Ko-Lee Instant Noodles Curry Flavour

It's basic stuff. Deep fried noods which are firm and tasty (in a deep fried way) with a watery and indifferent curry sauce (this is a curry!).

I mean, you'll eat it. But you won't actually enjoy it.

Par for the course really.

Kohlico

Kohlico (Ko-Lee and Sawadee)

Kohlico is a British company. They own Sawadee and Ko-Lee brand noods. Basic deep fried cheap noods made in Malaysia. Standard powdered flavourings. These are your straight ahead average noods. Apart from the Super Chow Mein, which is an epic fail due to the stupidity of having four flavouring packs to open and mix in (according to the instructions) after the noodles have soaked in water for three minutes. Given that the soy sauce alone will take you three days to squeeze out of the packet, your noods are guaranteed to be stone cold sober and somewhat surprised to find themselves in a compromising position by the time you get around to eating them....



Sawadee


Sawadee Instant Noodles Chicken Chow Mein Flavour
As filthy as it gets.
Nood score: 6



Sawadee Instant Noodles Prawn Oriental Flavour
Basic nood.
Nood score: 5





Sawadee Mushroom and Vegetable Flavour
Average, everyday basic nood.
Nood score: 4





Sawadee Instant Noodles Spicy Tomato Flavour
Dirty.
Nood score: 4



Ko-Lee


 
Ko-Lee Taste Sensation Creamy Shrimp Tom Yum
Top nood
Nood score: 9 



Ko-Lee Taste Sensation Classic Chicken
Top nood.
Nood score: 8




Ko-Lee Go Noodles Hot & Spicy
Top nood.
Nood score: 8




Ko-Lee Instant Noodles Mixed Vegetable
A dirty pig.
Nood score: 5

Ko-Lee Go Noodles Bombay Masala

OK, but lacks impact
Nood score: 4


Ko-Lee Instant Noodles Curry Flavour
OK noodles in an indifferent sauce.
Nood score: 4



Ko-Lee Instant Noodles Super Chow Mein
Epic fail.
Nood score: 1

Battle of the brands

Georgi Readman - eats 30 miles of instant noodles every year

Newspapers across the world picked up on this story in April this year (2013). Georgi Readman, 18 year old student on the Isle of Wight, only eats M Savers chicken noodles from Morrisons. It has been worked out that if the noodles were laid end to end it would amount to 30 miles of noodles every year.

Nice one Georgi! You're a true nood!


Daily Mail
NY Daily News
Yahoo
Opposing Views
Scallywag and Vagabond
Etc.

Sawadee Instant Noodles Prawn Oriental Flavour

Basic noods from British company Kohlico. Deep fried in Malaysia. Eaten in a kitchen or bedsit somewhere in the UK. Prawn flavour (or MSG and some spices and salt). Some kind of seafood flavour is quite common for noods. I think that what works best for the artificial flavourings used for noods is  1) Curry, 2) Chicken, and 3) Seafood. Three packets for £1 from my local shop. 85g net weight.
Nov 2013


Rather bland. Edible, but lacking in interest.
Sept 2014

Kohlico

Ko-Lee Instant Noodles Super Chow Mein

EPIC FUCKING FAIL!


I wanted to give up before I even started. This has FOUR - yes, count them: one, two,. three, fucking four - flavour sachets. Now, careful, you have to read the instructions - you add them AFTER the water and waiting three minutes. Why?!!!! Fuck knows. But it's all bit too fiddly and cooky for your average noodfan. Worse still, the bloody soya sauce is almost impossible to get out of the sachet (no, that's not a challenge to the world's strongest granny, that's simply a statement that this nood will annoy you). Guess what - by the time you add all the fucking flavourings and get the bloody soya sauce out of the packet, the noods have gone cold. What a fucking surprise!

The brain dead idiot who invented this should get back on the train to Idiotsville straightaway.

What's it taste like at the end of it? Who fucking cares! This is not cor·don fuckin bleu cooking - its instant noodles. Open the pack, pour on the water, stir and slurp. End of. Go home and lie down.

Hey, here's a clue for everyone: if it's got "super" in the name, leave it in the super shop, and buy an average nood instead.




Date: Nov 2012   Score: 1 

Kohlico Group

Best instant noodle chow mein

Ko-Lee Instant Noodles Mixed Vegetable

This is a dirty pig. Authentic deep fried noodles (none of your air dried nonsense) sitting in a puddle of dirty washing up water. For all you cooks out there, this goes great with a can of Tennents Super. Perfect breakfast.

