Fresh ramen noodles vs. instant noodles
The difference starts before the noodles reach your pot.
Ninja City
What makes a noodle instant?
Instant noodles have already been through a cooking step and then dried. That is what lets them become a meal quickly when you add hot water or cook them according to the packet.
Manufacturer Sumioka shows the sequence: mix the dough, roll and cut it, steam the noodles, then dry the portions. Its factory uses either frying or hot air for that last step. Instant doesn’t automatically mean fried.
Fresh noodles take a different route
Fresh ramen noodles retain moisture instead of being dried into a shelf-stable block. Sun Noodle, for example, mixes, sheets, rests and cuts its dough, then portions and ages the noodles under refrigeration. Some are shipped fresh; others are frozen.
Shape and thickness vary in both categories. A wavy noodle isn’t proof that it came from an instant packet, and a straight noodle isn’t proof that it was made fresh.
Dried and instant aren’t the same thing
Some dried noodles skip the pre-cooking step. Sumioka’s regular dried-noodle line dries the formed strands, while its instant line steams them before drying. That difference helps explain why two dry packages can need different cooking methods.
The noodles in our ramen
Our fresh ramen noodles come from Ohio City Pasta here in Cleveland. We put them with our pork-bone broth, cooked over two days, in the Tonkotsu. The broth, tare, oil and toppings make up the rest of the bowl.
Keep reading
What are ramen noodles made from?
Further reading
Sumioka Foods: Noodle production