Why am I doing this to myself? Am I a masochist? I have reviewed both the Shrimp and Chicken flavors of Twisted Noodles, and despite the fact that I thoroughly hated both, I feel a compulsion to review everything I can get my hands on, including this crap, Twisted Noodles Beef Ramen. So with that admission of my own OCD, let’s just jump right into this review.
Along with the aforementioned Chicken and Shrimp flavors, this appears to be the only other variety sold in the USA, although they also offer the same three flavors along with a Veggie Ramen flavor in cup form for sale in Canada. I guess if I ever find that here, I’ll pick it up just for the sake of completion, but this Beef flavor might be the (merciful) end of Twisted Noodles for me. Is it obvious that I don’t have high hopes for this? While I truly do appreciate what Albany Farms is trying to do here from a manufacturing perspective, these ramen cups/packs have al been oily sodium bombs with questionable noodle quality and very little flavor. As I write this introduction, I have a small glimmer of hope that maybe the Beef flavor can provide a little redemption for the brand, but I’m not hopeful.
I found both of these varieties at Grocery Outlet for $0.39 or so (I lost the receipt so I’m going off a recent price on the Grocery Outlet website). Either way, these usually sell for well below $1.00, and in that regard, they are a cheap way to make an instant noodle meal if you’re really struggling – and that’s the one good thing I can say about this brand. Their pricing model is aggressive, but it’s also a you-get-what-you-pay-for situation.
Twisted Noodles Beef Ramen Cup
The Verdict:
| Product: | Twisted Noodles Beef Ramen Cup |
| Origin: | USA |
| Noodle Quality: | 2/10 |
| Spice Level: | 0/10 |
| Overall Score: | 1/10 |
Let’s start with the cup version.
The sodium is a relatively reasonable 1200mg. Not awful for a standard-sized ramen cup.
Inside, we’ve got those infamous noodles, broth powder, and a pretty pathetic amount of dried veggies. The broth ingredients, as you can see, start with salt, MSG, and sugar, with no mention of beef flavor until a bit further down when we get to things like yeast extract and soy sauce. The dried vegetables are a bare-minimum assortment of carrots, peas, parsley, and corn. Your eyes are not deceiving you: that is a single pea and a single piece of carrot in the photo above.
Noodles:
There’s two cooking methods here: steep or microwave. I knew from prior experience that the microwave method would make for marginally better noodles, so that’s what I did. There’s just little saving these noodles no matter which directions you follow. You’ll end up with an oily mess of overly chewy, unhydrated noodles that are among the weirdest and worst I’ve ever had.
- 2/10
Spiciness:
No spice in this.
- 0/10
Overall:
To call this “beef flavored” is an insult to beef ramen everywhere. This is oil-and-salt-water flavored, and even with vigorous stirring, I could not find anything beyond the faintest hint of “beef” flavor in this. If you look at the photo above of the pre-cooking contents of this cup, you’ll see that there was barely a dusting of the broth powder on top of the noodles, and that pittance is reflected in the final cooked outcome. I intensely dislike this; there is no flavor here beyond salt and fry oil. The one sad little pea in this cup rehydrated fine. The corn, not as much. I could stomach the Chicken Ramen Cup for a little while, but this Beef Flavor may be the absolute worst cup of the whole product line. How a company can screw up something so basic is beyond me.
- 1/10
Twisted Noodles Beef Ramen Pack
The Verdict:
| Product: | Twisted Noodles Beef Ramen Pack |
| Origin: | USA |
| Noodle Quality: | 2.5/10 |
| Spice Level: | 0/10 |
| Overall Score: | 3.5/10 |
Onto the pack version.
Oh look, an ungodly amount of salt. 2710mg for the entire pack, 118% of your recommended daily allowance. A complete and utter sodium bomb. I can forgive comparably high levels of sodium in Japanese and Korean noodles that contain a ton of other ingredients and authentic flavors, but this is inexcusable.
The ingredients in the pack appear to be largely identical to the ingredients in the cup. And just like in the previous two pack reviews, I must mention that whatever half-wit has written the ingredients label included dried peas, corn, and carrots when in fact there are absolutely no dried peas, corn, or carrots present in this pack. Almost certainly it’s a bad copy-and-paste from the cup version, but how has this company been around for years and no one has noticed such a glaring error on the ingredients label? It’s almost like QA for Twisted Noodles doesn’t exist… which would explain the quality of their products.
Noodles:
No surprises here, they are marginally better than the cups but still have a disgusting oily discharge when cooked. Tough, terribly chewy and underdone in texture, funny aftertaste. Blech.
- 2.5/10
Spiciness:
Once again, no spice here.
- 0/10
Overall:
I say this with the absolute bare-minimum amount of praise that it implies: out of all six Twisted Noodles products I’ve reviewed, this is the best one. I don’t think it’s good, but I also don’t hate it nearly as much as I hated the others. Putting aside the oily aftertaste of the noodles, I could taste actual (artificial) beef powder in this, and it was honestly alright – certainly at a similar level to the broth powder in Nissin or Maruchan packs. The problem was that eventually, I got further down into the bowl, and all of that massive dose of salt was settled on the bottom of the bowl, and once again this was after my usual amount of vigorous stirring. This just proves that this recipe doesn’t need all of this salt, because it tasted just fine until near the end. I can give this one a soft recommendation if you don’t drink all of the broth, and that’s probably the only way I’d recommend anything from this company unless you are positively desperate for bargain-bin American-made noodles.
- 3.5/10
