Tapatio Ramen Mega-Review | Noodle Journey Episode 194

Yes, I’m insane. This review is going to be the biggest mega-review I’ve done to date. I’ll be taking a look at every single instant Tapatio Ramen product currently in existence: Original flavor, Beef flavor, Birria flavor, Carne Asada with Lime flavor, Chicken flavor, Shrimp flavor, Chili Lime Shrimp flavor, and Extra Spicy flavor.

You folks have no idea how long I’ve been trying to get this pile of noodle bowls reviewed. I’ve been planning it for such a long time now, and every time I think I’m ready to start, Tapatio comes out with a new variety or new packaging. This review reflects everything Tapatio has ever produced as of January 2025, although now some of these are already coming out in new packaging, but I don’t want to wait anymore, since from what I can tell all of the recipes are still the same.

It’s worth mentioning that a common thing I see people on Facebook or Reddit ask is, “Wait, Tapatio makes Ramen now?” Yes, if you’ve heard of the American hot sauce company Tapatio, they do also make ramen – they’ve been doing it for a couple years now. These bowls should all be available in one form or another in your nearest Walmart or grocery store for somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 to $3 a piece, and you can get them in six-packs on Amazon or direct from Tapatio’s website. Some of these also come in a cup form for lighter appetites, but I’ve got the bowls here for this review. The cups are just smaller portions from what I’m able to tell, not different recipes.

Now those of you who keep up with the channel or website might know by now that I’m a hot sauce fan, but I confess that prior to planning out this review I had never had Tapatio before. So a few months back I bought a bottle at Target to get a good idea of the flavor profile of the hot sauce before filming the review, because the soup flavors in all of these are going to have this flavor as a base. I have to say I like Tapatio hot sauce. It’s one of the tastier brands of mass-produced hot sauces that I’ve ever had. It’s got a really good pepper flavor, it’s not too watery, it’s got a decent spice blend, pretty medium heat, and my favorite thing about it is that it’s not vinegar based like some other cheap hot sauces, which is really good on my stomach. One more thing in the interest of full disclosure before I get into the individual reviews: I have had a couple of these before and I have a lot of thoughts about them. I’ve even mentioned the original flavor a couple of times in older reviews, but the majority of these flavors will still be entirely new to me. Let’s get this Mega review started.

Tapatio Original Flavor Ramen

The Verdict:

All right, so I’m going to start at the most logical starting point: the original flavor, because I believe all the other varieties are kind of a variant on this base flavor with different things added. Assuming this recipe hasn’t changed since I bought this, there are 1540 mg of sodium in this entire bowl, which claims to be two servings, which is, you know, bullshit. This is a single serving for anyone with a normal appetite. Inside we’ve got a block of wavy noodles, we’ve got a flavoring packet, and we have some dried veggies on the bottom. I do believe some of the newer flavors have the veggies in their own separate packet, but again, same exact stuff from what I can tell. This powdered soup base is an assortment of various spices and dehydrated hot sauce. The veggies are cabbage, bok choy, red pepper, and carrot. This is artificially flavored; I didn’t see any meat or dairy in the ingredients so I believe these are incidentally vegan, even though they’re not certified vegan. But please check for yourself in case I missed an animal product in my reading.

The instructions for this allow you to either microwave or steep it in boiling water. From the last time I had this bowl, trust me when I say that microwaving is the better method for these noodles, so that’s what I’m going to be doing for this entire mega-review. I know there’s somebody on Reddit who’s going to argue with me about microwaving noodles, but unless you like your noodles really, really hard, microwave works best here.

After cooking, the aroma is a strong blend of spices, some tomato powder for sure, lots of chili powder, which is what you want from a soup like this, and definitely a whiff of cumin. The smell of this does smell very close to the hot sauce; it’s got a sour spicy quality that my nose is picking up. Now, could you just buy your own artificial beef or chicken flavored Ramen and add Tapatio hot sauce to it? Probably. And if you do that you’d be missing out on the veggies and some of the additional flavorings in here.