Breakfast al fresco

You get three packets of Ko-Lee noodles for a £1 in my corner shop. Net weight 90g per pack. Gone in a flash, and you can eat the other two straight after. That's a three course meal! Munch five pickled onions, and that's your five a day sorted as well.

The noodle packet proudly boasts "An authentic product of Malaysia"; though, while the noods were dried fried in Malaysia, the company which owns the brand - Kohlico, is British. They also own Sawadee brand noods.

This is yer basic Asian nood - cheap and dirty. Though not as filthy as it could be. A little wishy washy - as you might expect from a packet which is flavoured "mixed vegetables".

The cooking instructions (as well as the traditional, open the packet of powdered chemicals, pour on boiling water, stir, wait, stir again and slurp) include cooking on the hob for three minutes and cooking in the microwave in a complex system of stirring and waiting that is just too confusing for your average noodfan.

Don't make it difficult, people - if you have to cook it, then it aint a true nood!
Nov 2013



The noodles are great - real wheaty and tasty. Good chewy and satisfying noodles. The sauce is secondary - indeed, quite meaningless: a wishy washy faint savoury flavour. There are three flavouring sachets, which is rather a lot to produce an insignificant flavour. But it's OK.
Oct 2014

Kohlico

Mug Shot BBQ Beef Flavour

These noodles are more pasta than noodles. A little too firm and, well, pasta like, for my taste.

And I still don't get what a standard mug is, because I used a much smaller cup this time, and the result was that the juice was still a little too much like soup.

But at least there's no dead cows in this one.

But it's all just a little too clean and harmless for my liking. 1% fat for god's sake! This stuff is for joggers not those who have a noodle horn.

Score: 2/10

***

Beef flavoured

Symington's

Nongshim Shin Cup Hot & Spicy

Nov 2013

BEST NOODS EVER!

This is the holy grail of instant noodles. Perfect noodles - soft and yummy - just like you get in a noodle bar (that's a noodle bar, not a gay bar), and a sauce so hot it rips your mouth apart!

It doesn't get better than this. Eat these, and your mouth will love you long time.

These noods are made by Nongshim, a Korean company founded in 1965 who have become the most popular and successful nood maker not just in Korea, not just in Asia, but in the whole wide world. One taste of this bastard, and you'll know why!

10/10

April 2015

Lovely soft fresh tasting noodles, with a wonderful sauce - very savoury and yummy, and not tasting artificial or chemical.  Strong chilli bite, which I like, though is perhaps a tad too hot for me. Really easy to make - no fussing around. Simply open  the packet of sauce powder, pour on boiling water and leave for three minutes. Simple. Job done. I really like these noods, and would make them my everyday snack if it were not for the depth of that bite. Also, I note that it contains beef. Why?

9/10

Nongshim

ASDA Smart Price Curry Flavour Noodle Snack (pot)

  

This is as filthy as it gets....

At least it is when you get down to the bottom.

The powder is put in the pot first, and the noodles are dumped on top. That requires a lot more stirring than the average nood enthusiast (noodfan?) will give it. I mean, stirring is such an effort isn't it? I like the packet noods where you have the powder in a separate sachet and pour it on top of the noodles yourself. And that's part of the ritual. Yea- stirring is as well. But not for half the fucking day. Stir, stir, stir. Come on!. When you have the noodle horn, you just want to get your face in there. No more messing about. The stuff is hot and ready and the aroma is wafting up your nose. What can a boy do? I mean what can a poor boy do? Get slurping. And burning your lips on a hot noodle, or getting your face splashed with hot sauce, is what it's about. 

No time to stir - just get in there!

Anyway. So this mother, has the powder at the bottom, and without spending the rest of your life stirring, most of the flavour will remain at the bottom as well. That means when you start eating it's a bit bland, and I had to add salt as though this were an epic fail. You work through it as a moderate modest sort of nood - the curry flavour is wishy washyy and bland, but there's some flavour there, and it's acceptable. But then you get towards the bottom where all the flavour has sat. The powder has turned to juice (no newbie mistake of not stirring in the corners), and has sat there waiting for the true noodfan to reach it and experience the delights of a truly filthy mess. It's vaguely curry flavoured (spot on! the best nood flavours are never "authentic" or "real" - they are synthetic or vague - a taste you may faintly remember as though a dream), and it tastes all synthetic and gungy and very moreish. Yum, yum, dripping yum. 

Get some in! It's cheap and nasty. Just what you want. 

