Instant Ramen with Cheese

Some people pull a face, while others think it sounds pretty good: a thick slice of cheese slowly melting over your instant ramen. In South Korea, it’s completely normal.

It smells a little like a questionable fusion dish. It also sounds pretty Dutch to put a slice of cheese on everything. Yet it’s a Korean habit. In South Korea, they love instant ramen. The ramyun or ramyeon, as the ready-to-eat noodles are called, look different from the more familiar Japanese ramen and taste different too. The often round sheets of precooked and dried noodles are spicier than the Japanese varieties. Samyang ramyun double spicy flavour, better known colloquially as ‘nuclear flavour’, is even said to be the spiciest instant ramen in the world.

A Korean eats around 76 packets of ramyun a year

On average, Koreans eat as many as 76 packets or cups of instant ramen per person per year. That means they are the world’s biggest ramen eaters. Moreover, in South Korea, unlike in Japan, instant ramen is much more popular than the freshly made variety.

Gooey

And, as we’ve written before, Koreans also love melted cheese. So why not add it to instant ramen for extra texture and flavour? Just like the other typically Korean ramyun topping, kimchi, a gooey, melting slice could well be a delicious addition to your next bowl of instant ramen. So just give it a try.

Korean ramyun is also available at various Asian grocery stores in the Netherlands.