Noodles:

As I stirred this, I noticed that these noodles clump together pretty tightly. They are very firm and could honestly even stand to go a little bit longer in the microwave. I’ve noticed that some of the newer recipes of Tapatio tell you to microwave these for 4 to 5 minutes, and I’m pretty sure they’re the same noodle recipe, so you might want to put them in for just a little bit longer if you like them less al dente. But I like them at this texture. They’re decent quality, they’re a little springy, and there’s a very sizable portion of them in here which I really appreciate. They’re a little slick, they make for easy slurping. The downside of that is the broth doesn’t quite cling to them as much as I would like it to. They’re not winning any awards, but they’re decent enough.

• 6.5/10

Spiciness:

So this being a ramen made by a hot sauce company, you would expect this to be spicy, right? It certainly is. It’s American spicy, not Korean spicy. If you can tolerate the more potent varieties of your average supermarket hot sauce, then this isn’t anything to worry about. If you eat Tapatio hot sauce regularly, it’s about the same heat level. If you eat Buldak regularly, you probably won’t even notice this heat. And if your palate’s not trained for spice, this is a somewhat medium way to start. It’s got a little linger to it, but it’s not crazy hot.

• 4/10

Overall:

And now we get to the flavor of this, and I’ve already said this in other reviews: I like this. I knew that already; I’ve had this variety before. What we have here is a spicy tomato broth with some nice sour flavor, a solid proprietary spice blend with lots of chili powder, cumin, garlic, onion, probably some other things I’m having a hard time picking out individually. It’s not overly salty. I would say cumin and smoky chili are the dominant spices along with some black pepper, paprika, you probably get the idea. The rehydrated vegetables are decent, but not enough of them. My favorite part about this is that all the little green herb bits floating in here are parsley, not cilantro. Thank goodness for those of us with a soap gene, but bummer for you folks who like cilantro, so you’ll want to add your own if that’s the flavor profile you’re looking for here. The parsley doesn’t taste like much, but it doesn’t taste like cilantro either, so that’s fine by me. I like that the broth consistency is a little bit thicker than you might expect. And aside from the lack of veggies and the clumpiness of the noodles, there’s not a lot of major complaints here. This is pretty decent. The flavor profile is neat because it does in fact taste like Tapatio’s hot sauce in soup form with some extra savory notes, so that makes it pretty unique among spicy noodles since it is Tapatio’s formula. Nice flavor, decent quality.

• 7/10

Tapatio Beef Flavor Ramen

The Verdict:

All right, and next up we’re going to do the Tapatio Beef flavor. And technically speaking, if you want a beefy Tapatio Ramen bowl, there’s this artificial beef flavor, there’s the Birria flavor, which will be next on the docket, there’s the Carne Asada lime flavor following that, and an argument could be made that the original flavor I just reviewed has kind of an artificial beef flavoring in it as well. So that’s three to four distinct beef flavor varieties in this lineup. This one comes with a hefty amount of sodium: 1830 mg for the entire bowl, which is 80% of your recommended daily allowance, so be careful if you watch your sodium intake.

Opening this up, we’ve got the Tapatio noodles, we’ve got a soup powder, and we’ve got a vegetable flake packet. The soup powder has your usual assortment of onion, garlic, spices, and artificial beef flavor from yeast, and the dried vegetables are supposed to be cabbage, bok choy, and carrot. Once again this is artificially flavored and it appears to be vegan unless there’s something sneaky that I didn’t catch on the label. A slight surprise: I can’t tell if some of the flakes are just kind of brownish carrots or if they’ve actually got some kind of mushroom or soy protein in here. Whatever it is, I didn’t notice it on the ingredients label, but it’s cool that it’s in there. We’ll find out what that is when it rehydrates.

Aromatically, it smells very similar to the original flavor with the added artificial beef powder in there. And aside from that extra beefiness, there really isn’t much to distinguish this from the original flavor. The spice profile smells about the same to me, and that’s not a bad thing. I mean, I like the original flavor; I’m assuming the additional artificial beef flavor in here is only going to enhance that.

Noodles:

The noodle quality is about on par with the original, so there’s no need to get into that again.

• 6.5/10

Spiciness:

Spice level is about on par with the original.

