Today I’ve got something super interesting from Samyang: Samgyetang Ramen Soup. This is super interesting to me because I love trying new things as you may well know and this product is Samyang’s take on Samgyetang, which is a South Korean soup typically made with ginseng, garlic, and chicken. As I filmed this review, I was a little bit hoarse, so a hearty bowl of chicken soup sounded really good at the time.
Wikipedia tells me that this type of soup is typically eaten during the hottest days in summer as a way of replenishing nutrients since ginseng has supposed medicinal qualities to it. I’ll let someone more qualified than me chime in if that’s a true statement. I found this at one of my nearby Asian markets for $2.99. This looks to be an export product made for the USA; you can also find this online at Asian grocery stores like Sayweee. Now checking out the sodium level here: be warned, this is pretty crazy. 2,230 mg, which is 97% of your daily allowance. It’s high, but it does make sense if you consider the origin of the recipe though, right? You eat this in the sweltering heat of the summertime and you sweat out all that sodium. That’s basically the idea here.
Inside the bowl, we’ve got a puck of noodles, we’ve got a sizable powdered soup base, a seasoning oil which was hiding underneath the noodles (so don’t microwave it by accident), and we have some little bits of vegetables hiding underneath the noodles as well. The noodles contain some onion and garlic extract in them which makes me think that they might be the same ones that I ate back when I reviewed Samyang’s Bulgogi Soup bowl. They look to be possibly the same recipe. In the soup powder we’ve got artificial chicken flavoring, multiple types of garlic related seasoning, MSG, onion and black pepper. The seasoning oil is soybean oil, garlic oil, green tea extract and natural and artificial flavor extracts. I’m guessing that something in those “natural and artificial” flavors is the actual ginseng or is supposed to taste like ginseng. And finally those vegetable flakes are carrots, bok choy and garlic chips. I am not just excited to try ginseng for the first time, but I’m also excited that this bowl is just wall-to-wall garlic flavor in the ingredients – that is something I can definitely get behind.
After cooking, this smells pretty great, like chicken soup with a lot of garlic. You’re supposed to add the oil when you’re done cooking this, but I did try broth by itself first. And it’s really good on its own. Right away that savory garlic, chicken, black pepper, onion flavor is coming through really well.
Smelling the ginseng oil for the first time, I was struck by how strong an aroma it is. I also had a little taste of it off of my finger, and I wasn’t thrilled with it. It’s kind of hard to describe; it’s like a bitter earthy herb flavor with like a slight citrus quality to it, somewhere between like pine needles and arugula, if that makes sense. It’s a very strong flavor. So either some miracle of food chemistry is about to happen when this is mixed in or this oil is going to ruin the soup for me.
Noodles:
As I mentioned above, I’m something like 95% confident that these are the same as the Bulgogi Bowl noodles. They are a little thin but they cook up nice and firm and chewy. The wavy texture is really good; it holds on to the broth really well.
• 8/10
Spiciness:
You don’t have to worry about chili pepper in here, but you might have to worry about black pepper if you’re really sensitive to it. It’s reasonably strong, strong enough that I’m going to call it a nonzero score for spiciness. If a medium amount of black pepper bothers your taste buds then you might consider this to be spicy.
• 0.5/10
Overall:
You’re probably wondering what that oil did to the broth, and it’s really interesting. I loved the broth before I added the oil. It’s extremely salty and garlicky and oniony with a pretty reasonable approximation of real chicken flavor and I love the extra zest of the black pepper. So before the oil went in I would have called this a solid 8 out of 10. Then I tried that oil on its own – didn’t love the taste of it at all – but the oil blends in with these other flavors and it is downright transformative. It adds this completely new element of herbaceous flavor, a little bit of citrus, and a little bit of bitterness, and that in turn kind of cuts down on the perceived saltiness of the whole thing and just enhances the other flavors. It’s a little hard to describe what it’s doing but yeah it’s really cool. Honestly I love this. I thought for sure I was going to hate the ginseng and tea flavors when I put that oil in but I’m happy to admit when I’m wrong. I was 100% wrong. This is amazing. I’ve never tasted a flavor combination quite like this. Beyond that, the vegetable and garlic flakes that were hiding on the bottom of the bowl are really good, nice and tender. The garlic flakes of course I love; there’s just not enough of them and I had to really go digging to find them. And aside from that the only other downside I think would be that saltiness, which I expected given the description of this, but while I don’t find that amount of sodium intimidating some of you might. So just be ready to drink a lot of water with this one or plan to sweat it out later. I am both pleasantly surprised and very enthusiastic about the results here.
• 9.5/10
Final Thoughts
I think the real takeaway here is that food chemistry is a super funny thing. I was dead sure that that ginseng oil was going to ruin this broth, and instead it turns into something profoundly unique. If you love garlicky chicken broth and want to try it enhanced with some nice herby flavor then you should really buy this. If you’re not like me and you’ve had ginseng before and you like it then you should definitely buy this because I’m assuming this is what ginseng tastes like and you’ll probably like it. And yeah if you’ve never tried ginseng but are curious of course buy this, you know, good way to find out. I love doing reviews like this where something unexpectedly great happens. Absolutely killer flavor in this bowl and the next time I go back to the store I’m going to clean them out of this variety.
