Nissin Cup Noodle Regular — Japanese Original Soy Sauce, 78g

The Japanese Cup Noodle, in its regular cup. It is a soy broth built on chicken and pork stock together, spiced and savoury rather than sharp, with five dried toppings sitting loose in the cup instead of in a sachet. In Japan this is the one people actually buy, in September 2025 the 78 g cup was the second best-selling cup noodle in Japanese shopping baskets.

カップヌードル, the name on the pack, so you can check what arrives.

This is Nissin's standard Cup Noodle: the flagship recipe, not the lighter reduced-fat version and not the premium PRO line. Of its three sizes, mini, regular and big, this is the regular. You are buying one cup.

What you're getting

• A broth with two stocks in it. Chicken and pork together rather than one or the other, with spices behind them and a bamboo-shoot note underneath. There is no chilli in it. Nissin sells a chilli tomato cup as a separate flavour.
• Fine, wavy noodles with a slippery smoothness. That smoothness is Nissin's own word for them, and it is what makes the broth cling to every strand.
• The "mystery meat", explained. The brown nuggets are a pork mince made with soy protein. Japanese customers nicknamed them 謎肉, mystery meat, and the name stuck so well that Nissin uses it now too.
• Five toppings, already in the cup. Mince, egg, prawn, pork and spring onion, loose in there. There is no sachet to tear open and nothing to stir in first.
• One cup is a light meal, not a big one. Plenty of people buy the bigger cup because this size leaves them wanting: if you eat like that, take the 103 g one instead. It is the same flavour but not quite the same recipe: in 2025 the bigger cup got a larger version of the mince and this one kept the standard.
• Allergens: Nissin declares crustacean (prawn), wheat, egg, milk, sesame and soy, and it is made with pork and chicken. That is the maker's own declaration for this cup, and it is wider than the named ingredients. Read the pack's own label before you rely on ours.

If you have seen Nissin cups at Coles for about two dollars, those are a different product: made outside Japan, in flavours like chicken, laksa and tom yam. Neither Coles nor Woolworths ranges the original soy sauce; Coles carries five export cups and not one of them is it.

Do not microwave it in its own cup. The lid has aluminium in it and Nissin warns of fire risk, so tip the noodles into a microwave-safe dish if you want to use one. You may have read that Cup Noodles became microwavable. That was Nissin's American arm changing its own packaging, and it does not apply to this Japanese cup.

The fill line is moulded into the inside wall of the cup rather than printed on the outside, so look down into it, about 280 mL of boiling water. Contains pork and prawn, so it is not halal, vegetarian or vegan.