Shin Ramyun

Noodle name: Shin Ramyun

Country of origin: South Korea

Flavour: 'Gourmet Spicy'. A good name for an indie band but somewhat lacking in clarity as a descriptive term. From what I can work out it's suitable for vegetarians.

Cooking instructions: Add too much water (500ml) cook for 5 1/2 minutes. The vegetable flakes have to be added at the start or they won't hydrate and soften properly.

Flavouring packets: Two. Presumably one is the gourmet and one is the spicy. Well, actually, one is the dried vegetables, mainly mushroom and spring onion and the other is a mouthwatering blend of maltodextrin hydrolyzed vegetable protein and the like.

Overall: These are a classy instant noodle. The broth is like a rabble-rousing newspaper columnist who has been at the seaside too long: bright red, angry and salty. Unlike a columnist, you don't wonder if it really believes what it is saying. Politically, most noodles are neutral*. It's spicy but like someone who has a single copy of INXS's fifth album but never plays it, it has just the right amount of kick. The dried vegetables are too small to have any real effect even on texture but psychologically they're a boon. I'd be hard-pressed to deny that it makes me feel good to know there's dried mushroom in there.

The noodles are the real star though of this soup, though.  Like a newspaper columnist going to a fancy dress party as a Star Wars character, they're thicker than you expect and slightly chewy. They're way better than you get with most instant noodle soups.

If these noodle were a crime novel they'd be: The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson. It could  seem like just your average noir novel. But then you open it and devour it and it's darker, stranger and better. than you could hope for. Yes, that's right. I may need to start thinking of other things to compare instant noodles to.

Rating 4.5/5

* That said: Number of noodles who have pledges support to Jeremy Corbyn: 0. So you never know.