Here’s a Japanese variety from Maruchan that I stumbled upon online totally by accident several months back: Maruchan QTTA Green Smoky Mayonnaise Ramen. Direct from the translation of Maruchan’s press release about this flavor, it is a “creamy soup based on the delicious flavor of chicken, with a moderate amount of smoked flavor and green chili peppers, and the sour and rich flavor of mayonnaise.” Sounds really promising! This was released alongside a red garlic mayonnaise flavor that was a red chili/pork/garlic/mayo combination, but sadly I was unable to find that particular variety for review.
Read more: Review: Maruchan QTTA Green Smoky Mayonnaise RamenThis might still be available if you hunt around (check eBay), or it might come back into Maruchan’s rotation someday as some flavors tend to do, but for now this appears to have been a limited-time offering. I found this on Yamibuy.com, so you can set up a restock alert if this flavor interests you.
This has a salt equivalent of 3.9g, making it about 1535mg of sodium.
Inside the cup, there’s a block of noodles, a broth powder, and lots of dried ingredients. The powder appears to be a blend of the ingredients I talked about above, but in powdered form: mayo, green chili, and pork, along with chicken extract and various seasonings. The dried flakes are shrimp, white onion, and green onion.
Noodles:
This was my first experience with Maruchan’s QTTA noodles, and I’d heard some mixed opinions on them before now, but I started out definitely impressed. There’s an abundance of them (a hallmark of the QTTA product line as I understand it), and they have a nice, thick gauge with a good medium suppleness. Really nice for a cup product… until they sat for a couple minutes, that is. As I ate my way through the noodles, they got softer and softer, and they weren’t even sitting for very long at all. My initial reaction would’ve warranted an 8/10, and still would if you were to eat these very fast, but seeing as there’s a ton of them to get through and they’re going to soften on you real quick, I gotta knock down the score a bit. Really unfortunate.
- 6.5/10
Spiciness:
The first bite was spicier than I expected, but I found it mellowed out very quickly. This isn’t approaching anything like Buldak or Daebak, nor even Shin, but it does have a nice somewhat mild green chili kick to it, along with a substantial amount of black pepper too. Despite that, there were no lingering effects that I really felt.
- 3.5/10
Overall:
Going back to Maruchan’s translated product description, “creamy soup based on the delicious flavor of chicken, with a moderate amount of smoked flavor and green chili peppers, and the sour and rich flavor of mayonnaise,” it absolutely delivers on all of those promises. The base is a salty, rich chicken broth, and the smoky flavor is pronounced but not to the point of inedibility. The sour oiliness of the mayo comes through soon after, and there are also some strong onion and shrimp flavors as a result of the dried toppings. It’s a flavor combo unlike any I’ve had before, and the mayo in the broth powder gave me the same richness vibe as that famous TikTok mayo/egg ramen hack. But did I like all these flavors together? Yeah, mostly. As I worked my way through the cup, the richness of the broth did start to feel a little heavy, and the smoke flavor, which I might possibly attribute to smoked paprika, kind of got old near the end, but largely I enjoyed this and I felt like no two bites were quite the same. The handful of shrimp in the cup were pretty sizable for instant ramen shrimp and were nice and tender, plus I was really happy to see a solid amount of minced white onion in a noodle cup – that one’s kind of a rarity in my experience. That onion especially added some nice crunchy veggie texture and zest. Definitely a unique cup all-told, and something I’d probably buy again the next time Maruchan sells it. A shame about the noodles though, because if they had held up, they would’ve pushed this into the “Excellent” category rather than “Really Good”.
- 7.5/10
