Buldak ramyeon

I've had an assortment of Buldak ramyeon, Korean spicy ramen, for a while but never got around to trying it. There was an article about it in the Washington Post that reminded me that I should try it!

I decided to start with the least spicy according to this chart:

jjajang

Jjajang it is. This is chicken flavor with spicy Korean black bean sauce. It's good!

The package instructions are:

Add noodles and flakes into 20 oz (600 mL) of boiling water and cook for 5 minutes. Please remain 8 tablespoons of water. Add the sauce and stir-fry for 30 seconds. Stir well and serve.

It's spicy but not sweat inducing. If you don't like spicy food at all, all varieties should be avoided because even this one, the mildest one, is spicy. But I like it, and we'll see about the others, but I'd get this again.

550 cal. 1,920 shu.

Quattro cheese

Add noodles into 20 oz (600 mL) of boiling water and cook for 5 minutes and 30 seconds. Please remain 6 tablespoons of water. Add the sauce and powder. Stir well and serve.

This flavor confused me! Of course macaroni and cheese is a thing, but when I think of ramen noodles I think of Japanese food, which rarely has cheese in it. There's a sauce packet and a powdered cheese packet, so it is sort of like boxed macaroni and cheese, but with different noodles, and spicy.

It is pretty good, however! I did not eat the whole thing as it has a huge number of calories, but I easily could have. The spice catches up with you after you stop eating.

590 cal. 2,323 shu.

Carbonara

Add noodles into 20 oz (600 mL) of boiling water and cook for 5 minutes. Please remain 8 tablespoons of water. Add the sauce and cheese powder. Stir well and serve.

This is another cheesy one. It's good, but I'm looking forward to the next one (kimchi).

550 cal. 2,400 shu.

Kimchi

Add noodles and flakes into 20 oz (600 mL) of boiling water and cook for 5 minutes. Please remain 5 tablespoons of water. Add the sauce and stir-fry for 30 seconds. Stir well and serve.

This was good! We'll see how the next ones go, but I could definitely see ordering a whole box of just this one. It's noticeably spicier than the cheesy ones, but not painfully so.

520 cal. 4,000 shu.

Original

Add noodles into 20 oz (600 mL) of boiling water and cook for 5 minutes. Please remain 8 tablespoons of water. Add the sauce and stir-fry for 30 seconds. Add the flakes. Stir well and serve.

This was good too!

560 cal. 4,404 shu.

2x spicy

Add noodles into 20 oz (600 mL) of boiling water and cook for 5 minutes. Please remain 8 tablespoons of water. Add the sauce and stir-fry for 30 seconds. Add the flakes. Stir well and serve.

I decided to jump forward to the hottest one to see how bad it really is. It's spicy! I ate about half of it before the spice caught up, my nose started to run, I started to sweat, and it was no longer fun!

550 cal. 10,000 shu.

Curry

Add noodles and flakes into 20 oz (600 mL) of boiling water and cook for 5 minutes. Please remain 8 tablespoons of water. Add the sauce and stir-fry for 30 seconds. Stir well and serve.

This was good; about the same level of heat as original.

Stew style

Add the sauce into 17 oz (500 ml) of water and boil. When the water starts to boil, add noodles and cook for 5 minutes. Add the powder. Stir well and serve.

This was good, more soup-like than the others because you don't drain the water after cooking the noodles.