Help my instant noodles addiction

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

So I found out that I have a guilty pleasure for eating instant noodles. They're basically an unbalanced meal in a cup with too much salt and barely any proteins and vitamins but it's not my fault that they taste so good! Anyone know any good compromises? Like adding meat or something.

 

[zetsubouzanto]

garlic ? it's a bundle of fiber , A , C , and basic amino acid ... but yeah it's smell bad if you don't boil it long enough

 

[421cookies]

Egg. it should cook enough with boiling water.

 

[dabson]

If you have the ability, cook for yourself. You might find it tedious, tiresome and drab but it's worth it. Assuming you've already accomplished that, make it a habit. Do it at the same time every day. Fresh ingredients are better. Don't fear experimentation and try to make something you enjoy eating. You'll like the food a lot more and since it is consistent and tasty. That's what's most likely to get you off instant noodles/fast food.

 

[justforthelulz]

Chop some fresh onions/mushrooms, maybe some garlic, as suggested earlier.

 

[Yatsuki]

Add loads of veggie (cabbage keeps for a long time, but frozen/canned vegetable is fine), egg is nice too. Switch if up with the veggie and meat so instead of eating all pork for weeks, try fish balls, crab sticks, chicken sausages etc sometimes too.

Also, maybe do try to cook for yourself. Trust me, I'm lazy too and if I have all the money in the world, I would eat out every day instead of eating noodles or cooking but well... It's not the "healthiest" and most freshly cooked etc but I usually cook a load of food during the weekend or on my days off, then put them in containers and freeze them. If I have to chop all the ingredients and wash dishes and pots, might as well use a load of them. Fun fact: I'm known within the market near my house as the one who buy 4-5kg of tomatoes at once lol, make a batch of simple tomato sauce with loads of onion, mushroom, zucchini, garlic too, and freeze. Not that it's a balanced meal but at least I know my tomato sauce doesn't have load of sugar in it.

Btw, if you can get your hand on a slow cooker, as someone who have little time to cook and/or lazy, it's gonna be your best friend.

 

[hazzack]

boil them in milk.

wait, that come out wrong.
you boil the noodle in water, then you make pseudo cream sauce by heating up milk, add some sausage or something then put them noods there and season to your liking.

also get some chives, they're good.

something like this
https://youtu.be/Ymfzg7rVZwU

 

[ABCsOfLife]

@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN

Why is it bad to eat it frequently

Or by helping your addiction you actually want to try new recipe or something instead?
Use some chilii spices then, and then stir fry it, eat it with nuggets that have cheese inside it or so.

 

[LonelyPerson]

Well one thing for sure is to add eggs which 421cookies already said. Not only you get good protein but you can have them in a variety of ways, you could fry them for fried instant noodles or boil them inside for cup noodles and you could even have it half cooked before throwing it into your noodles, they are all valid in my opinion. You could also try to add in some meat in the mix, some brands although more expensive have meat included.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

I always eat instant noodles with eggs lol. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I'll reply more in-depth in a little later.

 

[blackyawgdom]

Buy small bags of various flavored Boneless Wings (the already cooked kind) You can throw a few on a plate in the microwave while the noodles boil or with any other meal. Or some thick cut bacon. Cook it 75% of the way in a skillet (with some kind of weight on top so it is comes out flat) then place on a cooking sheet with all 4 raised sides, dust them with a mixture of 1cup brown sugar, 2t paprika and 1t Cayanne Pepper (or those red pepper flakes from pizza places, or some curry powder). Finish in the oven at 400, till the sugar has melted. Let the bacon cool in fridge. Cut into short strips/squares. Now youve got Brownsugar bacon for any occasion/meal.

Pork-loin, cooked in a crockpot/slowcooker/Easypot with a can of Vernors Ginger Ale, Sage and Thyme.

Google the instructions for Roasted Garlic.
Learn to caramalize onions and make onion butter.
Save your bacon grease in the fridge.
Dont buy "Himalayan Pink Salt", that shit is a scam.

 

[TheGTF]

In general, it's less the noodles themselves that's the problem with instant ramen and such. Sure most brands are flash fried, but that doesn't add a meaningful amount of fats to most diets. The real killer is the dehydrated soup packet- that's where the metric fuckton of salts and preservatives and such come in, all that tasty stuff that's really bad to have regularly. And if flash fried noodles still bother you, then there are brands of instant ramen with dried noodles that haven't been fried.

So if you want to feel less bad about eating those noodle bricks, then start learning to make your own soup. That way you can get whatever fresh veggies you want in there, way less salt, etc. A basic meat stock is easy enough to make, it's just boiling bones with aromatics and regular scum skimming- make a large batch and store it for later- the stuff can freeze for 6-8 months. Seafood stock or dashi is just as simple. That should be your building block from which you tweak and modify each bowl of noodles you subsequently make.

 

[421cookies]

@TheGTF Eh? Isn't it more about the noodle? People often say throw the boiling water because it contains wax, preservative, etc. don't they?

 

[TheGTF]

@421cookies Not quite. You're thinking of false scare media claiming wax linings on paper cup ramen made them toxic. No known study has proven it to be true, and similar or larger quantities of carnauba wax are used in other products intended to be directly consumed such as in Smarties, Peeps, and candy corn. Multiple fact checkers such as Snopes and TruthorFiction were not even able to find traces of wax across multiple brands, particularly Nissin- the largest brand on the market and the creator of the instant noodle. No reputable brand has been found to use wax in any part of the production process.

Ramen noodles are just flash fried to dehydrate them, then they're cooled and packaged- the flash frying is the preserving process and that is where dietary problems with consuming them too much and too often could arise. What gives most brands of instant noodles their shelf life is the low moisture and the high salt content mixed into dough itself (fresh would be 1-3% of the flour weight, instant needs higher to achieve the shelf stability)- that's what preserves them, throwing away the water you boiled with them doesn't magically make that disappear, it's in the noodle themselves. This value is going to vary by brand and type of noodle of course- air dried noodles have lower oil content (3% on average, fried are 10-20%) and generally less salt in the dough due to less lipid oxidation threatening shelf life. The dehydrated soup powders are a ton of extra salts you don't need to be using- the packet is 99% table salt and MSG, 1% everything else. The nutritional information for the standard brick package of ramen can clock in at 50+% (Maruchan chicken flavor hits 75% for example) of the daily recommended value of sodium but if you read the packaging, those numbers assume the seasoning is used too. The block of noodles itself however is maybe 18-20% on its own (depends on the brand again), without the seasoning packet; still salty in its own right but far more manageable to work with. Thus my point of making your own soups with much lower salt helps mitigate this particular problem- a few teaspoons of salt to make a few quarts of stock is much more diluted than a few into a single bowl of soup

 

[421cookies]

@TheGTF Your ramen knowledge sounds like something out from Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-san lol.
I'm not sure either but some years ago before they updated the regulation, cheap instant noodle around here in southern asia often have shelf life to about 2 years. And some studies shown on tv also said that those noodles take several days to be fully digested iirc.

 

[zetsubouzanto]

technically noodles are complex carb that is harder for body to absorb , thus you gain fat faster while feeling less energetic . but it takes no longer than 10 hours to fully digest but faster to go to your intestines since it's a complex carb in physical form .

eat noodles in moderation folks , 1 piece per week seems reasonable . 2 is overextending and 3 causes you to gain blood sugar spike level over what needed per week , 4 is plain dangerous .