Ko-Lee Bang! Bang! Noodles Ruby Murray Curry Flavour

Chewy noodles and a thin sauce, but decent enough. I like the packaging, and the contents are OK, though could do with more flavour. I'm happy enough to eat these, but there are better curry noods around, and at lower prices.


Score: 4

Kohlico

Best curry flavour instant noodles

Ko-Lee Bang! Bang! Noodles Chicken Feel Good Flavour

There is a Bang Bang Chicken recipe popular in China, and I wonder if that is the source behind the name for this new series of pot noods.  On opening the pot and finding three flavour sachets I felt that was a lot of fuss for a quick convenience meal, but in the end it was quick and easy to prepare. I did put in the chilli seasoning as it didn't taste too hot on my tonguw, and true enough the noods didn't burn me, but I've still ended up sweating, and if I have this again I'll leave the chilli out. Chilli often tends to dominate any meal flavours anyway. A little goes a very long way!

I'm not sure if this is veggie. The ingredients list is a bit vague - it says "Chicken Seasoning Flavour (Soy sauce, Onion powder, Chicken Flavour (NI))" - make of that what you will. I've found out what  NI means - it is "Nature Identical", another word for synthetic. So this is veggie.

I quite liked this. The noodles were a bit wiry, and the sauce was a bit thin so not clinging to the noodles so it was essentially eating the noodles then drinking the liquid left in the pot, but it was OK.


Score: 5

The best (and worse) Chicken flavour instant noodles

Ko-Lee Bang! Bang! Noodles Bangkok Nice 'N' Spicy Flavour

Easy to make, and a fun looking cup, but the noodles were like thin wire, and the sauce was watery with a flavour that is best described as hot tomato. I didn't use the hot flavouring sauce, yet this still ended up being very hot. Uncomfortable to eat, and now I have heart burn! Not impressed.


Score: 3

Kohlico

Pot Noodle Sweet & Sour

Normally a £1, this is on offer at 50p in Asda, so I grabbed a few. I like Pot Noodle anyway. This is easy to make, and has a typical sweet and sour sauce. It works well. If you like sweet and sour and re-hydrated veg, then this will be to your taste. I found it edible, but the unremitting sticky sweetness (though balanced by pleasant acidity) became a little one-dimensional. OK though.


Date: Oct 2016  Score: 4

The best of the Pot Noodle slags

Pot Noodle V Asda Noodle Snack: Beef & Tomato

Pot Noodle v Asda in a head to head. Pot Noodle is normally £1 a pot, while Asda is less than half that price, though the Pot Noodles were being offered at half price, so I grabbed some.

Ingredients. Asda on the left, Pot Noodle on the right

Both are veggie, using onion as flavouring and soya for the beef. Asda use herbs, which made a difference in the taste. Asda wasn't a great tasting pot, but it was streets ahead of the Pot Noodle which was bland to the extreme.

Open the lid and check the contents

The packaging is fairly similar, though Pot Noodle has the stronger appearance both in the label and on opening the pot. The Pot Noodle cup appears to be over flowing with goodness, it has some writing on the inside of the lid, and the sauce sachet is bolder and better looking. The anticipation and expectation for the Pot Noodle is much greater, especially with all the clever advertising. Asda Noodle Snack, of course, has 0 advertising, so the expectation is that it's going to be crap, and the appearance on opening the lid confirms that. It all looks pale and cheap next to the glorious Pot Noodle.

Pour and stir

Pour on the boiling water and stir. The Pot Noodle has a solid cake of noodles which makes it hard to stir. The Asda noodles are slightly easier to prepare. There is more vivid colour in the PotNoodle sauce, but as both soften and cook, there isn't a lot to choose between them. They both have bits of dried veg in the sauce, and after a while, if anything, the Asda noodles look more appetising. Put on the tomato sauce. Both sauces are thick and dark. And when eating the pots, both sauces were sweet, rich, and with a pleasant tomato flavour.

Asda was the clear winner with those herbs, but neither were worth the money.,

Asda Beef & Tomato Flavour Noodle Snack

Pot Noodle Beef &Tomato

Asda Beef & Tomato Flavour Noodle Snack

There's some herbs. It's a decent enough pot snack. Better than the Pot Noodle it's clearly trying to copy. Bits of fried veg, and a thick and tasty tomato sauce. But on the whole lacks interest and flavour. Veggie.


Date: Oct 2016  Score: 3

***

Beef flavoured

ASDA Noodles

Pot Noodle V Asda Noodle Snack:
Beef & Tomato

Golden Sunrise Instant Noodles BBQ Beef Flavour

Pack of five for a £1.00 from a poundstore.  Can't go wrong. Made in China for OTL, a wholesale distribution company in Yorkshire, these are cheap as chips and quite tasty. Great value for money. I assume they are veggie - it says "Beef Flavouring", the little flavour packet produces a savoury and warming flavour. Nothing exceptional, and it needs salt, but it's OK, especially at this price. And it cooks easy.  For an everyday cheap snack you can't go far wrong.

Score:  6

Beef flavoured

Pot Noodle Mac & Cheese

Cheese is an uncommon flavour for instant noods, but it does make sense. Macaroni cheese (or macaroni and cheese - sometimes shortened to mac & cheese) has been around in some form since at least the 14th century. This makes sense, as wheat in its various forms - breakfast cereal, pasta, bread or pizza dough, is often combined with milk, usually in the form of cheese, to make a meal.

