• Classic Ramen
• Apocalypse Ramen

Ramen is our ride-or-die. It got us through undergrad, working for poverty wages, and too many depressive episodes to count. It’s cheap, versatile, and takes 5–10 minutes to prepare. You can even eat it dry after smashing it up a bit, with the powder sprinkled on top, if cooking seems like it’s going to take too many spoons.

Classic Ramen

Sometimes called instant noodles.

Not all ramen is created equal. There are off-brand Mr. Noodles that you can buy three for a dollar, but this is an act of desperation. Consider whether, in fact, you are that depressed and/or broke. If you can manage it, Nongshim is substantially pricier but is objectively the best ramen. There are a range of possibilities in between.

We recommend swapping up your ingredients so you don’t get bored of them.

Core Ingredients

• Pack of ramen, a.k.a. instant noodles
• Boiling water

Preparation I: Stove

• Dump the ingredients in a pot as the water is boiling, then mix it up.

Preparation II: Kettle

• Boil the water in the kettle, add the boiling water, noodles, and flavour package to a bowl, and mix it up.
• Note that the water will be hot enough to cook the noodles but might not defrost any frozen veg that you add. This is why you have a microwave.
• Also note that any measurements on the side of the package are a suggestion, not a rule.

Preparation III: Microwave

• Combine water and ramen in bowl.
• Microwave for 1 min. See if it’s cooked.
• If not, microwave another minute.
• Repeat until cooked.

Bottom-Tier Ingredients These are things you can add that are probably somewhere in your home right now.

• Wilty vegetables. If it’s looking sad in the fridge, it will probably taste okay once hot water is added.
• Soy sauce in packets from your last takeout.
• Hot sauce in packets from your last takeout.
• Whatever spices you sweep up from the bottom of your cupboard.
• You can rawdog it from the package if there’s nothing else.

Mid-Tier Ingredients If you add these, it’ll taste good, and you likely have at least one.

• Egg*
• The good kind of soy sauce
• Sriracha
• Frozen vegetables
• Fresh vegetables

God-Tier Ingredients Adding any of these elevates your ramen to next-level shit that tastes like you’re a fancy lady who went to a restaurant instead of a sad sack who is crying in front of your TV. We recommend stocking up in between depressive episodes, especially for things that don’t go bad.

• Garlic
• Onion**
• Ginger
• Chilies
• Kimchi
• Seaweed
• Tofu
• Canned baby corn
• Sesame oil
• Hash browns. Hash browns are delicious in ramen and we don’t know why. You have to cook them first before you add them: see our recipe for French Fries a.k.a. Hot Chips.
• Shiitake mushrooms. These come dried, so you need to rehydrate them. Put them in a jar of water, put that in the fridge, come back to it in a day or three. Chop up the mushrooms. You probably don’t want to eat the stem since it will never get soft, but the cap is delicious. The liquid also makes great stock to add flavour to the ramen soup—use it instead of water.
• You can do this dried mushroom trick with dried seaweed too. Mix them together in the jar.

*A note on the humble egg. There are endless ways to add egg to ramen. Hard-boiled, scrambled, or fried—they’re all delicious. Look for these recipes in The Humble Egg.

There is one egg variation which you can only do with soup, so we’re listing it here. Crack the egg into the hot soup, stir it in, and you’ve got a fair approximation of egg-drop soup. If the water isn’t hot enough to cook the egg in the soup, microwave for a minute, stir, and repeat until it is cooked. If you’ve made the ramen on a pot on the stove, then just keep heating until the egg is cooked.

**A note on onion preparation. Unless you like raw, crunchy onions, they generally take a little longer to cook than other vegetables, so you should put them in first. The smaller they are, the faster they’ll cook, but like some cruel Faustian bargain, the more you’ll have to work at chopping them. (Unless you buy pre-chopped, of course.)

That said, ignore any recipe that tells you to cook until translucent or worse, cook until brown. That recipe is not for when you have depression, and they will cook just fine alongside the rest of the ramen as you go.

A word to the wise: Different types of ramen vary as to the vegan-ness, and even vegetarian-ness, of their ingredients. If this matters to you, it’s a good idea to check the ingredients closely. Nongshim Soon and Vegetable Mr. Noodles are both vegan.

Apocalypse Ramen

This is basically like regular ramen soup but with three critical differences:

• It is intensely chaotic, which is to say that you can pretty much toss anything into it and say you did it on purpose.
• It’s slightly healthier, if your depression has lifted enough that you want to eat something other than delicious, delicious chemicals.
• It involves a mason jar, so you can feel like you’re riding out the end of days in true hipster style.

Core Ingredients & Supplies

• Mason jar or other heatproof receptacle
• Boiling water
• The only requirement here is rice noodles. Why? Because they cook fast.

Preparation

• Put all ingredients in the jar.
• Boil some water.
• Pour into jar to cover ingredients.
• Shake it up a bit (not right away, otherwise you’ll burn your hands and get more depressed).
• Let it sit for a few minutes.
• Enjoy???

Variations

• Remember those takeout packets of hot sauce and soy sauce? This is a good time to use them.
• Frozen or fresh vegetables. Wilted is absolutely fine here. International readers may call them “wilty” vegetables. Reader, you are now bilingual.
• Any kind of spices. We particularly suggest garlic or ginger powder, but seriously, anything will work.
• If you have tofu or some other protein to use, go for it.

Well, it is subjectively the best ramen, since others also exist. But don’t worry, you have a lifetime to select your own favourite.