Product information
About
Abura soba is Japanese ramen with no soup at all, five packets of it here. You boil these very thick noodles, drain them, and toss them through the sauce that comes with them: strong, a little sweet, with a savoury depth from the scallop stock worked into the noodle itself. Buy it if you have ever finished a packet of instant noodles wishing there had been more to chew on; if you want a bowl of broth, this is the wrong packet.
On the pack: 明星 チャルメラ 油そば (Myojo Charumera Abura Soba).
What you're getting
- The noodles are thick, thick enough that slurping them takes real effort, so expect to chew rather than sip.
- The sauce leans hard on soy and finishes a little sweet, with a savoury seafood note behind it rather than on top.
- In Japan abura soba is eaten with vinegar and a little chilli oil stirred in before you start, not after. Neither is in the packet, so use your own.
- Eaten exactly as directed, with nothing added, it can taste one-note. The packet holds noodles and sauce. There are no toppings in it. One packet on its own is a light meal rather than a full dinner.
- People divide on whether it eats oily: some find it clean right to the last mouthful, others find it greasy.
- Allergens: wheat, crustaceans (shrimp), sesame, soy and molluscs. Japan's rules have no mollusc category, so the scallop sits in the pack's ingredient list, not its allergen box. Read that list before you rely on ours, on molluscs ours is the fuller one.
- Also on the label: there is meat in it: the sauce is built on pork fat and carries pork and chicken extract plus gelatine, none of which show up in the allergen box.
There is no buckwheat in this, despite the word soba in the name: these are wheat noodles, the same kind used for ramen. You cook them in a pot and pour the water off, which is the opposite of what you do with Charumera's soup ramen packets, whose packaging looks almost the same. Nothing in the sauce is chilli, so it is not a hot dish unless you make it one. Charumera is the brand, not the dish.
Allergens
- Contains
-
- Wheat
- Crustacean
- Sesame
- Soy
- Mollusc
- Dietary notes
-
The sauce is built on pork fat, and carries pork and chicken extract plus gelatine: none of which show up in the allergen box. It is not vegetarian, halal or kosher.
For your safety, please check both the information on this page and the printed label on the pack. If anything is unclear or the information differs, please contact us before consuming the product.
Details
- Maker
- Myojo
- Made in
- Japan
- Net contents
- Five packets: 505 g in total, 101 g each, of which 85 g is noodles
Our guide
How to eat it
- Bring 500 mL of water to the boil.
- Add the noodles and cook them for four minutes, loosening them as they cook. On the pack, look for a numeral followed by 分, the Japanese character for minutes.
- Drain them well in a colander.
- Tip them into a bowl: the sauce goes on there, not in the hot pot.
- Add the sauce to the noodles, along with a splash of rice vinegar and a little chilli oil, both from your own cupboard since neither is in the packet. This is the order abura soba shops use: the acid and the heat go in before you mix, not after.
- Mix it all right through while it is hot. Taste and add more.
Good to know
- Add a raw egg yolk and stir it through: one yolk turns a packet into something closer to a meal.
- Spring onion and bean sprouts both work and are supermarket items. The two toppings pictured on the front are char siu (roast pork) and menma (fermented bamboo shoot), and neither is easy to buy in Australia.
In their own words
What Japanese buyers say
- What they like
The noodles are on the thick side, the chew-hard type.
麺は太めでワシワシ系。
from mognavi, a Japanese food and drink review site
- What they like
The noodles were smooth and the sauce wasn't heavy — delicious.
麺がツルッとしていてタレの味もしつこくなく美味しかった。
from monolog, a Japanese review site
- What they grumble about
With just the sauce and the noodles it's a touch too strong.
ソースと麺だけだと、すこし味が濃い
- What they like
It has a real, solid bite to it.
しっかりと噛みごたえがあり
from mognavi
- What they like
Taut and springy, with a hard-chewing texture.
ビン！と張りがあり、わしわしとした食感
- What they like
You could call these noodles properly chunky. Thicker than pasta, thicker even than inaniwa udon — a fine wheat noodle from northern Japan — they have real presence.
ごんぶととも言える麺。パスタよりも、稲庭うどんよりも太く、存在感を放射している
- What they grumble about
The noodles feel smooth in the mouth — but they're thick, so slurping takes power.
その麺の口あたりは、なめらか。けれども、麺が太いので、すするのにパワーが必要
- What they like
It competes on noodles and sauce alone.
麺とタレのみで勝負しています。
from mognavi
- What they like
A slightly sweet soy flavour.
すこし甘めの醤油の味わい
- What they like
The sauce leans strongly soy, and whether it's the spice, it has quite a punch.
たれは醤油感が強めで、スパイスが利いてるのか、なかなかパンチのある味わい。
- What they grumble about
Rather than slurping, it's easier to shovel them in with chopsticks.
すするよりも、お箸でワシワシと口中にいれたほうが楽
- What they like
You don't feel any greasiness, so I ate it to the end without tiring of it.
油っこさは感じられないので、最後まで飽きずに食べられました。
- What they like
As instant abura soba goes it's extremely well made — better than I expected.
インスタント油そばとしては非常によくできていて、期待以上の一杯でした。
from mognavi
Real quotes from review sites. We show no star rating from those sites.
The maker
Where it comes from
- Myojo
Charumera has been on Japanese shelves since 1966, and it turned sixty on 7 September 2026. The anniversary badge on the front of this pack is for that.
What makes the line unusual is where the flavour sits: the scallop stock is worked into the noodle dough itself, not only into the sauce, so the savouriness is in the strand. In 2025 the whole range moved to stock made entirely from Hokkaido scallops, and the icon on the front of the pack was added to say so.
The sauce in this packet is not the one it launched with. It was rebuilt in March 2026 to be richer and deeper than the original.
Product facts here are checked against the maker's own page: myojofoods.co.jp (opens in a new tab)
Often bought together
-
Myojo Charumera Abura Soba Soupless Ramen Packets 505g
$6.10 AUD
You are on this one
