Sapporo Ichiban, chicken flavor, cup style

Well, I'm back from my unofficial hiatus and I'm ready to give you a review of another variety of ramen! Today's is Sapporo Ichiban, chicken flavor, in a cup. My last experience with Ichiban is held in high regard, so I had only the highest expectations.



To expedite the process, and shake things up a little, I made a list of Pros and Cons when I was eating the ramen. I shall retain this format for you!

NOT EXACTLY A CON: I realized as I was packing my lunch today that the ramen had been expired since March 2007. I've only had it for a week!

NOT EXACTLY A PRO: This is the store's fault and can't be held against the ramen itself. It's also a lesson to me to read the expiration dates more carefully. And what does expiring do for dehydrated food? My logics tell me "nothing," but I could be wrong.

CON: The seasoning stuff comes in a packet inside the cup. I've never seen this before. It's kinda wasteful.
PRO: It also makes it less messy. Woo.

CON: There are two sets of cooking directions given on the lid- one for pre-boiling water and the other for microwave cooking. The pre-boiling involves adding boiling water, securing the lid, and letting sit for three minutes. The microwave is adding water, putting it in the microwave, and cooking for four minutes. This is what I do always. They're stealing my procedures. >=(
PRO: This makes me feel special.
SEMIRELATED CON: I've never understood how you're supposed to secure these lids. However, this also can't be held against this ramen in particular and therefore doesn't count.

CON: Overflowed in the microwave and therefore made me clean it. This one I'm holding against it.
No related PRO.

PRO: Liberal use of vegetables- carrots, corn, and peas. They were fairly large and plentiful. They definitely didn't taste a year and a half past their prime.

CON: That stupid dehydrated chicken again.
PRO: It actually looked like chicken- I could recognize it before I cooked it. Amazingly enough, it also tasted like chicken.

PRO: The whole thing also tasted like chicken. It didn't taste like the weird, mostly-salty-vaguely-chickeny taste of most chicken ramen. It was, dare I say it, delicious. The combination of real chicken flavor and vegetables and noodles was pretty great.

Really, the CONs don't mean much in comparison to how tasty it was. It's the best ~$1.50 you can spend on ramen. Sure it's more expensive, but it's so worth it. It's convenient, very delicious, and apparently stands the test of time pretty well. Go try it. Gogogo.

Final score: 4.8/5

Note: I have been alerted that there was, once upon a time, chili-flavored ramen. I've never seen it around, but I really want to try it. If you see it anywhere, please leave me a comment saying where. (For the sake of my ramen blog.)