Maruchan Sriracha Chicken Flavor Ramen

Instant ramen is a pretty amazing food.  It's cheap.  It's fast.  And if you're not stuck eating it for every single meal out of desperate financial necessity, it can be pretty tasty.  Thankfully, it's been about ten years since I've been on a largely ramen-based diet, so instant noodles from a plastic package have had time to go back to being a quick, steamy treat instead of a dreary, repetitive food slog.

So the last time the mood for ramen struck me, I spotted some Maruchan Sriracha Chicken Flavor ramen at the grocery store and snagged a couple. Maruchan's jumped on the popular Sriracha bandwagon, so I wanted to see how their effort stacked up.

First impression from a ramen point of view?  Fine.  It was the standard Maruchan ramen experience.  Noodly.  Salty.  No complaints.

First impression from a Sriracha perspective?  Disappointing.  The broth had a hint of orange tint to it, attempting to imply that some beautiful red Sriracha sauce had been waved near it.  Of course, I didn't expect it to come out looking like a broth when I'm done adding hot sauce to it, looking as though it's running red with the blood of my peppery enemies.  But I'd still largely categorize the color of this broth as "powdered chicken yellow".

And tasting the broth only yielded the faintest, most distant waft of Sriracha flavor and absolutely no heat that I could discern.  I could easily convince myself this was just a standard chicken broth with food coloring added and maybe a tiny pinch of extra garlic.  If I cared more, I'd arrange a blind taste test with some other chicken-based flavors and try to guess which broth was supposed to contain Sriracha flavoring.  But...I don't care that much.

Yep.  That's ramen.

What did I expect for $0.18?  

Honestly, brothy noodle soups are one of the best things to add actual Sriracha sauce to, so why try to skip that step by infusing the flavor packet with weak, nebulous Sriracha-like flavor?

Taste testing done, I dressed up the ramen with the best resources currently available in my kitchen.

Ahhh...much better.

You want delicious Sriracha flavor on your ramen?  This is how you do it.  Also added:  An egg, some peas, some thinly sliced onion and a few dashes of ghost pepper sauce on top of the Sriracha because I'm a savage.

The good:  Ramen.

The bad:  Disappointing lack of Sriracha flavor and no detectable heat.