Instant Ramen Noodles
HOLLA Toastie-lovers!
Despite appearances, yes I am still here and still toasting. Please excuse my prolonged absence, to paraphrase Timbaland & Aaliyah – it’s been a long time, shouldn’t have left you without a dope toastie to step to, step to, step to, step to.
So here’s a toastie that will make your lunchtime the Dopest of the Dopes. Not only because it is the epitome of time-management (two carbo-tastic lunches in one!), but also because of the endless fun you can have thinking up portmanteaus to describe it. It’s a Toodlestie! A Toadle! A Noastie! A Nastie! No, wait… ignore that last one.
Fun Fact! – Did you know that there was a limited edition UK release of watermelon-flavoured pot noodles in 2002?
Bonus Fun Fact! – If you guessed that the previous Fun Fact not only doesn’t weird me out, but makes me want to recreate it, you’d be correct! Suggestions welcome as to how exactly I can do this, as I don’t feel we have reached the pinnacle of human achievement without the creation of a WATERMELON NOODLE TOASTIE.
Pasta. Water. Getting hotter. A song about Noodletoasties?
Aaanyhoo, after an arduous three minute cooking process, the noodle filling is prepared, reconstituted vegetables bits and the weird flesh-coloured lumpy bits are GO!
Lastly, add to two slices of white bread. I also poured plenty of the soup on there too for good measure. The whole kit and noodle caboodle.
My toastie, it overfloweth with bountiful noodles of great beauty.
After a couple of minutes it started making a weird, whistling kind of noise. Hm. Not something I’ve ever encountered before while toasting, I must say, but I took it as a sign that the toastie was done cooking and ready to be examined.
Noodletoastie innards reveal some minor singeing of the contents. You may also observe that the outline of the bread is now slightly distended, caused by the bread’s absorption of the tasty noodle soup. I have coined the term ‘Negative Leakage’ to describe this phenomenon.
My forthcoming scientific paper ‘Negative Leakage And Its Application At Lunchtimes’ (currently under peer-review) examines the effect of Negative Leakage on the structural integrity of the toastie as a whole. In layman’s terms, this meant the bread went really soggy and the contents kept falling out. I also totally burnt my hand while taking this picture, but as a Professional Toaster I sucked it up and carried on regardless.
I’m hard as nails, y’all. HARD. AS. NAILS.
OFFICIAL TOASTIE PROJECT RATING:
Toastability – 3/5: while this toastie was simple both to prepare and clean up, the application of soup to the bread resulted in significant issues with form and structure.
Taste – 4/5: what this toastie lacked in internal rigidity it made up for in flavour. It really did make quite a delicious lunchtime experience, however it’s not really a hand-held toastie as the bread is too soggy. You’re gonna need a knife and fork.
The Toastie Project 
Some first thoughts for watermelon noodles:
I don’t know if the original was sweet or savory, so that might be the biggest deciding factor in choosing how best to recreate it.
Probably your best bet would be to buy a commercial watermelon flavoring (search for “watermelon flavoring” on Amazon to find some oils and extracts.) These would just provide the watermelon flavor without any extra flavorings or sweeteners.
If you want something you can find in a plain old store, you might try a powdered drink mix. Some of these are sweetened, but some are meant to have sugar added when you mix them up, so if you used a powdered drink, you might have to have sweet and/or sour noodles.
Excellent suggestions Pleatherwill! I was thinking along the same lines myself, particularly for powdered drink mix.
My other thought was maybe watermelon jelly crystals, but that might just end up in a noodley-watermelony-bready-gelatinous-nightmare.
A noodley-watermelony-bready-gelatinous-nightmare? Perhaps… hmmm..OK! Let’s try it!!!! (Let “us” as in you, really 🙂 )
Please make more toasties! Your fans are requesting more!
I have a suggestion with regards to the negative leakage & structural integrity of your rather yummy looking noodle toastie. Instead of adding all the noodle juice, just add enough to impart the flavour, saving the remaining yummy soup for toastie-dipping. Alternatively use less water so the flavour remains strong without water-logging the bread.