Best Instant Ramen Upgrades You Need To Try Right Now
While ramen is 100% a perfect meal in and of itself, especially the ramen here at Mike's Mighty Good, sometimes you need to spice it up.
Whether you're just adding an egg and a few veggies or recombining all of the parts of ramen to create something new and different, instant ramen is the perfect medium for innovation.
Given the number of ramen noodles we have to play with, we've become pretty good at building incredible ramen hacks to make our crazy good craft ramen even better. We've scoured the pages of our website and a few other choice repositories of ramen goodness from around the internet to build the definitive guide to instant ramen upgrades!
10 Instant Ramen Upgrades To Try At Home
1. Rotisserie Chicken Ramen
This recipe for Rotisserie Chicken Ramen is probably the easiest ramen hack available. Still, it's also, in a lot of ways, the foundation of the idea of ramen hacking in general.
Instant ramen noodles are a delicious food that's easy to prepare and packed with flavor. That being said, it's really a big bowl of noodle soup. While Mike's Mighty Good Craft Ramen is a fantastic meal by itself, it's also straightforward to step up the flavor level by adding things like big slices of leftover rotisserie chicken!
This hack is built for the Fried Garlic and Chicken Flavor Ramen from Mike's Mighty Good. The beautifully flavored broth combines with the roasted rotisserie chicken to create a next-level chicken noodle soup that's easier to make than your grandmother's recipe.
The only way to improve this hack is to add a soft-boiled/seasoned egg, but don't worry, that's the next hack on this list!
2. Easy Ramen Egg
There are few better or easier ways to upgrade your ramen noodles than to add a Ramen Egg.
Ramen Eggs are perfectly prepared, soft-boiled eggs that you often see swimming just under the surface of your ramen noodles.
A staple of the modern ramen shop, they are super easy to prepare at home and can truly take your ramen experience to the next level.
To prepare ramen eggs, you'll need to soft boil your eggs until the yolks are almost but not quite cooked. At this point, you cool the eggs, and from there, you can peel and serve them immediately. This process only takes about 7-8 minutes, so you can almost always prepare one in the time it takes to prepare your noodles.
If you want to "season" your eggs to give them that authentic Ramen Shop appearance, you'll need to prepare them at least an hour or three in advance. After you boil the eggs and chill them, you need to gently crack the shells while leaving them still on the eggs.
Next, you'll place the eggs in a ziplock bag and add 2 cups of soy sauce and a 1/4 cup of rice wine to the bag before sealing and refrigerating.
The soy sauce/rice wine mixture will soak into the eggs through the cracked shell, seasoning them with a delicious umami flavor and giving them a beautiful "marbled" appearance.
3. Tsukemen Dipping Ramen Noodles
Tsukemen-style noodles distill the ramen experience into the three fundamental parts: perfectly cooked noodles, hyper flavorful broth, and crisp, refreshing toppings.
By separating and refining all of these parts, you can create a ramen experience that's both familiar and wholly original. The best part about Tsukemen-style noodles is when you're finished; you won't have that "sloshy" feeling you sometimes get after crushing a bowl of craft ramen broth!
Creating Tsukemen-style noodles at home is simple, cook your noodles until perfect, cool, and reserve. Prepare the broth separately and spike with flavor. Then top with meat like roasted pork belly, ramen eggs, or fresh veggies like bean sprouts or cucumber before dipping and slurping your way into ramen euphoria.
4. Easy Ramen Dan Dan Noodles
Instant noodles are almost always brothy, but like many of the best instant ramen recipes, this Ramen Dan Dan Noodle hack takes away the broth component and utilizes the seasoning and oil to create a spicy Szechuan classic!
Instead of using the seasoning packet included with every Mike's Mighty Good Ramen flavor for a broth, you use some of the seasonings to dress the cooked noodles along with Szechuan chili oil, peanuts, cucumber, and roasted ground meat for that classic Dan Dan Mien flavor.
Flavor-wise, you can build this instant ramen upgrade with any of the flavors from Mike's Mighty Good, but if you want the highest flavor level possible, the Pork Tonkotsu Flavor is perfect for the job.
5. Gyoza Ramen
While Gyoza and Ramen might seem like an unlikely combination, they do go together quite nicely!