• 4/10

Overall:

Before I talk about the flavor, let me mention that the separate veggie pack (as opposed to the veggies that are underneath the noodles in the Original flavor bowl) yielded a lot more vegetable content, so I really like that. I’m pretty sure those little brown bits I suspected were soy protein came back as cabbage – I don’t see any evidence of mushroom or vegetable protein in here. This isn’t drastically different from the original flavor, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing; I really liked that one. The artificial beef flavor here is the only really noticeable difference, and it’s pretty good as far as artificial flavorings go. My guess is that this is basically the original with some extra yeast and soy, that’s usually what it is. So you add that flavor profile to the Tapatio spice blend and you get something that kind of reminds me of barbacoa seasoning like you might find on the ground beef at your local taco joint. It’s a smoky, cumin-forward chili powder with some black pepper, onion, garlic. Right on the money if you’re looking for a beefy Tex-Mex flavored Ramen. The vegetables all came back nicely; they give a nice little crunch. So I think the extra beef flavor, even though it’s fake, makes this a little more compelling than the original flavor.

• 7.5/10

Tapatio Birria Flavor Ramen

The Verdict:

All right, and next up is Tapatio Birria flavor Ramen. And if you haven’t been keeping up with culinary trends in the United States, this requires a little bit of an introduction. For the uninitiated, this is a Mexican birria combined with ramen noodles. That’s a Mexican dish traditionally made from goat in which the meat is marinated and cooked in a flavorful spicy consommé broth. In the US, we usually see beef instead of goat, although you could also use lamb or chicken too. And the basic idea is to cook some tasty meat in a tasty broth and then you eat it as a stew or you put it in your eating vessel of choice like a taco shell or a quesadilla and you can dip it in the consommé while you’re eating. Now, I don’t know where the idea of introducing ramen noodles into the equation came from, but someone somewhere started a trend where you mix noodles in with the consommé and meat and you get the best of both worlds: a tasty meaty stew with some ramen noodles. So Tapatio was the first company that I became aware of that is packaging that birria experience into an instant noodle form.

Sodium in this one is getting close to the high side: 1770 mg, which is 77% of your daily allowance.

Opening this up, this should sound familiar by now. We’ve got noodles, a powdered soup packet, and a dried vegetable packet. There’s honestly very little in here on paper that separates this variety from the original or beef flavors. The difference here is going to be in the spice blend, which is not specifically spelled out on the package. So in here we’ve got all the usual stuff you’d expect to see like MSG, garlic, artificial beef flavoring, salt, and spices. And then in the vegetable flakes we’ve got cabbage, carrot, and bok choy. Once again this is an artificially flavored beef broth; I believe that this is incidentally vegan, but please double check for yourself.

After cooking, it definitely smells more herby than the beef flavor did, but still retains that kind of Tapatio spice blend that I’ve already tasted in the other two. I also don’t know if my eyes are playing tricks on me, but this does look like a richer broth than the other two varieties were. It’s not hugely different, but I do find the smell and appearance a little bit more pleasant than the last one was, which was already pretty good.

Noodles:

Once again pretty sure these are the same noodles.

• 6.5/10

Spiciness:

The spice level is about the same. It does linger, but it’s pretty much the same heat as the first two.

• 4/10

Overall:

This tastes like a Tex-Mex beef flavored ramen bowl: tomato, cumin, chili pepper, garlic, onion, but I’m getting a hint of something else that I’m pretty sure might be a combination of oregano and cinnamon. It’s making this a much more interesting eating experience. I do think that oregano and cinnamon might be used in some birria recipes; there might also be some bay leaf in here. I’m just picking up on something a little earthier and a little sweeter. Yeah, so this changes up the recipe just a little bit, and I think it does so in a very nice way. I like this better than both the Original and the Beef flavor. I think this is a great flavor combination but look, let’s concede here: nothing that you buy in a powdered Ramen cup is ever going to taste as good as homemade birria. You’re never going to get the same thing that’s slow-cooked for hours, but on its own merits this is very tasty. The consistency is reasonably rich, kind of like a birria consommé, not quite as thick as the real thing. I wasn’t sure how the cinnamon aroma I detected originally was going to work in the context of this bowl, but this is really good. I can’t imagine any of the other flavors in this lineup are going to beat this. This passes the realm of good for me and enters into almost great territory.

• 8/10

Tapatio Carne Asada with Lime Flavor Ramen

The Verdict:

And now we come to the Carne Asada with Lime flavor, and you guessed it: this one is more or less the beef flavor but with some powdered lime and citric acid in here to give it a sour kick. And I know all this because this is one of the ones I’ve had before. I had a lot of thoughts about this the first time I tried it, but let’s go for it this time with a proper review. But first, be warned: the sodium in this one is a staggering 2,650 mg for the entire bowl. That is 115% of your daily recommended allowance. That’s nuts.

