Noodle Journey Episode 208: Nissin Cup Noodles Dill Pickle Flavor

This review kicks off 2026 with one of Nissin’s most aggressive novelty flavors to date: Nissin Cup Noodles Dill Pickle Flavor. Nissin has leaned hard into gimmick releases over the past few years, clearly designed to grab attention on social media, and this one fits that pattern perfectly. Even knowing that, I couldn’t skip it since I’ve reviewed every other one Nissin has made, for better or for worse. Some of these oddball flavors have surprised me in the past, while others have been among the worst things I’ve ever eaten. This one very much felt like it could go either way.

Read more: Noodle Journey Episode 208: Nissin Cup Noodles Dill Pickle Flavor

This Dill Pickle cup started showing up in grocery stores around June of 2025 and, despite being labeled as limited edition, it’s still hanging around on shelves in my local supermarkets. That either means it’s selling incredibly well to the point where Nissin is restocking it regularly or barely selling at all; I have my suspicions which it is, but no way of confirming that obviously. Either way, I grabbed one for a proper review free of all the trappings of social media clickbait. If you must buy this, check Walmart’s website or venture to your own supermarket to see if it’s still around.

Inside the cup is a standard block of Cup Noodles with a powder that smells overwhelmingly of dill the moment the lid comes off. The ingredient list reads like a pickle brine: dill, dried cucumber powder, white vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder, potato powder and egg white, likely used as thickening agents, along with salt and sugar. Sodium for the entire cup comes in at 1030mg, which is perfectly average for a Cup Noodles product. This is a microwave-only cup rather than a steeping cup, so plan accordingly if you do buy this for, say, an office without a microwave.

Once cooked, the aroma shifts from pure dill to a combination of dill and sharp vinegar. It genuinely smells like opening a fresh jar of dill pickles.

Noodles:
These are standard Cup Noodles noodles. They’re soft, slightly mushy, and very familiar if you’ve eaten any Cup Noodles product in the last few decades. The noodle quality here is not good enough to enhance or improve the experience.
• 5/10

Spiciness:
There is no heat here whatsoever. No chili, no pepper, nothing resembling spice unless you personally perceive pure acidity as heat.
• 0/10

Overall:
This tastes exactly like what it smells like. Microwaved pickle juice with noodles in it. For context, I actually like pickles. I enjoy them on burgers, I’ll eat them straight out of the jar, and I’m happy to steal pickle spears off other people’s plates at diners. What I don’t enjoy is pickles taking over an entire dish with no relief or balance, and that’s exactly what happens here. The dill is bitter and grassy, the vinegar is sharp and relentless, and there is absolutely nothing in this cup to soften or counteract those flavors. My mouth didn’t stop salivating after eating a couple bites, and not salivating in a good way. If there were some kind of creamy element here, something closer to a sour cream or yogurt base to turn this into a more tzatziki-adjacent idea, there might have been potential. As it stands, it’s just soft noodles swimming in acidic dill brine. I can imagine a very small group of extreme pickle lovers enjoying this, but I am not one of them. This is completely unpleasant to me, and I have no interest in experimenting further to make it better. It avoids a zero only because there is likely an audience for it somewhere, but I find it genuinely inedible.
• 1/10