Myojo Ramen Kits

It’s fall people! You know what that means! RAMEN SEASON HAS BEGUN! Even though it is 2020, that doesn’t mean we cannot enjoy this “special” time! We decided to kick off ramen season with some packs from the folks at Myojo!

Myojo who?

Many of you probably haven’t heard of Myojo (or maybe you are super duper ramen experts), but Myojo is a noodle company based out of Chino, California. Myojo was originally an instant noodle company located in Japan in the 1950s. In the early 90s, they expanded to the US and changed their focus to fresh noodles for ramen shops and at-home kits that the average consumer like us can buy. Yay! Besides ramen, they sell other kinds of noodles, like udon and yakisoba, but…obviously we opted for ramen. They have a lot of different varieties but we decided to try their Miso Garlic, Shio Tonkotsu, and Seafood Tonkotsu, which are part of their Premium Ramen Series! This was our first time eating Myojo ramen, and we couldn’t decide what flavor we wanted, so we decided to try out 3 of them at once. Yolo!

How to Make ‘em!

Making these bowls is easy as pie…or a lot easier than making pie since all you have to do is boil water! Each pack has 2 broth packets and 2 bags of fresh noodles. You start by boiling 2 pots of water. One for the noodles and one for the broth. (Quick Tip: you can heat the water for the broth up in a kettle if you have one!). Each type of ramen has a specific type of noodle that best compliments the flavor. Since the noodles are different thicknesses etc, the cook time varied by type from 1.5-2.5 minutes. While the water is heating up, empty the broth packets into separate bowls, and prepare you favorite toppings. Need some topping ideas? Check out our toppings section below. While the noodles are cooking, add 1 1/4 cups of hot water to each bowl and stir until mixed. Once the noodles are cooked, strain them and put them in the broth and, ta-da! Ramen! - so quick and easy… unless you are like Ryan and I and decide to do 3 different bowls at the same time. Our kitchen was a little bit of a crazy place with 3 different pots for each set of noodles, but we enjoyed our round robin style of eating. Having never had Myojo noodles before we were excited to get slurping.

Seafood Tonkotsu

Of the three packs, the Seafood Tonkotsu was our favorite. The broth definitely had a seafood flavor without being too fishy - more like bonito flakes fishy. It was milky and hearty but not thick. We were definitely pleasantly surprised, because seafood isn’t the most common ramen broth, and we hadn’t heard of a seafood tonkotsu combo before! We really don’t know why it isn’t more common because this was easily the best one! 

The Seafood Tonkotsu came with their thick wavy noodles, which were also my favorite! The noodles were chewy, had a great texture and really held onto the broth. Luckily this was the one I got to start with in our “round robin” eating and Ryan was mad at me that I went through more than half the bowl. Oops! I forgot we had to SHARE this.

Shio Tonkotsu

Our 2nd favorite was their Shio Tonkotsu. This is another combination that I had never heard of before. Usually you just have a bowl of Shio or a bowl of Tonkotsu - earth shattering information, I know! Anyway, if you like both alone why not together right? The broth was milky (and almost looked like milk which was a little off-putting because I am lactose intolerant) but had a great salt and pork flavor (which makes sense). It was a good amount of salt without being too salty like some Shio’s (especially at home packets) and had a very nice light pork flavor so you felt like you could have another bowl (which is good, because we had a third one to try)!

The Shio Tonkotsu came with their thin noodles, which were good, but my least favorite of the noodles. In all fairness, most thin noodles are my least favorite when wavy or thick noodles are an option. Interestingly enough, these thin noodles had the longest cook time (~2.5 minutes). Not exactly sure how that is possible, but we went with it and the noodles turned out great. If thin noodles are your jam, definitely give these a try.

Miso Garlic

The Miso Garlic ramen was the one I was most excited for, and honestly, it was our least favorite. Still very good for at home ramen, but it felt like it was missing something that we could not put our finger on. It somehow didn’t have enough garlic or miso. I felt like it was more of a soy sauce broth that had some garlic and miso qualities. It could have used that rich velvety miso flavor and texture. I thought about adding some miso paste to it, but we were already eating and the fridge (like 2 ft away) just seemed too far…

The thick noodles that came with the Garlic Miso pack were great though - definitely the best part of the bowl! Like its wavy sister, it was chewy and held onto the broth. The noodles with the broth definitely helped the broth flavor. I wished these were in the Shio Tonkotsu (maybe next time we can do a swap!).

Its all about the toppings, baby

Like many at home packs, these don’t come with toppings. When Ryan and I decided to make these Myojo packs, we went to our local Japanese store / found things around the house to throw into these bowls to zhoosh them up a bit (said in my best JVN impression…which isn’t great. Sorry Jonathan. We love you!).

We have been growing some green onions in our tiny apartment so we used some of those plus we had a can of corn because COVID so that was already set. We grabbed some menma (lacto-fermented bamboo shoots) and wood ear mushrooms which are easy to find at your local Asian market. Don’t forget to bring your mask! Don’t have an asian market nearby? You can substitute regular bamboo shoots and your favorite variety of mushroom!

For this ramen adventure, we decided to embark on a chashu making journey for the first time, and it turned out better than we expected! We started it the night before, and it took our at-home ramen game to the next level. We also used some of the sauce from the chashu, and made ajitama eggs - we’re getting really good at this home ramen thing. If you don’t want to spend hours in the kitchen when you could be watching Netflix, which I totally get, you can use bacon or get some pork or chicken from a local BBQ place, and add a regular soft boiled egg.

TL;DR?

These ramen kits from Myojo are really good! They are sooooooo easy to make and so much better than a majority of the at home ramens. It really satisfied our ramen craving at the beginning of this season and we are so happy we tried it! We will definitely be eating it again soon!!

Now go get your slurp on and don’t forget to vote!

**Myojo was kind enough to supply us with these noodle kits but we received no compensation. All reviews are based solely on our own opinions. We thank the Myojo team for sending these our way!