Inside here is more of the same: same noodles, same vegetable pack, and we have a broth packet which according to the ingredients is more or less the exact same thing as the beef flavor but with lime powder in it. Once again, this is artificial beef flavor, not real beef.

And once assembled, it smells just like the beef flavor with lime. Also has the same veggie mix we’ve seen before: carrots, cabbage, and bok choy. Yes, the Tapatio veggies and spices are there, but underneath it all is just this really strong citrus aroma.

Noodles:

Same noodles as above.

• 6.5/10

Spiciness:

Just a note about the spice level: it’s pretty much the same heat as the others so far, but with the added acidity of the lime powder, this one just comes across a lot more caustic, so be warned.

• 4/10

Overall:

You may have read between the lines from what I said earlier, but this score is not going to be too favorable. Yeah, I knew what to expect because I’d had this one before, and I was wondering if I’d feel differently about it now that I’m having it again, and I don’t. I don’t like this. It’s not because I hate lime; I’m honestly pretty okay with the reasonable amount of lime in things, but this is not a reasonable amount of lime to me. This is way, way, way too much. It’s overpowering, it’s unbalanced, it’s honestly kind of a relentless assault of lime on my palate. The last time I tried this, my wife, who could just pick up a lime and eat it like an apple without batting an eyelash, told me to tell you all that this is so freaking limey that even she cannot handle it. So I would love to tell you about all of the artificial beef flavor notes in this and the blend of Tapatio spices and how it all comes together, but the fact is I can’t taste much of anything except lime powder and salt. It’s incredibly harsh to me. I think this is a complete failure on Tapatio’s part, and really if they dialed back the lime to a reasonable amount they might have something neat here, but as it stands I can’t eat this. The heat is fine, but the broth is just mouth-burningly sour and offensive to me. If you snort lime powder the way Tony Montana snorts cocaine, maybe you could find something to love here, but this is not for me at all.

• 2.5/10

Tapatio Chicken Flavor Ramen

The Verdict:

All right, so with that unpleasantness out of the way, let’s see what this Chicken flavor can do when it’s combined with Tapatio spices. And just our usual quick sodium check first: 1550 mg, or 67% of your daily allowance. And that’s a little surprising because chicken flavors do sometimes clock in on the higher end of the sodium range, so that’s not a bad number.

Once again just like the Original flavor, I got stuck with one of the bowls manufactured without the vegetable packet. We have the same Tapatio noodles we’ve seen before, we have some dried vegetable bits mixed in there, and we’ve got a soup powder. Nothing in the ingredients is super surprising except that the artificial chicken flavoring in here contains egg. Now I don’t know if this was changed in newer versions of this packaging, so what I have right here is not vegan friendly. Yeah, if you’re vegan or you avoid eggs you’re going to want to check the ingredients yourself before you buy this.

Once cooked, it smells like pretty much the same Tapatio spice blend that I’ve been smelling with the other varieties. There is a whiff of chicken seasoning in there. The broth also has a slightly different body than the other varieties do, and that’s that chicken powder giving it a slightly different color and consistency, I’d imagine.

Noodles:

Standard Tapatio bowl noodles.

• 6.5/10

Spiciness:

Heat remains the same as the others above.

• 4/10

Overall:

I’ll cut right to the chase: chicken flavor goes with Tapatio ramen broth really well. Once again you’ve got the emphasis on the Tapatio spices, the kind of chili pepper, cumin, garlic, onion, tomato flavor, and it just tastes really good with the extra savory flavor from the use of that chicken powder. And yeah, even though it’s artificial it’s really good, and it’s close enough to the real thing that I don’t think I could really tell that much of a difference. So what this does is create a more chicken forward tomato flavor than just a plain old tomato flavor. I think it’s really tasty; chicken soup just automatically brings something into a more comfort food realm and this is no exception assuming you can handle the spice. Nice flavor, definitely an improvement over the original. I think it’s on par with the beef variety but with a different artificial protein flavor.

