The Best Instant Noodles, Ranked

Drain it properly and what's left is a finished plate of noodles rather than something bobbing in salty water. Wikipedia's article credits PT Sanmaru Food with launching Mi Goreng in 1982 as the brand's first dry variant, served without soup, and Indofood has built the line around that idea ever since. Sweet, savoury, faintly smoky, and complete straight out of the wrapper, which is the whole case for putting it first.

Fire noodles that earned the noise made about them, and the method matters. Samyang's own page tells you to boil two and a half cups of water, cook for five minutes, keep half a cup back and stir the sauce through the rest. Buldak Original lands sweeter than newcomers expect before the burn arrives. Garlicky heat, not punishment heat, and the noodle stays chewy the whole way down.

Nongshim has been making this since 1 October 1986, and Wikipedia notes it is produced in three countries: the United States, China and South Korea. A standard pack holds noodles, a soup-base powder and a sachet of vegetable flakes. The broth is beefy and properly hot; the noodle is thick enough to survive it. Shin Ramyun Original packet, every time, over the cup version.

The noodle is the whole point. Nissin builds these with triple-layered, non-fried strands and you can feel it, because they stay springy where a fried block goes slack halfway through the bowl. Nissin's page says RAOH means king of ramen in Japanese. RAOH Tonkotsu is the pork-bone one, creamy and heavy, closer to a shop bowl than a packet has any business being.

Premium line from a brand nobody thinks of as premium. The soup base is built on miso paste made from soybeans, rice and salt, then loaded with chilli sesame oil and rice bran oil, and that oil is where the richness comes from, so squeeze the whole sachet in. Gold Spicy Miso Flavor is the pick of the line: deep, nutty, genuinely hot. Wasted on anyone eating at a desk.

Sanyo Foods describes the soup as soy sauce and chicken broth infused with the aroma of sweet vegetables, garlic and a hint of ginger. Reads like marketing until you taste it, because Sapporo Ichiban Original is markedly less salty than the commodity blocks, and the noodle keeps a faint wheatiness that cheaper strands sand right off. Balanced in a way almost nothing below it manages.

Jjajang in a packet, first released in South Korea on 19 March 1984 according to Wikipedia, and made by Nongshim. Drained rather than souped, it turns glossy and faintly sweet, somewhere between a bowl of noodles and a dark savory sauce you would happily eat over rice. Chapagetti Original is where to start. Good cold at one in the morning, which is the honest test of any of these.

Cheese powder is doing the heavy lifting, and Samyang lists what goes into it: mozzarella cheese, milk, butter and parsley. Stirred through the Buldak sauce it turns the burn into something creamy and faintly ridiculous. Buldak Carbonara is the gateway pack, the one to hand somebody who insists they can't do spice. Purists sneer at it. Purists are wrong about this particular pink packet.

There's a reason this shape won, and it isn't the broth. Nissin's page calls it the original since 1971, which covers most of the history of eating noodles out of a cup. Cup Noodles Chicken Flavor gives you thin strands that go slack fast and a savoury powder that never builds past salt. Familiar, and the exact point where the shelf stops being interesting.

Billed by Nissin as the original instant ramen noodle since 1970, cooking in three minutes flat, and that's the entire pitch. Top Ramen Soy Sauce is the flavor to buy: less aggressively salty than the chicken, with a cleaner finish. Judged as sold, though, the broth is thin and the block goes soft fast. Historically important, pleasant enough, and outclassed by half this shelf.

Every American office microwave has met a hundred of these. Maruchan's page promises chewy noodles, savoury broth and a few vegetables in a 2.25 oz cup running 290 calories. Instant Lunch Chicken Flavor is the default, and the broth is softer and sweeter than the Nissin equivalent. The cup walls are thin, so carry it with two hands or accept the consequences.

Underrated because the packaging looks like every other block on the row. Nissin's ingredient list gives it away: garlic, lemongrass and lime juice sit in there alongside the chilli, and a special chilli sauce goes in at the end. Hot & Spicy Chicken tastes sour-hot rather than flatly hot, which is a different and better thing. That liquid packet is what separates it from the pack.

Priced to be an afterthought and built accordingly: a 3 oz packet sold in ones, sixes and twelves, with a soup base carrying powdered cooked chicken among the salt, sugar and spices. Chicken Flavor Ramen is the American student staple and it does the job. Softer noodle than Nissin's, saltier finish, and the powder never resolves into anything you'd call broth.

A tray rather than a cup, and the format changes what the thing is, because you drain most of the water off, then squeeze a sauce packet through the noodles. Nissin lists dried bok choy, cabbage and carrot flakes in the mix and says it's ready in five minutes. Chow Mein Teriyaki Beef is sweet, glossy and not remotely Chinese, which nobody involved is pretending otherwise.

Sold in a 4 oz tray that lands at 500 calories, which tells you it's a meal and not a snack. Maruchan's own copy calls it beefy and meaty with chewy yakisoba noodles and vegetables, and the chew is real enough. Beef Teriyaki Flavor Yakisoba is the sweetest thing here by a distance, though, and the sauce reads as sugar long before it reads as teriyaki.

Last because the sauce never gets past sweet and the noodles arrive already soft. Credit where due: Nissin puts green beans and cabbage in, and the page says no added MSG or artificial flavors. Cup Noodles Stir Fry Teriyaki Beef is pleasant and a little sticky, and that is the ceiling. Everything above it does more with its packet.