Everybody Loves Ramen

Eric Hites

Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2003

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Everybody Loves Ramen

Eric Hites

Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2003

Ramen, glorious ramen. By the bowl, Styrofoam cup or the Sam’s Club-on-special-this-week case, they’re tough to beat in terms of either tummy-filling deliciousness or wallet-friendliness. Cheap, easy to make and straight-up tasty, ramen noodles are a staple in the kitchens and cabinets of college students, single people and people – like myself – who hold both of those titles.

Eric Hites’ new book is titled “Everybody Loves Ramen” (somewhere in Los Angeles, Ray Romano is laughing). In it, Hites encyclopedizes and celebrates the everyday and the extraordinary – the alpha through the omega, if you will – of ramen. In his foreword, Hites says “[b]eing a single person myself, I know what it is like to cook for yourself while trying to make ends meet. We all know ramen noodles are a staple in the pantries of many single Americans.” Clearly, Hites knows who his audience is.

In its purest water-noodle block-seasoning packet incarnation, ramen noodles provide a fast, tasty snack. With a little extra effort and some leftovers or a scouring of one’s pantry or freezer, the blank, relatively bland canvas that is ramen can become an extraordinary lunch or dinner – hell, you can even make it into a breakfasty omelette.

The ways to cook ramen are as varied as the things you can do to it. You can boil water in a pot on the stove – the purists’ method. You can cook it in an electric teakettle, a trick I learned from an old roommate. Another roommate liked to take a packet of ramen, crush it and eat it from the cellophane packet in its crunchy, uncooked state in front of the television (preferably “Law and Order” reruns) like potato chips.

Fortunately, Hites’ recipes aren’t so low-tech, but they’re uncomplicated enough that most of them could be made in a dorm room microwave. One of these 50 recipes, Buttery Sesame Ramen on page 96, is simply a cooked, drained packet of ramen, a few pats of butter, a sprinkle of cumin and a few sesame seeds. Easy, inexpensive and different enough from one’s everyday ramen to provide a nice change of pace. Increase the butter to five tablespoons and you get page 70’s Cholesterol Killer Ramen.

Ramen’s inherent Asianness lends it to Asian-inspired dishes such as Flaming Poultry and Peanuts, a ramen-and-chicken dish with a no-cook sauce made from peanut butter, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, garlic and hot pepper sauce. You probably have half of those things in your top drawer right now, left over from the last time you got Chinese take-out. You can easily purchase the more unusual items like rice wine vinegar at one of the many ethnic grocery stores on Craig or Atwood. And don’t tell me you can’t get a plain chicken breast from Eddie’s.

Isn’t that forlorn little packet of ramen in your cabinet looking tastier already?

Many of Hites’ recipes are full of vegetables and lean meats, which helps to add some nutritional value to a food pretty devoid of nutrition. Part of why ramen tastes so good is because of its relatively high fat content, which proves again the truism that anything tastes good is, of course, bad for you. Many people perceive ramen noodles as fast-cooking versions of plain old semolina pasta, the kind of pasta one is served in an order of spaghetti and meatballs. Not true.

An examination of the nutrition facts on the back of an average packet of ramen reveals that an eight-ounce serving of ramen has 190 calories and eight grams of fat (12 percent of the FDA’s daily recommendation) and 3.5 grams of saturated fat (a whopping 18 percent of the FDA’s recommendation). Though it has no cholesterol – thank God for small blessings – it contains 770 milligrams of sodium per serving. And what’s worse, according to the FDA, one block of ramen is actually two servings.

But don’t be put off by the scary numbers. Everything in moderation. Share that pack of ramen – or your newest ramen concoction from “Everybody Loves Ramen” – with your roommate.