"Fire Noodle Challenge" - Samyang Foods Buldak Bokkeum Myun

YouTube is rife with videos of people taking the "Fire Noodle Challenge".  This is the common nickname for people's attempts to eat a serving of Samyang Foods' famously spicy Buldak Bokkeum Myun (불닭볶음면 - Hot Chicken Flavor Ramyun).  Many mortals absolutely lose their minds with distress and anguish over how spicy it is.  A few curiously shrug it off like it's nothing special.

Introduced in 2012 by Samyang Foods,  Buldak Bokkeum Myun is considered one of the spiciest commercial ramyun in Korea.

The usual gist of the challenge is to consume the spicy noodles as quickly as possible.  I guess this keeps people from trying to eat a bit of noodles every half-hour or so, taking advantage of plenty of recovery time between bites, and then claiming they "won" the challenge.  On top of that, who wants to watch a four-hour video of someone crying over noodles?

But I'm not really interested in wolfing noodles as fast as possible on video.  My question is, are these noodles spicy hot and enjoyable?  Will it burn my face off?  Will I die weeping in a puddle of sticky, spicy sauce?

Let's find out.

The packet on the left is a mix of sesame seeds and flakes of laver (seaweed).  The packet on the right is the sauce.

Buldak Bokkeum Myun differs from the standard ramen soup we eat in America in that the "soup base" isn't a powder that's intended to be mixed with water to make a broth.  Instead, you get a little packet filled with a thick pre-mixed sauce.  Instead of mixing the soup base into the boiling water with the noodles, you cook the noodles and drain them as though you're making spaghetti.

Naked ramyun.  NSFW.

Then you add the sauce.  It squeezes out of its little packet looking almost black, like thick crude oil sludge tinged with red.

Black gold.  Texas tea.

Stirring it up reveals the deep red-orange of the sauce.  Plenty of chili oil and chili powder in there.  Promising...and scary?  It certainly smells good.

I skipped the little packet of sprinkly stuff because of the seaweed.  My wife wanted to taste it with me and seaweed tends to trigger her severe shrimp allergy.  I'm also just not a huge fan of seaweed, myself.  It's like dried lawn clippings that taste like the wharf.  Pass.

The first thing that hit me about the sauce was a noticeable sweetness, which then faded to a savory flavor that I compared to a concentrated ramen soup base packet.  It's quite tasty, but it's intense.  Then the spiciness crept up on me.  I think the initial sweetness cuts the heat a bit, making it almost unnoticeable at first.  Maybe this is by design, like a tricky flavor special effect.

So here's where you're either going to be disappointed or super impressed with my spicy food-eating prowess.  While Buldak Bokkeum Myun is definitely quite spicy - definitely far spicier than most American palates can handle - I personally didn't get sent into paroxysms of agony and panic over it.  It had a nice, lingering, burning heat and I was left doing that little hissing, breathing-through-the-teeth thing I do when something really hot sticks with me for a while.  But I also found it completely tolerable and not too spicy to eat casually.

My wife, who proclaims herself not to be a huge fan of spicy foods, took a few decent-sized bites and declared that it wasn't way too hot for her, either.  She described how her lips burned afterward and definitely expressed some discomfort.  But she also didn't scream or cry or eagerly grope for something to drink.  And she went back for more.  If I'd bought more than one package, I think she'd have asked me to make her one, too.  Now, to be fair, she has been living with me for about 15 years, so her sense of what's way too hot is almost definitely skewed compared to the palate of the average Midwesterner.  But I typically can tolerate far hotter foods than she can and this didn't utterly destroy her.

All gone.

So, despite not gorging on these noodles as quickly as possible, I think it's fair to say I "won" the challenge.  I ate the whole thing (minus a few bites that went to my wife) and lived to tell about it.

Was it tasty?  Yes, despite a little bit of an over-processed undertone to the flavor of the sauce.

Was it hot?  Yes, but I didn't find it debilitating.

Would I buy it again?  Absolutely...probably a four-pack next time.