My suspicions from yesterday managed to come to life today in this review. I was a little concerned about YouUs creating an instant version of Yuk-Kal, which is a combination of Yukgaejang, Kalguksu, and of course ramen noodles. The ramen noodle part might work, but for some reason, I feel like I would personally like to have this combination with rice instead. There’s just something different about the flavor of Yukgaejang, which is a spicy beef soup, that calls for rice to me, again, personally. However, this is only my opinion on this matter…
I truly believe this combination with ramen noodles can be done right, but YouUs massively failed to do two things. First, there is a major issue with the flavor of these noodles. I don’t know what their approach was, but it doesn’t capture the flavor essence of either Yukgaejang or Kalguksu. The broth is disgusting… I really, really didn’t like. I hate it so much, that I think these are the worst instant noodles I have ever tasted, which is a truly monumental task.
The second problem is the noodles in combination with the hideous broth. Just tossing basic ramen noodles into this already terrible cup of noodles was a stupid idea. YouUs should have used a different type of noodles to at least try and save these poor noodles from becoming a laughingstock. Well, they didn’t do this either, so these noodles absolutely suck. I’m sure I already turned you off of these noodles, but if you would like the details, please read on…
Flavor:
Absolutely, horrifyingly awful… If my vocabulary was larger, I would unload on these noodles with every adjective I had, but I’ll save my breath. Let me at least describe these sad noodles to you. The broth is quite oily and a bit spicy. The broth doesn’t have the flavor of either fantastic dish, but something uniquely terrible. I can taste something like a beefy flavor with a very pronounced mushroom flavor as well. The other ingredients are uninspiring too. I found some: spring onion, mushroom shards, and lots of tiny pieces of beef. There’s a lot of beef in here, but I didn’t want to eat it. I attempted to beg my wife to eat them too, but she ended up dumping them. Adios noodles…
Spiciness:
YouUs Yuk-Kal is another cup of noodles that I believe to be marred by unnatural spices. The spiciness in these noodles comes from a combination of Korean red chili pepper powder and capsaicin, or at least I believe so. I don’t know about you, but when the spice tends to go to my brain first and coats my mouth in a fiery slurry, the first thing that comes to my mind is that these noodles have something artificially boosting the spice in them. However, it could also be the oiliness from the bone broth in tandem with red chili pepper powder that does this instead. I found these noodles to be medium hot with a level of heat that made me sweat a bit and made my mouth burn. These noodles are not for everyone.
Smell:
There’s actually not much of a smell at all to these noodles. The cup of noodles has almost no odor about it. I’m only barely able to detect the noodles and a bit of the spicy beef broth, but it is uncannily faint. There’s not much else to note really…
Noodles:
YouUs managed to pack in an insane amount of noodles once again. There’s a lot of them and you’ll be full afterwards. These noodles are your basic ramen noodles with a medium thickness to them. I have a couple of complaints about these noodles. First of all, they were way too soft and basically limp. They didn’t hold up well at all against the fiery red broth and they basically turned to mush. My biggest problem is this type of noodle (basic ramen) doesn’t taste delicious with broth. It just seems like something haphazardly dropped into these noodles with not even an intent to actually even taste the ramen to see if it all works together. Shocker here, it doesn’t…
Overall:
Without a doubt, these are the absolutely worst cup of noodles I have put in my mouth. I almost feel sorry for having eaten them. What a complete waste of noodles to further fill our landfills. Speaking from my own personal taste, these noodles would have been better with rice instead. However, then they wouldn’t even be instant noodles! The flavor combinations plain ol’ failed to work and the soul of the two dishes was completely missing from the flavor. Now, I’m sure there has to be another cup of instant “Yuk-Kal” that actually tastes great, so I’ll have to do some research on that and get back to everyone. I’ll bet you know what my recommendation is for these noodles, but I’ll go ahead and say it anyways… AVOID THESE NOODLES AT ALL COSTS!
Do you think rice or noodles works better with a spicy beef broth? Are there any other cups of instant “Yuk-Kal” that you can suggest? Let me know in the comments!
If you’re interested in hearing more about instant ramen, check out my on-going series, Noodle Story: An Exploration of Korean Instant Noodles, here on Medium.
