Today’s review is A-Sha x Hot Ones Ramen Noodle Bowls, a collaboration between two very well-known brands: A-Sha and Hot Ones. The flavors are Taiwanese Tingly Pepper Ramen, Sizzling Chili Garlic Ramen, and Fiery Hot Tonkotsu Ramen. I’ve got to say, Target has really upped its instant noodle game these last few weeks; not only did they start carrying Buldak Yakisoba, but now they also have these three bowls available nationwide.
Read more: Noodle Journey Episode 178: A-Sha x Hot Ones Ramen Noodle Bowls Mega-ReviewI paid $3.82 for each of these as a sale price through the Target Circle app, but they regularly cost $4.49 where I live. I am not thrilled with the price point; I have a feeling that price is going to scare away some potential customers. I get it, even though these are made by A-Sha, you are paying for the Hot Ones branding on these, just like you pay for David Chang’s branding on A-Sha’s Momofuku noodles. A-Sha is probably the leading noodle company in Taiwan; the quality of their air-dried noodles is stellar, so I have high hopes for these bowls based on their pedigree.
One more important thing to note: A-Sha has also released a different assortment of Hot Ones ramen cups that look to be making their way to Walmart stores, and those are smaller and different flavors/recipes than these; I’ll be reviewing those three at some point, hopefully once I can find them. For this review, I’m going in true Hot Ones style: from mild to medium to hot.
Taiwanese Tingly Pepper Ramen
The sodium on this first bowl is absolutely nuts: 2,470 mg, which is 107% of your daily recommended allowance of sodium, so please exercise caution if you cannot eat that much. Inside the bowl, we’ve got a round block of air-dried noodles that are thinner than I’ve ever seen from A-Sha before. The bowl contains a liquid sauce packet, a vegetable packet, and a spice packet labeled “Caution Extremely Hot”. The sauce ingredients seem to aim to create an artificial beef and Sichuan peppercorn flavor using various spices, including what I assume is Chinese five spice, and mushroom extract. The veggie packet contains dried mushroom, cabbage, carrot, and scallion. The spice packet is a chili powder that you can add slowly to adjust the heat to your preferred level; the instructions refer to the liquid as a sauce packet, but what comes out is very clearly a broth, it’s a soup, not a sauced noodle.
Noodles:
I’ve never had this exact gauge of noodles from A-Sha before, and I wasn’t sure how it would hold up in a bowl form. I don’t love the way these came out after steeping; they are chewy and have a pleasant thickness to them, but they probably needed a little bit longer. As it stands, steeped at four minutes, the texture feels a little underdone, so for the next two bowls, I am going to try microwaving.
- 7/10 (steeped)
Spiciness:
Before I added in that chili pepper packet, the base heat is reasonably on the mild end by my standards, though it will be spicy for a novice. Without the chili powder, the heat is no worse than just an average supermarket hot sauce, but it has that promised tingle in it. After adding the entire chili packet, which smells very nice and almost smoky, the burn is solid. With that entire packet added in, I think that brings this heat up significantly, and it definitely gets you on the back end.
- 3.5/10 (without chili packet)
- 7/10 (with chili packet)
Overall:
At its base, before you add the chili pepper, it’s a very mushroom-forward beef broth with some very mild herbiness to it. It’s got the tingly sensation of Sichuan peppercorn, but I don’t quite taste that telltale kind of floral pungent peppercorn blend that I usually associate with that tingle. By Taiwanese-style broth standards, it is very muted as far as the five spice flavors go, but that’s not bad; I actually like how very vegetable-forward this is. The vegetables in here are stellar; they all came back very nicely, and I got some in every bite. The artificial beef flavor is close enough to regular beef that I don’t miss it. The chili packet does change the overall flavor of this in a subtle way; it’s a little smokier and more pepper-forward, a very welcome change that definitely brings this up a notch from a flavor perspective.