• 7.5/10

Tapatio Shrimp Flavor Ramen

The Verdict:

Now let’s move on to this Shrimp flavor, which has a few different ingredients that separate it from the others, and I honestly don’t know if a sweet seafood flavor like shrimp will work with Tapatio’s spice blend, but let’s find out together.

Not quite as high as some of the others but still pretty high, the sodium count on this is 1940 mg, 84% of your daily allowance. I do believe this one comes in a cup version, so if you have sodium issues and you still want Shrimp Tapatio Ramen, look for the cup.

Inside, this one has the vegetables mixed into the noodle block again. We also have a powdered soup base. Now you might think that the ingredients in here are just going to be shrimp powder plus the original flavor, but no, there’s actually a lot more going on here. We’ve got a bunch of other ingredients besides the shrimp extract: there’s Bonito powder, cuttlefish extract, shrimp oil, and green tea oil. There’s also dried parsley like we’ve seen in the others, and there’s an additional mention of jalapeño pepper on the ingredients label, which believe it or not I didn’t see specifically called out in any of the other bowls. So this should be pretty interesting – that’s a lot of new flavors to build off of the Tapatio spice blend.

After cooking, there’s not much of a shrimp aroma or any kind of seafood aroma that I got out of it. Even the base powder honestly doesn’t smell any different than it did in the other recipes, but it’s not to say it won’t taste different; it’s just kind of a spicy tomato broth smell going on. So it doesn’t smell bad, but it does not smell very seafood forward.

Noodles:

Same noodles as before.

• 6.5/10

Spiciness:

Same heat level as the base varieties.

• 4/10

Overall:

The difference in flavor, despite my misgivings about the lack of aroma, is absolutely coming through. There is a subtle sweet seafood flavor that is really nice. It’s not strong; if you handed me a bowl of this and I didn’t see the label, I would just assume it was a slightly sweetened umami tomato broth with Tapatio sauce in it. That extra little bit of sweetness, though, it’s good. Like, it really blends well with the Tapatio spices. I think it balances out what has otherwise been a fairly salty savory borderline acidic finish to the other soups – not in a bad way, of course, but the sweetness balances out the acid of the broth a little bit. I wouldn’t say that it tastes like shrimp to my taste buds, but I think it’s a really nice departure from the original recipe. I think this is tied with the Beef and Chicken flavors for me. It’s a different backbone to the broth flavor.

• 7.5/10

Tapatio Chili Lime Shrimp Flavor Ramen

The Verdict:

Getting into the home stretch here, it is time for the Chili Lime Shrimp flavor, and given how poorly the Carne Asada with Lime flavor went, I don’t have high hopes for this one, but maybe the Tapatio employee who developed this recipe is someone else, who knows. But one major point against it already: the sodium count, good God, it is 2330 mg or 101% of your daily allowance. That’s crazy.

Once again inside the bowl: noodles, vegetable flakes, and soup base. I think I’m noticing a trend in the vegetable packaging; I wish I had noticed it earlier on, but when I get to the last flavor I think my suspicions will be confirmed. We’ll see. The ingredients list both natural and artificial shrimp flavoring in here, a few other seafood extracts that were not present in the plain shrimp flavor, like there’s squid in here, and of course it has lime extract and all the other standard soup base ingredients and veggies as we’ve already seen in the other bowls.

The aroma of the uncooked powder is interesting; it smells a little more peppery than the carne asada lime flavor did. It’s not like a full-on assault of lime powder there. After cooking, from an aroma perspective I’m getting flashbacks to the Carne Asada flavor – just a lot of lime and not much else. But smell doesn’t necessarily equate to taste one-for-one; there might be some nuance in here that makes this better than the Carne Asada flavor.

Noodles:

Standard Tapatio quality.

• 6.5/10

Spiciness:

About the same level as the others.

• 4/10

Overall:

You know, I’m happy to admit when I’m wrong, and I was wrong. This is not the full-on assault on my taste buds that the Carne Asada flavor was- it’s much more balanced. What this is kind of coming across as to me is kind of a Tex-Mex version of a tom yum soup. That is to say, it’s got a very mild sweetness to it that I can only attribute to the shrimp, with a pretty sizable but not overboard amount of citrus flavor. And while it might be slightly north of how much citrus flavor I’m willing to tolerate in something, it is well within what I would consider to be the acceptable bounds of something that is citrus-flavored, unlike the Carne Asada flavor. It also is very salty compared to the other flavors, so that is kind of a point against it. Overall, I’m pleasantly surprised. I’m not mad at it. I will even finish this. I probably wouldn’t buy this one again because this just isn’t my favorite flavor, but it’s not as intolerable to my taste buds as the Carne Asada was. It’s actually reasonably pleasant for something that’s not completely within my wheelhouse. If you like lime, this is the one to get over the Carne Asada flavor for sure.

