Nissin Raoh Tonkotsu Shoyu Ramen Packet Pork & Soy Broth 3 Servings 279g

This is a packet of ramen you cook in a saucepan, not a cup you pour water into. Three servings, each a dried noodle cake and a sachet of soup, and the broth is soy-led with pork richness through it and a real hit of garlic. Raoh is Nissin's premium bagged line, and this flavour has a thick, straight noodle.

On the pack: 日清ラ王 豚骨醤油.

This is the Japanese-market pack, made in Japan.

What you're getting

• It is not the tonkotsu you are picturing. Tonkotsu means pork bone, and if the word makes you think of the thick, opaque, milk-white Hakata bowl, this is a different thing: the first ingredient in the soup is soy sauce, not pork. What it has is pork fat and pork extract in a soy broth, with garlic. Japanese cooks treat it as a base for iekei, the Yokohama style of ramen, soy-based and garlicky, rather than anything from Hakata.
• The noodle is non-fried, so it eats closer to a fresh noodle than a packet one usually does. It is a thick, straight noodle, where the other Raoh bags we stock are wavy or medium-thick: firm bite, springy, slippery.
• Three servings of noodles and soup in the bag. No toppings come with it: no dried vegetables, no meat, no garnish.
• Fair warning: the smell is strong, and Japanese reviewers say it stays on them after they eat. It is a garlicky pork broth doing what a garlicky pork broth does, worth knowing before you cook it in a flat with the bedroom door open.
• One serving carries about a whole day's worth of salt by the World Health Organization's guideline, and most of it is in the broth.
• Allergens: contains wheat, egg, milk, sesame and soy. Egg and milk are declared on the pack but are not in the ingredient list, so our ingredients panel does not show them: on those two, trust the allergen list. Read the pack's own label before you rely on ours.
• Also on the label: the Japanese ingredient list names pork fat, pork extract and a seasoned pork oil in the soup, and a chicken seasoning in the noodles. Anyone who avoids pork or meat should skip it.

The one thing to get right: do not pour the cooking water away. You boil the noodles in a measured 430 ml, then tip that water into your bowl over the liquid soup and add the noodles last. The water is the broth. This is the opposite of the yakisoba trays we also sell, where draining is the whole method. There is no colander and nothing goes down the sink.

Two more things. This flavour cooks for five minutes, not four: a minute longer than the other Raoh bags we sell. Going by another Raoh's timing will undercook it. And the cooking instructions printed on the pack are in Japanese, so the method is set out in full below, in English.