Nissin Cup Noodles Tasty Chicken Asian Style Soup

Reviewing instant ramen from Europe, which I mostly buy during my family visits in Germany, have slowly become a running gag on this website. And it always starts with the ridiculous naming of these things, which sound like you asked a middle aged German lady that has never left Germany to name them, after blind testing them. How else do you come up with Tasty Chicken Asian Style Soup? Nissin really could do better in that regard and I am more than happy to offer my services. Anyway, let’s start digging into this questionable Cup Noodles product and see if it actually can convince, or if it ends up being a disappointing mess, like the ones so far.

Content

The main ingredient here seems to be sadness. And red paprika. And a few tiny bits of chicken and shiitake. 1% chicken, 0.8% shiitake, I think that says it all. I really don’t understand the red paprika and why this would indicate “Asian Style”, but I am also not one of the marketing geniuses at Nissin’s product development department.

The flavor is applied through a powder, although I should rather write “flavor”.

Preparation

Add hot water and wait for 3 minutes. No surprises here and therefore not much to say.

Review

Really, who comes up with this stuff? Who is the target group for this? I can only imagine that this is targeting people who have an inherent dislike for things with flavor. Even the saltiness is on the weak side, which generally should absolutely not be a problem with instant noodles.

With this cup, I can’t even guess what they were going for in terms of flavor profile. It does not taste like chicken, it does not taste like soy sauce, it does not taste like anything I could identify as Asian. The only thing that somehow is noticeable in terms of flavor is the paprika pieces. The chicken and shiitake pieces are mostly flavorless, only offering a bit of chew.

The soup itself has a very generic bullion type flavor, which is very much on the weak side. I had to force myself to finish it without modification or adding anything.

The noodles were not a huge issue this time, although they were short and brittle, basically no long noodles for a proper slurp.

I keep getting disappointed by these Asian Blast Cup Noodles and I am starting to very much doubt that there ever will be one that is on a similar level to what is available in Japan or other Asian countries.