Ramen Toppers Black Garlic Chicken for Noodles Review | Noodle Journey Supplemental Episode

I don’t use the term “game changer” lightly, but what I have here for review today might just be that: Ramen Toppers Black Garlic Chicken for Noodles. If you haven’t seen Ramen Toppers before, this is an American-made dried Ramen topping brand, and their revamped Pork and Fish Cake mix is legitimately one of my favorite products. It’s something I use frequently when I make Japanese instant ramen. When I saw that this new Black Garlic Chicken mix had started to pop up on Amazon recently, I got in touch with my contact over there and asked if I could have a canister to review, and so they obliged, and I am beyond excited to try this.

The Verdict:

If you want to hear straight from the horse’s mouth what to expect from this product, they sent me a note regarding what this is: “The black garlic chicken is marinated overnight in a blend of soy sauce, black garlic, ginger, green onions, sake, and a few secret ingredients for depth of flavor. After marinating, we flame sear the chicken to intensify its rich barbecue taste. We’ve paired it with Yamasa fish cake and a variety of mixed vegetables for the perfect balance of texture and taste for your Ramen toppings.“

Sounds pretty interesting, right? You can buy these directly from Ramen Toppers through Amazon and I was told by my contact over there that all of their products are selling like crazy and are in very high demand, so if you see that this is out of stock and you want to buy it, set up a stock alert with your favorite app or browser extension so that you know when it comes back. This is currently priced at $24.99 for a 14.5 oz. jar. This is 32 oz. prior to the drying process and it is made in the USA, which I know is important to some of you.

Inside the canister, we’ve got the same vegetable assortment in here that’s found in Ramen Toppers’ other products: corn, peas, carrots, green onions, and cabbage. But here’s the ingredients that make this stand out from its competition: we’ve got Yamasa brand narutomaki fish cake slices, and they are really nice full-sized fish cake pieces with a decent thickness. They are the same ones that are used in the new version of the Pork and Fish Cake mix and they’re very good. And then we’ve got actual dried pieces of black garlic marinated grilled chicken. If you’ve never had black garlic before, it’s great stuff. When it comes to Ramen, there’s a couple black garlic recipes that you may see: there’s something called mayu, which is a black scorched garlic and sesame oil that is often used as a garnish in ramen, and then there’s the black garlic you get when you ferment the garlic bulbs. And I believe the latter is what we have here. The fermentation process brings out this amazing sweet nutty flavor while also maintaining a mellow garlic flavor. It’s truly a miracle of fermentation. Not only is Ramen Toppers the only company that I’m aware of selling a marinated dried pork topping, but now they’ve got marinated dried chicken too. I have never seen anything like this before.

So the question is: what am I going to pair this with in order to conduct this review? I thought about going fancy and premium with Marutai Oita Tori Paitan, which is a thick chicken broth packed with flavor that I reviewed back in episode 134. I also thought about using Sapporo Ichiban Momosan Tokyo Chicken, which is also one of the best chicken ramen products on the market. But I thought, let’s see what this Ramen Toppers product can do to a super basic cheap pack of Sapporo Ichiban chicken flavored noodles. I like this flavor, but if Ramen Toppers can take something as basic as this and elevate it into something way more special, then imagine what it’s going to do with the more premium ramen brands out there.

To prepare this, just to boil the Ramen Toppers for 4 minutes to rehydrate in the same pot that you’re boiling your noodles and you’re all set. As this chicken was cooking in the boiling water, it just smelled great. You don’t put the Sapporo Ichiban soup powder in until the very end, so I was able to smell the chicken cooking all the way through. The soy sauce garlic chicken aroma is very apparent when it’s cooking on your stove top.

If you’ve never seen one of my supplemental reviews before, my main concern here is: does this supplement change the flavor of the broth for better or for worse or not at all, and how good does it taste on its own and in the context of a bowl of ramen?

Spiciness:

No spice here at all.

• 0/10

Overall:

Let’s talk about the vegetables first because that’s easy. This is not my exact preferred combination of vegetables, but everything tastes exactly right and rehydrated perfectly in the boiling water, so if you like this combination of veggies you have nothing to worry about here. They’re all very good. And like I mentioned earlier, the fish cake is sourced from the same company used in the Ramen Toppers Pork and Fish Cake mix. It’s once again terrific. It’s got a nice thick supple texture; the mild fish flavor comes through just right. If you’ve never had narutomaki before, it’s basically like imitation crab meat but slightly denser. If you buy a tube of narutomaki from an Asian supermarket and slice it yourself, you’ve got basically the same experience.

But now you want to know about the star of the show: the chicken. I started off the review by saying this could be a game changer and I’m pretty convinced now that it is. The chicken’s great. It’s all thigh meat, which is a really wise choice because thigh meat is more flavorful and for me has a nicer texture than breast meat. The rehydration process worked very well with this. It’s got the right texture; there’s nothing about this that would suggest to me that it came out of a canister or that it was shelf stable at one point. From a flavor perspective, the black garlic is a little muted in the couple bites that I tried. It’s there, but I wish it was a little more pronounced. The soy sauce is what I’m getting loud and clear along with the grill flavor, and that’s the part that I am really enjoying about the couple pieces that I tried. It’s got a nice umami, slightly smoky finish and as you can imagine, putting that into a chicken broth like this (or honestly just about any other ramen that I can think of) pairs perfectly.

As for how this affects the flavor of the broth, it’s pretty negligible. The vegetables, particularly the cabbage and corn, imparted a little more flavor into the broth than the chicken itself did, but this is a chicken broth so it’s a little hard to tell. I’m not detecting anything funky or weird. All that being said, the chicken’s great quality, it’s got a great flavor, the fish cake is wonderful, the veggies are competent. My only complaint is that I just wanted a little more black garlic flavor out of the chicken than what’s here, but otherwise this is a slam dunk solid product.

• 9.5/10

Notes since filming:

A little anecdote about the weekend I first published this video: There was a semi-regular viewer of mine who had left a few comments on my other videos here and there (some of them a little snarky but I let them slide because engagement is engagement), and he decided to leave a comment on this video explaining why he would never sully his diet with dried toppings like this one. And of course that’s fine; everyone can choose what they want to eat even though there’s nothing inherently un-nutritious about dried toppings such as these. But then he started attacking other people in the comments who are a fan of Ramen Toppers, and when they rightfully called him out for being a self-righteous asshole, he insisted that I was somehow manipulating the video comments so that everyone would gang up on him because he dared to insult this product. Folks, it was the strangest interaction I’ve ever seen on my channel, and it was one of the few times I had to immediately ban someone and delete the comments. I don’t care if someone insults me, my tastebuds, my opinions, or the subject of the review, but the second you start being an asshole to other members of my community, you’re gone.