Date: Nov 2013   Score:  8

ASDA Noodles 

Best curry flavour instant noodles

Mug Shot Roast Chicken Flavour

OK. This is pasta, not noodles. What's the difference? Noodles are a form of pasta, and on the whole there isn't much difference. Noodles are a particular shape of pasta; long and thin, such as spaghetti, fettuccine, or tagliatelle - though noodles can also be shaped. Pasta tends to be made of better quality ingredients, such as duram wheat - a very hard wheat, and contain egg. But, really, it's simply different traditions for essentially the same thing - so that something like chnöpfli  can be called noodles or pasta. Put simply - pasta is a European tradition, centred on Italy; noodles are an Asian tradition.

The instructions say use a standard mug. Our mugs must be larger than normal because this ended up as a pasta soup rather than a pasta coated in a rich sauce. The chicken is real - well, they threw a live chicken into a plane propeller and caught the bits; if that counts as real. Anyway, for those - like me -who don't eat chickens, dead or alive, I kind of wish food companies paid attention to the difference between "flavour" and "flavoured". "Flavour" means it tastes of that product, but does not actually contain that product. Proper in-noods are synthetically flavoured. "Flavoured" means it gets it's flavour from the actual product. So: "Flavoured with chicken" compared to "flavour of chicken". See? Simples.

I didn't enjoy this product. Needed salt. And it was actual chicken. For fucks sake.

Made by Symington's, who also make such delights as Chicken Tonight and the overpriced ponsy vomit that is Naked Noodle Poodle.

Score: 2

***

Symington's

The best Chicken flavour instant noodles

ASDA Smart Price Noodle Snack Chicken & Mushroom Flavour (pot)

Well, they're cheap. But they're not nasty. They're a bit bland and wishy-washy. And that's despite containing powdered baby chickens - bone, beak and claw (and possibly a bit of chicken poo).

You have to add salt - and that's an epic fail as far as in-noods go.

And despite being in a Pot Noodle type of pot, there's no extra flavour sachet. So that's a let down. ASDA do these slightly cheaper in just a packet, but I went for the pot expecting to get the flavour sachet. Also, it saves washing up.....

I have a Smart Price Curry Flavour to try,  but I'm not expecting big things.


Date:  2013    Score: 3

Still contains ground up chickens. Why? What possesses them to do that - the proportion is low it can't be tasted, and this is a cheap product anyway. Grief. Anyway, as before, it can be eaten, but does benefit from seasoning.


Date: Oct 2016   Score: 3

ASDA Noodles 

Clucking chicken noodles

Naked Noodle Ramen Noodle Soup Laksa

Aaaaaaaaargh! Ponsy overpriced crap!

The flavour is disgusting. Plastic, perfume, vomit, bad processed cheese, and car polish. Unbelievable! And not very strong (thankfully), so it's this vague vomity mush. Needs salt. But that doesn't help - that just makes the vomity perfume taste come forward a little more. Gagh! This has to be the world's worse. Was this the flavour they really intended. Unbelievable!

Now this is an expensive instant noodle. You pay for the packaging and the marketing. And lots of flavour powder. You can get authentic Asian made instant MSG noodles for between 20 and 40p, depending on where you're buying, and how many you buy. An average price is 33p. This perfumed ponsy vomit costs £1. Three times as much as normal. Though, fair do, all British made noodles are expensive. And container noodles do cost more because you pay for the container.

This ponsy plastic crap is a ramen rather than an instant noodle. A ramen is a noodle soup. Though in America - where they are often wrong - they think ramen means instant noodle. Let's be clear on this. Noodles are stringy wheat paste things. Like spaghetti. Soup is a liquidy thing. Like - well - soup. Now, you can have noodles in a soup. And that's a noodle soup. Asians call that ramen. But if your noodles are not swimming in flavoured water, then they are noodles. You can turn any noodles into a soup by adding lots and lots of water. That doesn't mean they'll taste any better, but you'll notice the difference. When you open a can of spaghetti, you'll notice some moisture. Indeed, in some cheap tinned spaghetti you'll notice a fair amount of thin liquid. But that's not a soup. Open a can of soup and see the difference.

Got it? Ramen is soup. Instant noodles are dried noodles.

This ponsy crap is ramen. Or - rather - as the makers call it: "ramen noodle soup". That's like calling it "soup soup". Or "instant noodles instant noodles". Bah.

The flavour is laksa, which is a spicy noodle soup from the Peranakan culture. It's supposed to be a coconut curry. A bit like a korma. And this does have coconut milk and coriander and cumin and chill (proper ingredients). It comes in a ponsy box which is meant to look like a New York Chinese takeaway box. Inside the box is the waxed cup to hold the noodle soup, and a folded in half plastic fork. The instructions are wrong, so at some point they must have changed the design, but didn't bother to change the instructions.

Why a fork? Some pre-cooked convenience foods come with a fork, so you can eat them out in the park. But this one needs boiling water - so you need to be in a kitchen for that. And kitchens have forks.

