Ever want to combine your love of instant ramen with your love of sandwiches? No? Well, we’re doing this anyway. When I was broke(r), I was notorious for making ramen sandwiches to stretch my budget. A ramen sandwich is basically cooked, strained ramen on toasted bread (high fiber wheat ideally) for a carbtastic explosion of flavor! Click here for the recipe.
The Obligate Story
I made a ramen sandwich at work because I forgot the lunch meat one day and was feeling a bit nostalgic. I then noticed the looks of admiration and not at all disgust from my colleagues. It was then I decided to take this to the next level with the Ramen Salad Sandwich. Potato salad is a thing, pasta salad is a thing, why not ramen salad? After politics the past couple years pretty much globally, why not? Anything goes anymore, so let’s go for it.
I based this recipe off a combination of some pasta salad recipes I knew, with ideas from potato salad and chicken salad to really round it off. This would probably kill you from sodium otherwise. I also used some tricks I had heard about from Japanese ramen preparation. Aside from the complete joke of a reason to make this, the recipe actually turned out okay. I also added in some less traditional ingredients which I will note down below. I might start writing some of my crazy ramen ideas down in more recipes down the line.
The Recipe
Ingredients
1 Packet Ramen (beef or chicken work best)
2 Hard Boiled Eggs (finely diced)
~1 Stalk Celery (finely diced)
½-1 Green Onion (finely diced) or about a quarter of a small onion finely diced
½-1 Cup Frozen Peas, Carrots, Corn, Soybeans, etc.
Sauces:
Mayonnaise
Mustard
Spices:
½ Ramen Flavoring Packet
1 Tablespoon Seasoning Salt
1 Teaspoon Pepper
Optional:
Textured Vegetable Protein
Wheat Bran
Worcestershire Sauce
MSG
Sweet Relish
Directions
Take your vegetables and hard boiled eggs and dice them up finely. You want them to look similar to the following. Put them aside in a big enough bowl to mix everything once finished. I only used one egg because that’s all I had on hand.
You want to cook whatever frozen vegetables (or fresh if you really, really want to make this a hipster dish) you use. I add water to the frozen vegetables and just put them into the microwave and let them cool during the rest of this process. Drain them before using. For this culinary masterpiece, I used green soybeans, green peas, and corn. You can add pretty much whatever else you want, like carrots or even maybe some beans or similar if you’re brave enough.
Cook your ramen without using the packet. You want to cook the noodles about to where you normally would if you were going to enjoy them as a meal. Once they cook through, drain them and chill them either with cold water or ice, then drain them again. Get a Top Ramen cooker if you don’t want to mess with the stove and love the microwave (don’t worry, I’m not a shill for Top Ramen! I cook Maruchan and other brands in my Top Ramen cooker).
Move the noodles to your cutting board and finely chop them up. Once chopped, add them to your bowl. Add your remaining vegetables (corn, peas, etc.). You then want to top this off with any of your optional ingredients (though I found it often helps to wait on the drier ingredients until you’ve started mixing unless you’ve made it the same way before or are comfortable with making a mayonnaise based “salad”) and spices.
I messed up adding the spices and spilled in way too much seasoning salt and pepper, so… not showing a picture for that part. Add in a bit of mayo and stir. You want to add the mayo slowly and mix everything so you don’t end up adding too much. You are aiming for a consistency where the salad holds together when you pick it up with a spoon and turn it to the side, but then slowly falls apart. You want this to hold up when you make a sandwich. Once you get the consistency close to right, add about a teaspoon of mustard, or more if you like mustard.
You can also stir in some of your additional ingredients. You want to have used less mayonnaise earlier if you’re adding something like Worcestershire sauce or relish. For things like textured vegetable protein or wheat bran, you want to add a little bit more. Add your ingredients and tweak as necessary.
Stir everything up and get ready to load up your toasted bread with this heavenly creation. I found it to be surprisingly good, considering it was originally created entirely as a joke. Granted, MSG does that. I’m pretty sure the creator of mayonnaise, the creator of any kind of mayonnaise based “salad”, and maybe several supernatural beings are all cursing me as we speak for this abomination, but this was a massive success for a joke recipe.
Conclusion
This recipe was made as a joke to mess with a coworker, but it actually came out surprisingly well. I’d give it like a 7/10. I don’t think I’ll make it again because it’s completely absurd, but it’s actually pretty good for a quick meal. This might be worth trying as a gag or if you are a bit low on cash, or just really like carbs. This recipe was dirt cheap and I’m pretty sure the power used making it and writing this totaled out to more than the ingredients, but it was definitely filling and decent.