Indomie "Mi Goreng BBQ Chicken"

Brand: Indomie
Flavour: Mi goreng BBQ Chicken
Format: brick-in-packet
Packets: five
Identifiables: noodle brick, flavour powder, soy sauce, chili sauce, fried onion bits
Sodium: 0.90 grams

There's a problem with Batch Two: Revenge of the Noodle. Quite simply, I love spicy food, and I seem to have already reviewed everything in it that's spicy. Now, the booster pack I recieved from Pat McK. is full of stuff which is (or can be) spicy, so I'm making certain to use those to satisfy the cravings for real heat, but this means that the last few things in Round Two will take a bit longer to get to. For example, I've reviewed another Indomie noodle today.

Now, most of the Indomie packets look exceedingly similar; white background, photo of prepared noodles with immense amoutns of extra stuff stacked on top, solid-colour banners, and text reading "Mi goreng" in friendly italic Bodoni with more details in a semibold Helvetica. (Yeah, typography geek.) Honestly, it all feels a bit dated, and I'm always tempted to check the "Best Buy" date to make sure I didn't get a packet from the early seventies by mistake.

Fortunately, the flavour never lets me down, even if it's not quite what I expect. This one claims to have barbecue chicken flavour, though the chicken is entirely artificial. With the variety of flavours coming together in the dish, however, it's hard to say that there's any chicken in particular. After all, there are five packets in here.

Five!

Roll that around in your head for a moment. This particular ramen has more parts to it than the average sandwich. One must cook noodles and drain them, then stir in flavour powder, soy sauce, chili sauce, and oniony-garlicky-oily stuff. Finally, only right before serving, one opens the mysterious fifth "sachet" to find crispy fried onions. It's the most complex ramen I've made yet, yet it's not that much worse than any other "dry" style noodle. Still, about the only way to top this would be, say, if I had to mix one of the packets in with the noodles while cooking, a different one after, fry up a third packet of sauce before adding the noodles back in, stir in a fourth packet after adding the noodles back in, then top the mess with other bits. (Now that I mention it, I may have to invent such a thing. Who here would buy and eat Electric Keet brand ramen?)

As always, I prepared as directed. The catch is, the camera I normally use is actually owned by one of my flatmates who is presently on holiday, so I had to use the lower-quality backup, I didn't have any of my usual clear bowls, so it's a solid ceramic one this time. It's the most slipshod review ever, and I have to say, this noodle deserved better. It's every bit as good as the standard "Mi goreng", perhaps more so because the onion bits really do add to it.

Still... five packets? The preparation rating is a two, but a very low two at that. Also, I'm docking a point from the packaging because the three sauce packets were stuck together in a way that really demanded I ignore the pinking and use a scissors to release the tasty goodness within. Even with that, it's a top-notch noodle, and I'm really having to fight the urge to make a second one because it's simply that tasty.

Numbers: packaging 3, preparation 2, heat 3, flavour 5, overall 5
Music: Tomohiti Nishiura - Dark Cloud 2 (PS2) - Veneccio