In high school, instant saimin was a quick and easy meal to make. I ate a lot of saimin back then. In fact, for a snack-on-the-go we used to eat uncooked saimin. Here’s the secret recipe: smash the dried noodles into tiny bits, put in a ziploc bag, sprinkle the seasoning, shake, and eat. A salty, crunchy snack, not unlike potato chips, I suppose. In those days, who the heck cared about the silly information listed on the back label? Definitely not me.

Fast-forward to today; I am just a wee bit older and a tad more health conscious, so consuming a staggering 1580 mg (!) of sodium (66% DV) is somewhat frightening to me. It also packs a lot of calories into a single steaming bowl: 380 calories. If you look at a Maruchan Ramen (Chicken Flavor), you’ll see 190 calories listed — but the serving size is 1/2 block of noodles. What the heck? Who eats only half a block of instant saimin noodles? Deceptive labeling, I say! All of these factors combined make instant saimin one of those foods that I would love to eat, for convenience and nostalgia’s sake, but simply have a hard time reconciling that with my conscience.

Instant Okinawa Soba

Champuru Pops brought me a package of instant Okinawa Soba to try. It sat in my pantry for quite some time, but tonight, after a vigorous, two-hour sweat-invoking karate workout, I felt sufficiently satisfied that I could eat it with less guilt than if I had been sitting on my okole (buttocks) all evening. So, before better judgment had time to kick in, I opened the package and started boiling the water. I was past the point of no return!

Dried Noodles

The product was purchased in Okinawa, so everything on the packaging was in Japanese. My lack of kanji-reading skills prevented me from reading much. I suppose it’s just as well. With my luck, it probably contains 2000 mg of sodium and 1000 calories.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the Okinawa Soba noodles are thicker and flatter than ramen nooodles.

Seasoning – Dashi soup base and Tongarashi to add spice

The Okinawa Soba also came with two flavor packets: one for your dashi soup base, and the other to kick up the spicy factor. The rafute (shoyu pork), fishcake, and red ginger pictured on the package were glaringly absent. Oh yeah, I probably couldn’t read the “suggested serving” notice in Japanese.

After cooking for a few minutes on high heat

I cooked it like I would instant saimin, careful not to overcook the noodles.

Mmmm… yummy

I had forgotten just how salty instant noodles can be. I really should have only used half of the dashi packet, because even now, two hours and four glasses of water later, my tongue still feels like the Dead Sea. Aside from being a little too salty for my palate, the noodles were quite good for instant/dried, and the soup had that warm, comforting effect that only a steaming bowl of Asian noodles can have.

If I look extra bloated tomorrow, it probably means I’m retaining water because of all the sodium I just ingested. Instant Okinawa Soba, a guilty pleasure, but one that I really mustn’t partake in too often for my own good.

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