The Ramen Burger!

 

Look out!  I'm blogging about food now.  Well, I'm actually blogging about items on my "Need to Try" list, that may be on yours as well.  I should probably be up front about the fact that I am not a professional chef.  I'm not even remotely close to being a great cook.  I do have a lot of children, we live in chaos, and the law says that I must feed them.  Truthfully, if dinner makes it to the table without triggering the smoke detector, it's a good night.  That's why I think I may be able to help reveal whether some of these popular Pinterest recipes and projects are actually attainable by those of us who just feel so regular.  Believe me, if I can do it, anyone can.  If it's something that should be left to the pros or those people who say they're not, but should be, I'll be happy to share my Pinterest fail.  It should be fun, or at least funny.  The Ramen Burger is where we'll start.

So, you may have seen or heard about the ramen burger.  My kids have wanted me to make this since seeing it on the Food Network.  I've seen some pics floating around on Pinterest as well, but it was honestly not something that I thought would find its way to my menu.  However, the idea that you can create something exciting from 2 of the things that almost every busy family has in the kitchen, ramen and ground meat of some kind, definitely appealed to me.  I eventually gave in and told them I'd try it.

I looked around online a bit and discovered that there's no real must follow recipe for these.  It's as straightforward as any other burger, with the exception of cooking a pile of cooked noodles on the griddle, rather than toasting a bun.  Since I wanted to make the burgers to my taste and there's not much to do with the noodles, I didn't follow a particular recipe to share this time around.  It's basically as follows:




 Boil some packets of noodles.

Toss them (cooled) in some whisked eggs to get them sticky.

 

 

Shape them into "buns" and chill them in the fridge, so they will hold their shapes.  About 30 minutes to an hour will work.

*I should point out that I used a biscuit cutter for the ramen buns pictured in the post.  I learned the hard way that in order to make this work, you have to cut them before cooking them.  You really want to get that crust on the outside and it will be too difficult to cut them out without tearing them up, once you've got that crust.

Those are chicken burgers (hey, it's what I had) on the left, ramen buns on the right.

 

So that's all there really is to it.  Once you've crisped up the outside of all of the buns, it's no different than making burgers of any kind.  Here's what we ended up with:

                                  

 

 So what's my review of the ramen burger????

Sorry to disappoint you, but ramen noodles are the most tragic thing to happen to the burger since tofu!  I personally thought it was atrocious. The taste of those noodles in any form other than soup was just off to me.  I didn't like the flavor that the crispy, browned parts took on, and I found the texture of soft cooked noodles on the inside abhorrent!  I, along with 2 of my children, have sensitivities to texture, so I may be more discriminating than most in that department.

Anyway, they looked cool, and we get to say that we tried them, but when it boils down to finding something to cook with two fridge/pantry staples, you'd be better off utilizing your ground meat for tacos or something similarly simple.  If you're really in a pinch, I'd say to just revisit the college days by falling back on el cheapo and have the soup.  You could always fancy it up by tossing in some fresh cilantro, Thai basil, some sesame or chili oil and calling it a poor girl's pho.  Now that's classy for $.25 per person!  I actually did that several times during my last pregnancy. 

I will say that the actual burgers pictured were fantastic!  I should've written down what I put in them, but as I mentioned before, many kids, chaos, quick fix, etc.  I do know that I would've added copious amounts of garlic, and I do recall a bit of milk soaked bread (like my grandmother made her meatballs), and some Asian flavors.  Maybe I will try it again and take notes to share.  Either way, the chicken burgers will find their way back to the menu, the buns, however, will not.