped I love cilantro

This is our summer noodle option it’s kind of great that the noodle catches the leaves like that so that every bite has like a little punctuation of cilantro Man it’s so refreshing sometimes I might add like a soft boiled egg to this if it’s lunch time and I have like 10 minutes instead of five this is truly like between meetings I’m scarfing it down the next one is a Ramen carbonara I don’t think there’s any Italian Dish

That angers people more on the internet than carbonara this recipe is obviously not the Roman way we’re using instant noodles this is something that I often am excited to make for myself like I’ll be really hungry at midnight and be like hmm I have bacon and eggs

Even if I don’t have cheese I’ll make carbonara like I’ll make it anyway because I love it so first what we did was we fried off some bacon and in the pan that has still some of the Bacon Fat there’s also this great fond fond is a reference to the foundation the flavor

Foundation on the bottom all the stuck on bits the brown stuff we’re gonna make a nice sauce and bring us to a boil for something like carbonara you really do kind of want to want freshly grated cheese pre-shredded cheese has all these stabilizers that make them sort of Clump

Up in a liquid situation like this so it’s not really something you want and I’m just using my spatula to scrape up the nice bacony bits on the bottom because we want that in the sauce in the end I just flipped it so that both sides cook I’m Not Really Gonna loosen the

Noodles too much yet because I’m convinced that not loosening the noodles keeps them pretty Al Dente and chewy and that’s kind of nice the hardest part about carbonara is keeping the egg velvety and not scrambled and one way to do it is to just really make sure you

Are agitating while you add the egg another thing I do sometimes is I actually add some hot broth to the cold egg first room temperature eggs help you know doing this using like this two-hand motion it’s like emulsifying I might add it back to the heat to like finish foreign

For me pepper is the taste of carbonara super creamy I learned this from my friend Rebecca she was like turn the plate not the noodle I was like wow it’s a good catch [Applause] we fried an egg to put on top and this is a very substantial midnight snack

It’d be a nice breakfast if you wanted pasta for breakfast I think this is the move right right into that egg yolk get that dribble It’s really rich from the cheese a lot of pepper I think you could add salt if you wanted but Carpenter already has you know the cheese and bacon so I often get carbonara at restaurants because I am obsessed with carbonara next we’re gonna make Hedy McKinnon’s crispy she pan noodles with glazed tofu

This is just a great way to get some protein and veg and carb in your body it’s a lovely weeknight meal you can make it in 30 35 minutes what’s really cool about the recipe is it calls for three packets of those dried instant noodles and you just pour over some

Boiling water from a kettle and you let that sit for just five minutes and you drain it so that’s what we have here these are just noodles that have been soaked and drained they’re still very Al Dente like not cooked through you’re going to just season it with some soy

Sauce sesame oil a little neutral oil and salt I’m just tossing the seasonings in how bouncy they are it’s really satisfying just gonna put it on a sheet pan save the Bowls because we’re gonna add the bok choy to it bok choy goes in here oil and salt

Oh they’re so delicate they’re like don’t work me too much this is an incredible glaze and it’s hoisin sauce maple syrup sesame oil sesame seeds and garlic we reserved some of it so that we can drizzle it over the top but we did toss these in in the marinade so the

Tofu is sort of ready to go so you take the tossed tofu and you’re gonna lay it between the noodles you do want to like Nestle it into the noodles so that it’s in contact with the pan that’s gonna help it get nice and like crispy the

Oven’s really hot it’s at 450. we’re gonna roast this for 15 minutes on the bottom rack and now we’re gonna pull this out yum all right gorgeous what’s really cool too is the noodles the way they’re like chewy these are the bok choy that I seasoned with oil and salt we’re just

Gonna add them to the top the tofus were already cute the vodka is like adorable these are gonna roast for a little bit longer just four to seven minutes wow for just doesn’t that just look inviting wow gorgeous you have some remaining marinade left over and just

Gonna like drizzle it over the tofu a little bit some cilantro on top to finish it when someone says they don’t like cilantro I really believe them I think it’s like you can’t help it if it tastes like soap to you so use parsley Although the noodles are crispy you know they’re crispy on top but still like chewy on the bottom Parts this is like something I would want on a Wednesday night after work so easy to put together not just that really fun this is a banger definitely make this one

I’m really excited about this recipe this one actually took a really long time and it was very deliberate I was working on kind of like minimal pastas and I was trying to figure out how to do like a gochujang pasta one interesting thing about culture John is it has a

Great fermented flavor but it’s a deep flavor it’s like if you think about Flavor as like a gradient deep kind of sweet earthy notes that’s culture done but what happens is a lot of the culture and pasta recipes out there I noticed that they just leave it there and then

They add butter maybe which is also a low note and they kind of just like maybe salt and pepper and that’s it maybe tomato paste which has a little bit of acidity so I wanted to do a cold drink pasta that had everything that had high notes had middle notes had sweetness

And spiciness and balance I’m always reminded that culture John as lovely as it is it needs friends it needs things to like pick it up I’m going to boil the water you can do a full pound of pasta but I think the joy of instant noodles is it’s

A single portion already and that’s really helpful when it’s just you I’m not like the best with my knife work but if I can slice it as thinly as possible than what you end up with are like gorgeous like shavings I personally think that it looks really cute so I’ve

Got these gorgeous scallions I like to like smash them first and then run my knife through do a very like coarse mince I’m gonna start the sauce now butter and then add the garlic to it salt you don’t want the garlic to burn the salt will draw out some water

You hear that sizzling because it’s the garlic letting out its water into the fat I’m gonna add the noodles now because it’s finally boiling with your tablespoon measure I’m gonna like add a tiny bit of oil to it just like swirl it around culture John see how nicely that like slipped right

Up Cherry vinegar it’s really nice in this it needs a little honey you need a little sweetener and now bring it back on the heat and bring it to a boil and this is all going to Bubble Up into a lovely glaze you could use tongs if you

Want but I’m just going to add it straight this is going to finish the sauce tiny bit of butter to gloss it up at the end this is a little trick a little shaky shake this helps the sauce kind of cling to the noodles more and makes them shiny and glossy and that’s

Basically it Noodles here it was really special it’s like really intense the vinegar is significant but you need that acid to balance out the sweetness of the culture John it’s like a new taste I’m really happy with it the noodles are a building block a packet of ramen might look like just a packet of

Ramen but there’s a lot of potential in that little packet you can just make it from the packet and according to the instructions in it and they tend to be very delicious even just adding an egg adding some scallions or say roasting on a sheet pan with vegetables and tofu or

Making your own sauce to go with it like a kosher on buttered sauce as much as I love rice noodles are more fun to eat right yeah that’s the ending right what I really want is to see you guys eating it get in there that’s so good those are

Delicious oh my god well an explosion of flavor of my mouth