Annie Chun's FreshPak Noodle Bowl: Miso Soup and Udon Soup

By: Tanya Taylor, PhD | Apr 27, 2006

Annie Chun's makes "All Natural Asian Cuisine" or "Gourmet Asian .... Made Easy." [website]. They are a small comany started by Annie Chun, of course, who is originally from Korea, but now resides in California. The products available include Ramen Noodles flavored with different typical Asian sauces, such as Chinese Chow Mein and Thai Peanut FreshPak Ramen Noodle; also there are Asian Noodles, such as Chow Mein Noodles and Hunan Rice Noodles; and there are also Soup Noodle Bowls, like the ones we reviewed, Miso Soup and Udon Soup. You can order products online, but I found the Annie Chun's Noodle Bowls in the local Kroger grocery store.

The soup mix comes in a large bowl, which is reuseable and recyclable - and I love it! Unlike other microwavable soups, you have to do a little work with this soup. The noodles, soup base and toppings, are each in a little individual package. Open the noodles first, add them to the bowl, then add some warm water, then drain this water. This loosens up the noodles. Then add the soup base, toppings and water, and microwave for 2 minutes. The packaging says 1 minute, but the soup didn't get hot enough (at least not in my cheap microwave).

I thought this product was very interesting, since, not only is it all natural, it's Asian soup, and it's like twice the size of the smaller soup cans. The noodles are not your normal limp soup noodles, but they are quite thick - maybe a little too big to fit on a regular tablespoon. The Miso soup had tofu and scallions. The tofu was in very small chunks and was quite tasty - even for a non-tofu eating person like me. The soup itself was flavorful, but I had to add salt - quite a bit of salt. I think I might have added too much water - okay, so I didn't measure out the exact amount like the directions said.

When I tried the Udon Soup, which has Bok Choy and Shiitake mushrooms, I made sure to add only 1 cup of water. This time, the soup didn't really NEED salt, but I still added a little, which improved the taste in my opinion. The Udon soup was much better tasting than the Miso soup, again in my opinion. It seemed to have more substance. The shiitake mushrooms were very tasty - don't be scared away if you've never had shiitake mushrooms before - the mushrooms in this soup didn't even look like typical mushrooms. The Bak Choy was cut up in very small pieces, and actually resembled the green onions.

The serving sizeis 1/2 of 1 bowl - you know how much I hate when they do this! So 1 bowl of the Miso soup has 220 calories, 2 grams of fat, 900 mg sodium (38% of the recommended daily amount), and 3 grams of protein. That's a lot of sodium! Overall, I would say that the taste of these soups were just okay. Like the packaging says though, you can really use these products as a base for a bigger meal. I love the fact that it is exotic, and has these unusual (to some) ingredients.

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