Noodles and Asian Supermarkets

The store shelves here are filled with many different kinds of noodles from many different countries, often with bad or entirely missing English translations. So, sites like this one very useful: http://noodleson.com/review/. Why miss out on delicious food, just because you don't know what it is? [grin]

The wide variety of products covered includes Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and Indonesian noodles, as well as those made in North America. Reviews are comprehensive and include the directions & ingredients listings in English, along with a picture of the prepared noodles. The quality and spiciness ratings are useful.

Sure, preparing these types of prepackaged noodles isn't very difficult, but often following the directions will give much more pleasing results than not! Not all noodles are straightforward either. If you had never seen these Japanese noodles before, for example, you might find the packaging somewhat perplexing: Otafuku Sauce Yakisoba.

Asian supermarkets are rising in popularity in North America. According to Macleans Magazine, the Galleria Supermarket in Toronto opened in 2003 with a Korean clientele in mind, but now 40 percent of its shoppers are from outside the Korean community. (Article on Macleans website and scanned version on Galleria website.)

Hopefully, this will lead to improvements in packaging and labelling. Some are easy to figure out, like Nong Shim's Potato Noodle Soup, with it's clear English name and picture of a potato. However, other packages have no English at all! So it's great for adventuresome noodle-lovers to have websites with pictures and helpful text so they can figure out what it is that they've bought. =:3

WARNING! Prepackaged noodles have way too much salt in them. Often the included noodle package has nearly 100% of the daily recommended intake of sodium! Be sure to check the portion size too. The better noodles have the vegetables packaged separately from the soup mix and/or hot spices and/or liquids to be added. With these, it is easy to adjust how hot you want the noodles to be, and how much sodium you want to include. Usually the amount of salty soup mix can be safely cut to half a package or less.

An added advantage is that you can save the unused portion and use it with unflavoured noodles and other vegetables or seasonings of your choice later. This doesn't work with the noodles prepared in an included cup or bowl though -- A common method in that case is to make the noodles as directed, then pour off half the soup and fill back up with hot water.

Sempio's Honey Rice Black Vinegar looks attractive and sounds interesting on their Korean website, but without an English version, one might look to translation websites for a translation. Sure, "apple concentration misfortune" sounds more interesting than "apple juice," but some of these wordings just make it seem much less appetizing.

Some say there are too many websites and blogs that feature reviews -- Cases like this though, show that there are still areas that need more coverage.