I think it's a neat idea for Pot Noodle to have a macaroni cheese flavour (and to cash in on the currently popular Americanised "Mac & Cheese" term, which is springing up all over in pub menus). The sauce is quite creamy, which suits the British style of instant nood - I'm not sure this would be as popular in other countries, particularly in Asia, where instant nood sauces are often thin and watery (albeit, very spicy!). I quite like a macaroni cheese for lunch, but if I fancied one I would go for a can of macaroni cheese as something tastier, cheaper, and easier to prepare. This is OK, and a fun change, but is not really what I am looking for in an instant nood - especially a Pot Noodle nood.

Score: 4

The best of the Pot Noodle slags

Batchelors Super Low Fat Noodles Chicken & Herb Flavour

This aint good. Really, it fails in so many areas. It takes ages to cook, and even then at the end of all the boiling and microwaving the noodles still taste like you're eating old boots. Tough and tasteless.  There's not enough flavouring to deal with the hunk of noodles, and what flavouring there is certainly doesn't taste of chicken or of herbs. This is shite, really.

No dead chickens, just onion flavouring. Made in Germany.


Score: 1

More info here: Super Noodles

The best (and worse) Chicken flavour instant noodles

Batchelors Super Noodles Bacon Flavour

Just when I'm starting to like Super Noodles with their new and improved recipes and flavours, I get a typical bland one which reminds of the good old bad days. Yes, there's an attractive smoke aroma, but the attractiveness ends there. Stodgy bland noodles combine with a lacklustre seasoning to produce a meaningless meal. Put on some seasoning and it's edible, but no more than that.

Poor showing really.

Date: May 2016   Score: 2

***

Crap.

Date:   April 2014   Score: 1


Other reviews
*TheRamenRater

Super Noodles are crap

Batchelors Super Noodles Curry Flavour

These can be picked up in Tesco for 50p for a 100g packet, though they are generally around 80p. Iceland have a 90g packet for 35p, which seems a real deal. I think this is a replacement for the Super Noodles Mild Curry Flavour.

I have been gently mocking of Super Noodles since I started this blog, seeing them as being more noodle than flavouring, and a pale imitation of the more robustly flavoured, fun and interesting Pot Noodle. But we tried this side by side with a Sainsbury's Instant Noodles Curry Flavour, and were really impressed with the difference in flavour. Super Noodles were much more flavoursome and interesting, with range of flavours and textures. I'm not getting the Pot Noodle horn here, but I am either seeing a positive change in the recipes for Super Noodles, or I've simply been rather blind to the charms of the Super Noodles in the past. This one gets the NoodleDelight bloggers thumbs up.

Score: 6 

Super Noodles

Best curry flavour noodles

Symington's Golden Wonder Normous Instant Noodles Chicken Flavour XL

Lots of noodles. Sauce is mainly onion flavoured. It's acceptable and cheap. Nothing very interesting, but quite harmless. Veggie. Made in the UK.

Score: 3

***

Symington's

The best (and worse) Chicken flavour instant noodles

Nissin Soba Chili (Cup Noodles)

This is the cup version of Soba. It is made in a manner I've not encountered previously. Soba is a Japanese stir fried noodle meal, so Nissin want it to be as close to a stir fried product as possible. In this case they ask you to take out the flavouring powder, and pour on boiling water and leave for three minutes, then pour away all the hot water through holes in the lid (lots of warnings about burning your fingers!), then add the flavouring packets, stir and eat. The result is moist but not wet. There is a lot of onion flavour, so you do get an impression of fried food. A sort of soya sauce is also used as part of the flavouring. The chilli heat is moderate, so it informs and spices the food rather than dominates. Although mostly tasting of onion and soya sauce, and the noodles being a bit bland (this is made in German rather than Asia, so the noodles are likely to be air dried rather than deep fried), this is a tasty product that I enjoyed. Damn shame that being made in Germany, and despite the main food lumps being soya chunks, it contains pig fat. Why?

 

Date: May 2016  Score: 8

  

Now branded Cup Noodles, and with a warning to take care when pouring out the hot water. And, yippee, it doesn't contain pork. 

This is a tasty, savoury mood. Yes it relies on soy sauce and onion, but it works, and the chilli gives it a rousing kick, without being dominating. I like this. A lot.

Date: July 2021 Score: 9

Nifty Nissin noodles

Nongshim OoLongmen Beef Flavour

No instructions on the container anywhere - though there is a stamp that says do not microwave. Anyway, I poured on boiling water to what appears to be the fill level. This cooked quickly (I've been having a lot of UK packet noodles recently, and they need boiling water and five minutes in the microwave, and even then they are still a bit too firm) producing nice soft good quality noodles. The dried veg was nice. Again, hydrated quickly, and while they were clearly rehydrated dried veg, they added some texture and flavour to the whole thing. The powder, though, was a little disappointing. I'm not sure what the artificial beef flavour is, but this was a faint onion flavour. It wasn't unpleasant, but a little vague - more like dish water than beef.  However, overall I enjoyed these because the noodles were so nice, it was quick and easy to make, and the finished result wasn't over-spicy, over-flavoured, too artificial, and didn't leave me feeling a little dirty afterwards. I'd go for these again. Just put in a bit of garlic salt, and ping! we're good to go!

Ingredients

Score: 6


*The RamenRater

Nongshim

Beef flavoured

Batchelors Super Low Fat Noodles Chilli Chicken Flavour

The noodles are tough as old rope and not as edible. The flavouring is more like curry than chilli. Onion is the main flavouring. No dead chickens are used. Made in Germany.


Score: 2

Super Noodles are crap

The best (and worse) Chicken flavour instant noodles

Symington's Golden Wonder Normous Instant Noodles BBQ Beef Flavour XL

Twice as much noodles as normal, but a moderate flavour. Fairly acceptable, even if nothing great. There's a pleasant tomato sweetness, and some onion flavour. Not one I will rush to buy again, but I'd be OK with eating this again.

No meat in the ingredients.


Score: 4

Symington's

Beef flavoured