- 7/10
Sizzling Chili Garlic Ramen
This one has a high sodium level again, but not as bad as the last one: 1,830 mg, which is 80% of your daily allowance. Inside, I was surprised to find two liquid packs; we have a chili garlic soup base and a chili garlic sauce, plus the standard veggie pack and spice pack. The liquid packs contain yeast extract, garlic, sesame oil, ginger, and tomato paste. This is the only one that explicitly says vegan on the side of the package. The soup base alone is a little bland; I would probably score it like a 5.5 out of 10 if this was all it was. However, the intention definitely seems to be that you’re supposed to put both of those liquid packs in when you cook this, so I rectified that.
Noodles:
I microwaved this one, and the noodles came out much better, so the microwave is definitely the way to go for this particular noodle block. A much more supple texture that still retains its chewiness.
- 8.5/10 (microwaved)
Spiciness:
Without the added chili pepper packet, the spiciness for this one is honestly just about where the first one was, which is very surprising for something that says medium heat on the pack. After adding the full packet, the heat also comes out to be about the same.
- 3.5/10 (without chili packet)
- 7/10 (with chili packet)
Overall:
The initial soup base on its own was reasonably pleasant, though slightly bland. However, once I added the second liquid pack, the actual chili garlic sauce, it obliterated whatever good flavor the base had. I found the sauce extremely bitter, extremely overpowering, and quite frankly, I didn’t like what it did to the broth; it turned the flavor profile into something that resembled a poorly balanced mala sauce. I like mala when the spices are balanced, but this is a really harsh, jarring flavor, and I am unpleasantly surprised; this actually went in the trash after I was done filming. The chili powder does add a little level of smokiness to it, but not nearly enough to save this.
- 3/10
Fiery Hot Tonkotsu Ramen
The sodium in this one is incredibly high again: 2,140 mg, or 93% of your daily allowance. We’re back down to a single liquid packet, a vegetable packet, and the optional spicy packet. The noodles, the veggies, and the chili powder are all the same as the others. In the liquid pack, we’ve got some fairly non-typical Tonkotsu ingredients; there is no real pork in here, but there is milk, coconut oil, yeast, garlic powder, and various vegetable extracts. A-Sha is making a clear attempt to make up for the lack of real pork extract by using yeast to emulate that rich umami flavor.
Noodles:
They are identical to the other flavors, and since I microwaved this one, they came out really well. The microwave is the way to go.
- 8.5/10
Spiciness:
This is unlike the previous two varieties, as it was already pretty hot before I’ve even added in the chili pepper packet. I think this might just be a little bit spicier than something like Shin Black. After adding the chili pepper, the heat goes up, and it’s a solid burn, similar to the full heat of the previous two bowls.
- 6.5/10 (without chili packet)
- 8.5/10 (with chili packet)
Overall:
What I tasted was exactly what I smelled: it’s a reasonably garlicky, mushroom-forward broth. It does not resemble Tonkotsu in any way, shape, or form. There’s no creaminess and no real pork flavor here, even the artificial flavoring does not taste like pork to me. However, it does have that mushroom umami going for it, a lot of garlic, and a good amount of spice. The spice is not overpowering the flavors in here that I like, which was a big problem with the Chili Garlic flavor. The flavor of the broth is not necessarily better than the Taiwanese Tingly Pepper was; it’s definitely leagues better than the Chili Garlic.
- 7/10
Final Thoughts
Ignoring the price tag completely, I liked the Taiwanese Tingly Pepper and the Fiery Hot Tonkotsu enough to softly recommend them from a flavor perspective. The Sizzling Chili Garlic flavor I thought was a complete misfire of flavors and completely inedible once everything was fully assembled. Going back to that $4.49 price point, my recommendation for these two is not what I would call overly enthusiastic. In my opinion, you won’t miss much by skipping this product line altogether.
Notes after filming:
I cannot stress to you how the slow burn of the Fiery Hot Tonkotsu crept up on me after filming. It got hotter and hotter the further I got into the noodles, inching ever so close to the level of the Daebak Ghost Pepper noodles I reviewed back in Episode 145. Do not make the same mistake I made; if you’re going to add the chili packet, do it in small amounts very carefully.
