Samの英語チャンネル

A special kind of regional ramen makes its 7-Eleven instant noodle debut, with help from the makers of Sapporo Ichiban.

Nothing else has such a fundamental effect on the quality of ramen as the broth. Get the broth right, and you’re going to have at least an overall-good-tasting meal. If the broth is bad, though, it won’t matter what sort of noodles and toppings you have, since they’ll be soaked in subpar flavor.

With that in mind, 7-Eleven Japan is taking on a tough challenge with its latest instant ramen offering, since there’s a lot of complexity, and so also a lot of potential places to screw up, with the broth of the Milk Miso Curry Ramen.

This ramen didn’t come about by 7-Eleven just grabbing random things from around their kitchen and tossing them in the pot, though. Ramen with a mixed broth of miso, curry, and milk is a local specialty of Aomori Prefecture, located up at the northern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu. This regional version hasn’t really spread to the rest of Japan, though, so 7-Eleven’s cup ramen version, which just recently went on sale, is going to be many people’s first encounter with milk miso curry ramen.

There’s an argument to be made, at the granular level, that the idea isn’t so strange. Ramen with miso-based broth has been popular for generations, and it’s a style especially loved by people in northern Japan. Ramen with a curry-based broth is less common, but not unheard of (though you’re more likely to run into curry udon noodles on restaurant menus than curry ramen). The island prefecture of Hokkaido, just north of Aomori, is known for “soup curry,” a variation with a more liquidy consistency than the thicker roux ordinarily used for Japanese curries. Some Japanese home chefs also like to add bit of milk to the pot when cooking curry or reheating leftover roux, to give it a richer flavor.

However, is 7-Eleven trying to be too clever by combining all three of those ingredients, miso, curry, and milk, in a single ramen broth? At the very least, it sounds like something that would require a delicate touch in balancing the flavors, but “delicate” isn’t usually a quality we associate with instant noodles.

In contrast to the complexity of the broth, making 7-Eleven’s Milk Miso Curry Ramen is simple. You just open the lid, fill the cup with boiling water up to the line marked on the inside of the container, wait four minutes for the contents to cook, and then stir in the broth packet.

Floating in the opaque brown broth were bean sprouts, wakame (seaweed), and ground meat. Appearance-wise, the broth looked pretty close to standard miso ramen broth, but it smelled different, with a buttery sweetness to the aroma that was wafting up as steam rose from the cup.

Using a spoon for extra classiness, our taste-testing reporter Yayoi Saginomiya took a sip of the broth, and much like with how it looks, the initial taste impression is strongly of miso. But as she went on eating, she could feel a building sensation of curry flavors coming on after the starting miso sensation.

However, Yayoi wouldn’t call any of the flavor profile’s notes “milky.” Moreso than milk, she felt like she was getting the flavor of butter. That might be because the broth uses powdered whole milk instead of liquid milk, something that’s probably unavoidable in order to meet the shelf-life expectations for instant ramen.

That’s not to say the broth is disappointing, though. Sure, in terms of flavor it may be more accurate to describe it as “miso curry butter ramen” than “milk miso curry ramen,” but it still tastes very good. With three ingredients that aren’t often combined together like this, there was a risk of a disorientating, discordant flavor as each of them tried to pull your taste buds in a different direction. 7-Eleven Japan, and their partners for this project at Sanyo Foods (makers of the Sapporo Ichiban instant ramen brand), though, have done an excellent job crafting a smooth, rich, and harmonious broth that’s miso-forward, with the curry coming on as a welcome guest and the milk helping tie everything together.

7-Eleven’s Milk Miso Curry Ramen may not be as dramatic-tasting as the concept sounds, but it is delicious, and if you’re a fan of miso ramen looking for a version of the broth with a twist to it, we highly recommended this.

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Source: SORA NEWS24