Ramen Review #2: Master Kong's Pork Ribs Flavoured Noodles.

Today I want to introduce you all to a brand of noodles that quite recently popped up in the Asian supermarkets here in the Netherlands. The brand is owned by Tingyi (Cayman Island) Holding Corporation and is actually a Taiwanese company with headquarters in Tianjin, China. Usually I'm very cautious when eating foods that hail from China, because food safety isn't much of a priority over there... I mean people smuggle baby formula into the country because the ones produced inside China are potentially harmful... but since these noodles got through EU borders and is sold in the large chains of Asian supermarkets, I decided to give it a chance.

Master Kong has two varieties of noodles here: A normal instant ramen in various flavours and a special instant ramen in 3 flavours: beef, spicy beef and pork ribs. I tried the beef one and loved it so I bought the other flavours the last time I went to the Asian supermarket.

The package contains a piece of dried noodles, two flavour packets and a packet with dried vegetables and meat.

You can see why its a special ramen: the noodles are thicker and more irregular than the usual instant ramen noodles. I think its great that they include some dried vegetables and they actually reconstitute quite nicely.

The carrots don't taste much, but the cabbage is actually sweet like real cabbage. The little bits of meat, not really sure if its real meat... taste generic meaty. The beef flavoured ramen has little chunks of beef in it, but i'm not sure if those are little chunks of pork.

The broth itself doesn't taste much porky, its more a generic bouillon flavour rather than a heavy pork flavour. Its slightly hot because of the pepper but not as hot as the beef flavour.

The noodles themselves are the best part. They are more chewy and more like fresh ramen than most instant ramen brands and they don't turn soggy fast. I can boil these noodles for a few minutes without worrying about soggy noodles. The noodles are shorter though, but that doesn't bother me much.

Overal: The noodles have great texture, but the flavour isn't that special. I guess you can keep these as a staple kind of instant ramen, since the soup is so generic. It probably combines well with any kind of fresh ingredient you would like to add.