I Freaking Made Ramen

That's right kids. Well, what I like to call poor man's ramen, because I'm pretty broke most of the time as of late. 

Basically I realized one day that I haven't really eaten many vegetables since I moved into my house, and I needed to change up the pb&j, burritos, and spaghetti routines I've had. But if you're wondering, all those were homemade too, so I'm not that bad.

Here's what I used for the broth. 

+ Store-bought chicken broth, because ain't nobody got time to make fresh broth that will pale in comparison to the carton stuff.

+ Teriyaki marinade (you can obviously use soy sauce, but I apparently didn't have any)

+ Ginger paste

+ Sriracha TO YOUR LIKING

I considered making my own pulled pork, but I didn't particularly want to buy a $20 cut of pork that I probably wouldn't use all of. So I found these pre-cooked seasoned pork carnitas at QFC and thought, "that's $6, I can do $6." So I unpackaged them, popped them in the microwave to heat, and shredded them up. It was going to soup, I didn't really care about the tenderness, but I was surprised with how tender they were.

Broccoli slaw is always my slaw of choice, mainly because it stands up so much better to dressing than cabbage, and it has way more flavor. So instead of using whole broccoli florets, I just grabbed a package of slaw.

This was the one ingredient I went fancy on, honestly because I was intrigued when I walked through Whole Foods for the first time. BLACK NOODLES. BLACK RICE NOODLES.

How creepy are they? Luckily they tasted less creepy than they looked, but this package actually had four servings so I can use it for other funky recipes!

The next step was to soft boil an egg, which I will admit, I didn't get quite right. I didn't set a damn timer like I always do when I hard-boil eggs, but it was still tasty so I'm not complaining.

For extra flavor and garnish, chop up some green onions. But to be perfectly honest, I never actually eat the green onions. Next time I might do chives. The stringy texture of scallions creep me out. But the flavor they add to the broth is key.

And they're so damn pretty.

So there you have it! Next time I might add less ginger and more sriracha, and obviously cook my egg a little bit longer, but I'd say this was a good try for loosely going off a couple different recipes.

Have you ever made ramen? Or more importantly, have you ever had authentic ramen? Because this is certainly not that, but it was tasty!