The noodles are made by Symington's, a Leeds based company founded in 1827 that produces a range of brands including Campbells soup, Aunt Bessies, Mug Shot instant noodles, and Chicken Tonight.


Score: 2

Symington's

Super Noodles are Crap

Super Noodles are not super, they are crap.

Batchelors were formed in 1895 by a tea salesman, William Batchelor. Initially they sold tinned peas, but then moved into dried soups. They make Cup a Soup. They are owned by Premier Foods, who have bought up several other famous British brands, such as Oxo, Hovis, Sharwoods and Cadbury.

One of their flavours is. Mild curry! Yes, Mild. That sums them up. Super Noodles are not for real noodle fans - the filthy brigade, they are for the softy middle-class wannabes. Young, shy and nervous boys who would like to be a bit wild and naughty, but can't actually face the real smut of a Pot Noodle. So they get an over-priced packet of bland shite and eat that. Poor sods. Virgins all. Not man enough to grab themselves a real woman, they eat their "Super" Noodles while drooling over Page 3 porn. They are to be pitied, and Batchelors are to be despised for exploiting them.

What is wrong with these "Super" Noodles?

The name for a start. It's just so wrong. Instant noodles are filth from the gutter - they are pot, cup, packet, dustbin, soiled boot, or naughty noodles, they are not and never will be "super". For that implies real food. Instant noodles are the opposite of real food.....

The price is wrong. Why do Batchelors charge twice as much for the same wheat flour paste and chemical dust that the others have? Perhaps because they actually put in more chemicals than the others? Shite chemicals.

You have to cook the fucking things! Yes. Not instant at all. You have to measure out boiling water (how is that possible? As soon as you pour it into a measuring jug the water stops boiling!), and then cook in a pan or in the microwave. Sod that. Proper noodles are made just by pouring on boiling water and stirring. End of. Shut up and eat. Don't stand there in the kitchen stirring your bloody noodles in your pansy apron and chefs hat as if you were Gordon Fucking Ramsay.

They taste like crap. They don't taste filthy. They just taste bland and soggy. "Mild" curry for fuck's sake. This is noodles for wimps who don't like to taste the real filth of a bad boy noodle. For the first time in my life I had to add salt to an instant noodle.

They are crap. They contain the wrong sort of chemical shite. So you get all the nasty things in your body, but without any of the pleasure. These tame, tasteless noodles are more likely to give you cancer of the bowels than regular filthy noodles, but you have none of the fun.

Super Noodles are sold in bigger amounts than the average packet nood: 150g per pack.

The full range: Super Noodles. It is not stated where they are made, though recently packets marked "Low Fat" have been made in Germany. Most of Premier Foods UK factories are for their bakery products. Ashford is the dry goods site, though Super Noodles are not listed as being one of the products made there. Oxo is made in Worksop.  The company has been struggling financially for the past few years. It was delisted by Tesco for a while, for trying to off-load its debt by increasing prices. It is now cutting suppliers, and demanding £5,000 each from those who want to remain in business with them.

It's clearly not just a crap product, it's also made by a crap company.

Hall of horror

(top to bottom - most horrid way down below)

Batchelors Super Noodles Steak Fajita

Score: 5

Aromatic Thai Green Curry 

Score: 3

 Sizzling King Prawn

Score: 3

Steak & Ale Pie

Score: 3

Mild Curry

Oh please don't hurt me with a real curry Mr Batchelors. Make mine mild....

Chow Mein

Tasteless crap

Roast Beef & Onion

Usual bland nonsense - but I like the onion flavour

BBQ Beef

Not too different to the Roast Beef - there's that onion flavour again.

Southern Fried Chicken

Floury pasta-type noodles. Sort of a tomato paste flavour with synthetic chicken flavouring, like chicken flavour crisps. A modest warmth. 

Batchelors Super Noodles Bacon Flavour

Bacon sounds like such a great idea for noods. Open up the flavour packet and the wonderful aroma of synthetic smoked bacon wafts up. But by the time you've added the water and given it a stir it's all gone to pot. Bland and floury. You need to add salt to get through it, otherwise it's like eating cotton wool.

Batchelors Super Noodles Thai Green Curry

Bland and floury. There's a hint of the Thai Curry, but mostly this is flour and water. Stodgy.

Batchelors Super Noodles Chicken & Mushroom Flavour

Floury and stodgy, Boring noodles that you have to work through. And then you get the powdery  flavouring which is just a bit too chemical tasting.

Batchelors Super Low Fat Noodles Chicken & Herb Flavour

Score: 1

Batchelors