[Opinion] “Daejanggeum in Cooking Instant Noodle”

For Koreans, the second most familiar food after rice is instant noodles. Rice has been the staple of our diet for thousands of years, on the other hand, instant noodles have become popular as the second staple food for only 40 years. The consumption for instant noodles totaled 3.7 billion packets last year, which meant that on average, each individual in the nation ate 80 instant noodle bags. If you pile the total number of bags up, it would be equivalent to 83,635 times the height of Mt. Everest. Also, the total length of the connected noodles is long enough to run around the earth 4,616 times. Instant noodles have gone through evolution, and there are now several types: noodles in bags and bowls and fresh noodles. Also, there are about 160 kinds of instant noodles, and its annual sales tops 1.3 trillion won. Instant noodles for monks, without the five spicy ingredients such as garlic and green onion, are also available.

A bag of instant noodles weighing 120 g has about 520 calories. Each bag involves 75 lines of noodles and the total length is around 50 to 60 meters. Today’s instant noodles (pronounced “Ramyeon” in Korean) came from the Japanese pronunciation of “Ramen,” referring to the Chinese noodles made by putting dough through a thin spread. However, the instant noodles commonly seen today originated in Japan. In 1958, Momofuku Ando came up with the idea of a “Ramen” recipe while observing the cooking process of fried food. The first instant noodles introduced to Korea were “chicken instant noodles” back in September 1963. The price was 10 won, and some people wrongly misunderstood the noodles as cloth because the pronunciation reminded them of a type of cloth.

How can one major ingredient cause various tastes? The taste of instant noodles varies depending on the bowls, water, heating power, and additional sources. Men who served military duty pick the taste of instant noodles that they cooked in their lunch box after night shifts as the best. The instant noodles cooked in silver kettle on the stove fueled by oval briquettes tastes great. When bowls are not available, some soldiers used to eat instant noodles using their hands as a bowl after putting their hands into the noodle bag which was flipped inside out just as if wearing gloves. On the Internet, you can find many interesting stories ranging from thousands of recipes for instant noodles and also a crazy fan of instant noodles who has eaten instant noodles three times a day for 30 years.

At “the Instant Noodle Cooking Contest” held last weekend, Kwak Ho-il (Korea Culinary Science High School, 2nd grade, 17) won the best prize among 90 Korean and foreign contenders with his dishes of “Healthy Three Courses Using Instant Noodles”. The first course was a bitable dish of the instant noodle gratin layered with cheese, dried seaweed, and chicken breasts. The noodle gratin had Chinese medicinal ingredients, ginseng, and jujubes. The second dish was instant noodle salad wrapped with rice paper. The last dish was a dessert – honey-mixed instant noodle topped with peanuts, walnuts, and almonds. It was the best use of instant noodles just like the cooking skill of “Daejangguem“(main character’s name and she is a cook at the Royal Court). How would the main roles, Daejangguem and the court lady “Han”, in the popular soap opera ”Daejanggeum,” cook instant noodles if there were instant noodles in the reign of King Jung in the Chosun Dynasty?

Editorial Writer Oh Myeong-chul, oscar@donga.com