• 6/10

Tapatio Extra Spicy Flavor Ramen

The Verdict:

And finally to finish out this, we’re going to end with the Extra Spicy flavor. And this is essentially identical to the Original flavor from an ingredients perspective with the exception, of course, that there is additional chili pepper or capsaicin in here to make it spicier. So really the only things I’m after with this part of the review are going to be: how much spicier is it, does it impact the flavor in any significant way, and how does it compare to something like Buldak for all of you spice heads.

Sodium in here is a little bit higher than it was for the original flavor: it is 1760 mg or 77% of your daily allowance, so getting towards the high end but not as bad as some of the other flavors that we’ve seen.

And inside we’ve got the noodle block and the vegetables already in the bowl and the soup base is separate. I wish I had figured this out sooner: the commonality with all the ones that had the vegetables already in the bowl versus having a separate vegetable pack – all of the ones that had the separate vegetable pack were listed as being manufactured in Vietnam. This one and all the others that had the vegetables mixed into the bowl here are manufactured in South Korea. That’s how you tell. That’s the difference. If you look on the back here, it’ll tell you where the manufacturing facility is: Vietnam, your vegetables are separate and a little more plentiful; South Korea, they’re mixed into the bowl, all kind of sitting at the bottom there. I’m sorry it took me this long to realize it.

On first sniff of the powder, it does smell a little chemical forward. I’m worried that that means there is capsaicin in here and not just actual hotter pepper flavor. We’ll see. After cooking, it does smell pretty much like the original flavor. I’m not getting any whiff of chemical like I did with the raw powder, so hopefully this is a pleasant spice and not a weird artificial spice.

Noodles:

Same blocky, firm noodles.

• 6.5/10

Spiciness:

For something labeled Extra Spicy it’s not that much spicier than the base flavors are. If anything, I’m noticing that while it’s not that much more potent, it does kind of linger in the back of my throat a little longer. There’s definitely some chemical shenanigans afloat here because it doesn’t taste purely like additional pepper flavor, but I’ll talk about that below. It is punchier, it does stick around a little longer. I think if you’re a spice head you’re not going to notice a huge amount of difference between any of the other flavors and this Extra Spicy one, but even though it’s not a massively bigger kick, it is a kick. So if spicier is what you’re after you’ll probably like it.

• 6/10

Overall:

This does taste like there is a little capsaicin extract in here, which I would usually associate with a slightly bitter chemical taste, but there is some additional pepper flavor in here that I’m detecting beyond what was in the original, and that’s good because that means this wasn’t achieved purely by extract. That means that there is some actual thought in here about how this was going to taste at the end. I don’t necessarily prefer it over the Original nor do I prefer the Original over this, it’s just a little bit different. So I honestly think that the score for this one should be a wash with the original flavor. If you like the base flavor of Tapatio Ramen and you want something spicier you’ll enjoy this. If you don’t want something spicier you’re going to get pretty much the same flavor notes with just a slightly different flavor of pepper to it.

• 7/10

Final Thoughts

Let’s talk these flavors. What would I buy again? Original, Beef, Birria, Chicken, Shrimp, maybe Chili Lime Shrimp if I was really in the mood, and maybe Extra Spicy if I wanted something a little hotter. The only one of these I would say to actively avoid in my opinion is the Carne Asada with Lime because it was just too much lime, not enough other flavor. As far as the other flavors go, whichever protein and flavor blend you like, I don’t think you can go too wrong with any of them. The noodles are all pretty decent, the vegetables are good quality and in the cases where they come in a separate pouch there’s a little bit more of them. Remember to check the manufacturing origin to see if they’re made in South Korea or Vietnam, and that will tell you how many vegetables you’ll probably end up with if they’re in a separate packet. Overall, as a brand I’m pretty happy with everything that Tapatio brought to the table here, except for that one variety.