What a wild ride 2020 has been. I don’t even know where to begin. Ryan and I have been sheltering in place in our apartment in Queens, NY and working out of our 1 bedroom apartment, craving ramen. Restaurants and bars in Queens haven’t been taking certain precautions we would have hoped for, so we have only gone out to 1 restaurant and only 1 time. When browsing instagram, dreaming of what we could be eating, we noticed Ramen Lab was selling ramen kits with recipes from some local ramen places. We obviously had to order it and decided to start with Ivan’s shio ramen.

Ivan Ramen

Ivan Ramen is a famous ramen place in the Lower East Side (I miss the Lower East Side so much since not going there since March). Ivan Ramen is very specifically known for its shio and its owner, Ivan Orkin, has many interviews and videos about his shio so it was fun to be able to have it at home. Ryan and I have been to Ivan multiple times, and it was obviously on our list to review officially in our Great New York Ramen Tour.

Ramen Lab At Home

First off - let’s explain these Ramen Lab At Home boxes. It comes with 5 single serve ramen packs from 5 different restaurants. The concept is essentially a boil in a bag, which is a gross concept in general, but it really worked out well! Each bag has chashu with the broth and comes with a noodle pack that is separate. Each box comes with extra noodles (kaedama) from Sun Noodles (Sun Noodles - pay us 😉) and may I say, it is a lot of it. Our freezer is now filled with broth and noodles…not that that is a problem or anything. Anyway, once you boil the bag of broth and make the noodles (it comes with very easy instructions) you can top it with whatever you want. On the Ramen Lab website it tells you the ingredients of each ramen (which is great for allergies) and the recommended noodle cook time from the corresponding chefs (naturally we didn’t look at that until after we made ours but, hey. Very classic us). One thing to note is that on the instruction card it has cook time instructions for the noodles, but we believe these are only for the kaedama noodles since there are specific noodle cook time instructions on the website. A little confusing…

Getting Down To Business

We are not doing our typical review rating style for this since we can’t go to the restaurant. Instead we are going to be reviewing the experience of making these specific ramens at home and reviewing the individual packets.

Ryan and I decided to make our own ajitsuke tamago (seasoned egg) the morning of. We are not pro’s, but we will get there! We also didn’t have any sake on hand 😬, but it still turned out really good! We also added scallion from our window “garden” which was fun.

The broth was pretty oily, but tasted great. We weren’t sure if it was just oily as a result of being packaged for home cooking or what. Either way, a little too oily. Once we go through the rest of the packets we will find out! Ivan’s shio has a bit of a fish and garlic taste to it, which fits Ivan’s description and from what we remember from eating it at the shop. It tasted like there was nori in it, but we didn’t put any in. Another thing we noticed is that there was a lot of gelatin floating around. Again, we are assuming this is a result of packaging for home cooking. It took us a while to figure out what it was. It reminded me of the soup you put inside a soup dumpling.

The chashu was interesting as it was boiled in the bag of broth. Obviously it would have been better with a char, and maybe next time we will take it out after it has been cooked and try and get it a little more crispy. Ryan’s pork was way too fatty while mine wasn’t - crap shoot.

The noodles that came with the Ivan Ramen pack were rye noodles (essentially tasted like a lighter buckwheat). Since we took pictures after we put the ramen together, we over cooked the noodles from sitting in the broth. Whoops! Later, we cooked the kaedama noodles following the instructions but they were a little too chewy for us. Next time we will do it for a little longer. Obviously cook to your liking, but if you are not going to eat immediately, undercook it so that it cooks in the broth.

Overall - for at home ramen from a bag, it was really good! It really satisfied our ramen craving without having to leave our apartment. We had a lot of fun making it and it was very simple. We happen to be pretty good cooks, but it’s pretty fool proof if you can boil water! The only equipment needed are two pots and water. The Ivan packet was pretty good, but it is no comparison to eating at Ivan Ramen in person, but in these times, it will have to do. We really recommend this experience and enjoyed starting out with Ivan Ramen!

Stay tuned for more at home reviews (including the 4 others from Ramen Lab At Home).
Ani Ramen

Remember to wear a mask and that Black lives matter!

*We received no compensation for this article, and all reviews are based solely on our opinions.