Better instant ramen

Ingredients

• One instant ramen brick (think Maruchan or Top Ramen)
• 1 teaspoon Better Than Bouillon No Chicken soup base
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon lemon or tomato juice, or a slice of lemon or tomato
• ½ cup fresh or frozen vegetables, to your liking
• 1 teaspoon chopped spring onions
• Other seasonings and spices, to your liking

Instructions

• Put just enough water in your pot to cook your ramen. This is probably less than you think it has to be.
• Add soup base and garlic to the water.
• Add the lemon juice, tomato juice, or lemon/tomato slice to the water. The acid is necessary if you want to counteract the saltiness from the soup base.
• Heat the water to boiling.
• Add your vegetables (minus the spring onions) and your ramen brick. (Do not include the flavor packet that came with the ramen.)
• Cook for three minutes, or until the noodles have your preferred consistency.
• Pour into a bowl. If you used a slice of lemon or tomato, you may want to discard it at this point.
• Top with spring onions and other seasonings, and serve.

Suggested mix-ins

• Tofu — For protein!
• Miso paste — Add in with the soup base and garlic at the very start.
• Water chestnuts — These should go in at the very start, or they’ll be too firm in the end.
• Cabbage — Shredded or chopped, not like a whole leaf. This should also go in fairly early, unless you like very crunchy cabbage in your ramen.
• Celery — Celery in ramen sounds weird, but I always have way too much lying around, so I like to add it in.
• MSG — Available in the US under the brand name Ajinomoto. Mix this in at the start, or at any time if you taste the broth and decide it needs a little something extra.

Recipe blog storytime

After going vegan, I still had several packets of animal-flavored ramen lying around in my cupboards, and needed to come up with SOME use for them. If that's not a concern for you (and you don't happen to have any Better Than Bouillon or similar lying around) you can just mix in the flavor packet after cooking, as usual.