Marutai Yokohama Iekei Shoyu Tonkotsu Ramen Packet 192g

Yokohama's iekei ramen in a Marutai packet: flat, medium-thick noodles in a soy-seasoned pork-and-chicken soup (shoyu tonkotsu), with a chicken-oil sachet. Iekei (家系) is a ramen shop style born in Yokohama, made on pork-bone and chicken stock mixed with soy sauce, and served with spinach, sliced pork and nori (dried seaweed sheets). Buy it if you want a soy-seasoned pork-and-chicken bowl with soft, chewy noodles; if you want thin, firm noodles, this is the wrong packet.

On the pack: 横浜家系 醤油とんこつラーメン. It is Marutai's own take on the style, and no Yokohama shop is named on it.

What you're getting

• The noodles are flat and medium-thick, not the round, straight sticks of Marutai's three Kyushu tonkotsu packets (Hakata, Kumamoto and Kagoshima), and some people find them closer to udon.
• They boil in the water that becomes the soup, so it goes cloudy as they cook. That is the method, not a mistake. The soup comes out thick, and there is less of it than you might expect, because the dried noodles soak some of it up.
• No seafood goes into the soup, and a separate chicken-oil sachet adds the aroma.
• Nothing comes on top. The pork, spinach and nori in the picture are a serving idea; spinach is in any supermarket, and toasted nori sheets are at Asian grocers.
• Allergens: contains wheat, milk, sesame and soy. Older packs do not list sesame. Read the pack's own label before you rely on ours.
• Also on the label: chicken oil, pork extract and pork oil go into the soup, and gelatine is declared as well. No ingredient names where the milk, sesame or gelatine come from. Anyone who avoids pork or meat should skip it.

Two noodle bundles in the packet make two separate meals. The soup holds most of the salt, the noodles far less.