Baiji Broad Chili Oil Flavor (Sour and hot)

Noodle name: Chili oil flavour (Sour & Hot). This is a silly name for a flavour. As so often when things go wrong, I blame the parentheses. What do they mean? Is the Chili oil sour and hot or the noodles? It's confusing.

Country of origin: Harder than you'd think to work out. Baiji is the name of the company and they're definitely Sichuan but there's not much more info about them out there for a non-Mandarin reader. In fact, the language I'm confused by might not even be Mandarin, think about that eh? Reminds me Donald Rumsfeld, eh? All that "known unknowns". Ha ha. How we laughed. Anyway, this is a noodle review blog, obviously and shouldn't on any account stray into politics or pseudo philosophy. 

Cooking instructions:  Finally some unusual instructions, which is handy as having a category just for making the one point about the instructions always using too much water was getting a bit Morrissey. These request you to boil the noodles in a lot of water, then drain them. Meanwhile, you mix the flavour packets "on a plate" and then toss the noodles in them afterwards.  

Flavour packets: Three. One of chilli oil. One brown, which looks like soy sauce and one white powder. 

Overall: I presume that when this blog makes me a large amount of money and my position as Britain's leading instant noodle expert is recognised by interviews and appearances on chat shows, one question I will get asked a lot is: "Can a noodle experience really be genuinely thrilling?" And I settle back, shall purse my lips, place my fingers under my chin and look upwards, pretending to think. After a pause, I'll say: "Well, x*, have you ever tried Baiji Broad Chili Oil Flavor noodles?" And then after an applause break, I'll describe the many ways that these are delicious. The noodles like Inglourious Basterds in that they have the right amount of resistance and are longer than you'd expect. (They're also wide, white and not-quite transparent, but that's too easy). The flavouring comes at you from all angles. It's not just sour and hot.  They start with Sichuan pepper numbing your lips to open them up for the arrival of soy sauce tang, small sweetness and about as much acid as you'd find on  a music documentary about 1987. Then, like a dentist's waiting room with no entertainment mags but a single page from one 1990s teenage girl magazine they've just the right amount of heat and a tiny bit of sugar.

Forget the laboured similes, these are amazing noodles. If you were served them in a restaurant you would be genuinely pleased. These are probably the best single processed food product I have ever tasted.

If these were a crime novel they'd be:  As I love them unconditionally, I've really struggled over this section, which I'm sure is also true of some of you readers in previous entries. I think it has to be Dashiel Hammett's The Thin Man. Yes. They are that good.

* Where "x" = name of interviewer, obviously. Not that the interviewer's name will be "x".  Mind you, you never can tell nowadays.

Noodle rating: 5/5.  Henceforth, these are the standard by which all noodles shall be measured.