Nissin Chow Mein, chicken flavor

Hi again! My internet's out and I can't post this as of writing time, so you can't see how late this post may or may not be, because it's going up later than it's being written. How much later, I won't divulge.



"Quick and Easy"! "Steaming hot Stir Fried Noodles with plenty of Vegetables"! "Sabor a Pollo"! This package makes plenty of claims, complete with multiple languages, inconsistent capitalization, and a cousin of that cute little chicken from the Milunch instantanéo. Notice how the chicken is above the Spanish. Are drawings of chickens something commonly associated with Mexican/Spanish food? (They're not the same, but how are we to know which one they're aiming for?) Can we make sweeping assumptions based on a food that isn't even from those cultures? I think yes! Another thing to notice is there appears to be little bits of chicken in the chow mein itself. This is important. Keep it in your mental toolbox. (Foreshadowing!)

I haven't referred to it as ramen yet. Nowhere in the package does it actually even claim to be such. However, take a look at this.

It's a brick of fried noodles. Oh what now? Yeah, give it up, it's ramen... and here's where it's revealed that I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm no weeaboo. I'm just a broke-ish college student, not a ramen master. I should probably change the subtitle of the blog to "I review vaguely Asian, more than likely actually Mexican instant noodle products." Let's just play pretend here and we'll all be happy.

Onto the actual instant noodle product. I had to put in water up to the fill line and dump in the contents of the vegetable packet, like normal. However, there was one kind of vegetable in the packet I didn't recognize. I should've photographed it because I can't describe it well, but it kinda looked like shriveled popcorn kernels. I said "oh well" and stuck it in the microwave- for the entire six minutes necessary.

I also should have photographed the side of the package- there is a picture of a chef, and the caption reads something like "For full flavor, microwave." It doesn't give alternate cooking directions, so I'm not sure what they're trying to discourage here. It was kind of packaged weirdly, though, so before I tore into the packaging it said "for full flavor, wave." I didn't wave at my food. I was willing to take that risk.

Six whole minutes later, I took it out of the microwave, and weirdly enough, it didn't smell exactly like vegetables. There was another weird smell in there... it got rather masked once I put in the seasoning packet, though. It wasn't a powder, like normal, but instead a thick sauce, the color of soy sauce but the thickness and viscosity of Hershey's syrup. I stirred it all up- it took a while, because the not-chocolate sauce didn't want to coat the noodles evenly. It was then that I realized what the smell, and weird vegetable, was. That, my friends, was rehydrated chicken. They dehydrated chicken pieces and put them in with the "vegetables." I'm an omnivore, I'll eat a hamburger as willingly as I'll eat organic tofu, but for some reason the entire concept of dehydrating, then re-hydrating, most likely questionable chicken weirded me out. I ate it anyway.

The flavor wasn't bad. The only chicken I could taste was in the chicken bits, the seasoning must've been all chow mein flavor. The vegetables weren't overpowering and added a bit of texture. It wasn't awesome, though. The thick sauce ended up being a drawback, also- I had purchased a can of Coca-Cola to consume alongside the ramen chow mein (healthy!) and I couldn't drink it. I had to switch to water, because the sauce was so syrupy that the sugar in the Coke felt weird in my mouth. A general rule of mine is that food should not interfere with other food. This was a clear violation.

Pros: Not too badly tasting, I don't remember the cost but it was fairly cheap for something like this, the cute chicken's cousin.
Cons: Six minute cooking time, rehydrated chicken(!), Penalty for Interference with Other Food.
Final score: 3/5