Nissin Spiced Chicken Spicy Chunky Chicken Cup Noodles
I recently was lucky enough to receive some Indian instant noodles, which included this curious Spiced Chicken Spicy Chunk Chicken Cup Noodles by Nissin. The name promises (at least) two things:
Spice / spiciness
Chunky chicken
I have heard from Indian friends that supposedly Indian cup noodles are much better and more flavorful than any other cup noodles out there. So far, I never had the chance to confirm what they were saying, but now is the time.
These noodles are out of control!
Content
I am not trying to sound too negative from the start, but while struggling to open the lid, you immediately notice the lower quality of the lid and the glue used. I can imagine that this lid rips quite often when you try to open it, so there is definitely some different material used here compared to Japanese cup noodles.
On the inside, we find a relatively small and densely packed brick of fried noodles. Or at least I guess they are fried, since palm oil is the second ingredient on the ingredient list.
The noodle brick is densely covered with spices. Below the noodle brick, you will find freeze dried vegetables such as carrot, cabbage, french beans and curry leaves. There, you will also find the chunky chicken pieces, if you look close enough.
Maybe noteworthy, it does not come with a plastic fork, like many other Asian cup noodles outside of Japan. I am personally in favor of less single use plastic, but I can imagine it would be a minus for some people.
Please follow the instructions of the cup noodles exactly. Or else.
Preparation
I am just going to repeat what is written on the label as cooking directions:
Pull back the lid halfway and fill the cup with hot water up to the inside line.
Close the lid and wait for 3 minutes.
Remove the lid. Stir well to mix the ingredients & enjoy Cup Noodles.
Enjoy~Whenever! Wherever!
Fully prepared spiced chicken cup noodles by Nissin from India.
Review
There are a couple of questions that come to mind immediately after opening the fully prepared bowl. The first one is probably: Where is the soup?
Someone has previously explained to me that Indians aren’t really the biggest soup eaters out there, so maybe the reduced soup amount is a reflection of that. But really, just a theory. Maybe it is also to not dilute the flavors too much and keep them concentrated. That definitely would make more sense, since this thing is actually packed with flavor!
To the average person of the Western hemisphere, I would describe it as almost stereotypically “curry” flavored, which means a turmeric heavy masala spice blend. I would guess, for the “spicy” label in most Indian cuisine, this cup noodle is quite tame. It does have some spiciness kicking around in the background, but not enough to make this German bloke even break a sweat. I expected to have my mouth on fire, so I am kind of disappointed to be not in pain from this spiced chicken cup noodles. Does that make sense?
The next question is: Where is the spicy chunky chicken that was promised on the cup? Even after digging around, I could only find a few small pieces of chicken that nobody in this world would describe as chunky.
The not so chunky chicken of the spicy chunky chicken cup noodles.
On the other hand, the texture and flavor of those small chicken pieces was quite nice, better than some of the meat I had in some Japanese instant ramen.
The noodles are relatively good, not on the same level as the ones of the Japanese cup noodles, but still much better than the garbage I got in the European cup noodles like in the German Takumi cup. It is still surprising to me, how big the gap in terms of flavor and quality is between the cup noodles from different countries.
The Indian noodles are much better than the ones of European Nissin cup noodles.
Overall, I have to say that I quite enjoyed it, even though it did disappoint in terms of spiciness and chunky chikenness, which are kind of the 2 things it promised on the cup. The flavor overall was good though, hard to argue with the impact of the masala. On the other hand, with a price tag of 50 rupees (~$0.60 USD), I have to imagine that it is one of the more premium instant noodles in India. I could find a twelve pack of Maggi masala noodles for just 150 rupees, which tells me I am not necessarily getting a great cost performance here.
I would definitely eat Nissin’s spiced chicken cup noodles again, but they probably will not become my first pick if available or if I find myself in India one day.
6.5 out of 10