All you need for this upgrade is a bunch of delicious frozen gyoza from your local international grocer and the perfect pack of craft instant ramen noodles. We recommend the Savory Beef Ramen flavor from Mike's Mighty Good for this recipe. The delicious, rich beef broth goes perfectly with the seared/caramelized gyoza flavor, especially if you're using beef or pork gyoza. If you're using shrimp or chicken gyoza, consider using the vegetarian miso ramen flavor or the fried garlic chicken flavor; either will go perfectly with a bunch of crispy gyoza!
The nice thing about this hack is that the ramen broth acts as the perfect dipping sauce for your crispy gyoza. The gyoza adds a new flavor and texture dimension to the ramen experience, pumping up that flavor level and adding a ton of umami.
6. Korean Cheese Corn Ramen
Korean Cheese Corn Ramen combines two incredibly delicious dishes; beautiful instant ramen noodles and Korean cheese corn, a classic Korean side dish served with Korean to BBQ worldwide.
To create this mouthwatering ramen hack, you need to combine roasted corn with rich mozzarella cheese in a pan alongside perfectly cooked ramen noodles and a few sprinkles of the seasoning packet included with every Mike's Mighty Good Ramen flavor.
After that, you really just need to wait until the corn, cheese, and ramen melt into a crazy flavorful, ooey-gooey, cheesy bowl of goodness.
To garnish your Cheese Corn Ramen, you can add a touch of spicy mayo, sliced green onions, and a sprinkle of toasted sesame oil!
7. Ramen Carbonara
Classic Italian carbonara and ramen noodles might not seem likely friends, but you'd be surprised.
The flavor profile of traditional Italian pasta carbonara, bacon, egg yolks, peas, and parmesan cheese, is incredibly complimentary to the umami notes found in all ramen flavors we create here at Mike's Mighty Good Craft Ramen.
If you give this ramen hack for Instant Ramen Carbonara a try, we think you'll discover a new go-to comfort food.
To prepare, roast bacon pieces until crispy in a pan, add garlic, peas, parmesan, and then a pile of cooked noodles. Add some of the water you used to cook the ramen to create a sauce, and finally, add the egg yolks and a sprinkle of the ramen broth base and stir until the mixture is thick and delicious!
8. Chili Garlic Ramen Noodles
While this recipe is not a Mike's Mighty Good Creation, it is a straightforward and super flavorful ramen hack that's easy to throw together in just a few minutes.
Instead of broth, this ramen creates a Szechuan-style noodle packed with rich, spicy flavor.
To create this Chili Garlic Ramen Noodle recipe first, prepare the noodles without adding the broth base when finished. While the noodles are cooking, you can combine the spice mixture.
Once the noodles are done, drain the water and then add the spice mixture, plus a few sprinkles of the seasoning packet and the chili oil and scallions.
Finally, add a few spoonfuls of the cooking water to loosen the noodles and create just a touch of sauce.
9. Ramen Budae Jigae
This recipe for Budae Jigae or Korean Army Stew takes our incredible Vegetarian Kimchi Ramen and builds a one-pot meal with more than enough food for two hungry people.
By combining roasted spam with cabbage, rice cakes, enoki mushrooms, tofu, and baked beans, you create a 1 of a kind meal that's packed with insane levels of flavor.
This recipe goes far beyond most ramen hacks and includes a longer stewing period that will lengthen the prep time for this recipe considerably.
While this ramen hack is not quite "instant," the wait is worth it for this crazy flavorful Korean Army Stew!
10. Spicy Pork Wonton Ramen Bowl
Like many of these ramen upgrades, this recipe for Spicy Pork Wonton Ramen combines two cuisines.
While ramen may have been originally imported from China to Japan, it has become a quintessential Japanese food. On the other hand, Pork wonton soup is a classic Chinese dish that is beloved all over the world.
The combination of the Spicy Pork Tonkotsu Ramen from MMG, a handful of delicious pork wontons, and a few spoonfuls of chili oil create something wildly unique without a lot of effort.
The beauty of this dish is you can cook both the wontons and the noodles simultaneously before adding the broth, so it really doesn't take any extra effort to create this crazy flavorful ramen hack!
Final Thoughts on Ramen Upgrades.
While these are some of our favorite ramen upgrades to use at home, there are a ton more out there to discover. If you think we missed any of your favorite upgrades, be sure to comment below and leave us a link so we can give them a try!
