Technical Description: Nissin’s Cup Noodle with Chicken Flavor

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By…

Sanjidah Abdullah

Writing for Engineering

The City College of New York

October 24, 2018

 

Technical Poem

Cup Noodles

I am in a raw and heterogeneous solid state

My dry contents remain within their territories for the most part

But you want to alter my course in an instant

Suddenly, I am drifting, weightless in boiling hot liquid

Waves trying to break me

Mysterious red snow sprinkled throughout my sanctuary

The contents within are stirred

I am soft and warm, now whole and delectable

I am screaming as steam is emitted from within my temple

Suddenly a sauna is in the making

I burn you for a few passing moments

But I am not an inferno

Yet you continue to consume me as I lay afloat in the blazing fluid

Slowly but surely, I completely disappear

 

• Introduction

Cup Noodles is widely known as a dorm-room staple as it instantly cooks in 3 minutes and is incredibly affordable. In more technical terms, cup noodles is an instant ramen noodle brand manufactured by Nissin and created in 1958. According to Elise Hu, Cup Noodles was originally created in Japan by Momofuku Ando. She writes that Ando was motivated to create instant ramen noodles due to the fact that prior to the invention, ramen noodles could only be bought fresh and served after boiling for a long period of time. Thus, Ando focused on creating instant noodles by preserving dry and cooked noodles. After many failed attempts of drying the ramen, he was inspired by his wife as she made tempura, a battered deep-fried food. Ando’s solution was to lightly fry the noodles in oil for a few minutes, dry them and finally package them in a cup. However, Hu notes that his cup innovation did not originate until traveling to the United States in the 1960s where he observed consumers break up his original blocks of dried ramen to fit into cups for convenient consumption. Finally, the first cup noodle was introduced in September of 1971 and now the brand itself is available in over 80 countries. Hu adds that Nissin has created many cultural adaptations to its instant noodles to better serve its global customers. For instance, in Asia, slurping the noodles loudly is a sign of complimenting the chef whereas in America, this action is considered very rude and so the noodles have a shorter length in America.

Ando’s creation has remained largely popular to this day as 97 billion packages of instant ramen were sold internationally in 2015, according to the World Instant Noodles Association. In the next few sections, the different components of a cup noodle, specifically of the chicken flavor, will be described as well as the process behind creating the instant ramen noodles that are a part of every college student’s diet today.