Ming Tsai Blue Ginger Ramen Noodle Bowl

By: Tanya Taylor, PhD | Mar 29, 2007

Ming Tsai is a world renowned chef who has hosted shows on the Food Network and now has show on PBS called Simply Ming. He opened his first restaurant, Blue Ginger, in Wellesley, MA in 1998 and since then, both he and his restaurant have won numerous accolades. In 2000, he launched a line of Asian ready-to-eat foods available at Target stores everywhere, and in 2006, the brand was extended.

I am sure many of the products in this line taste great, but the only one I have tried so far is the Ming Tsai Blue Ginger Ramen Noodle Bowl and it is horrendous! So many problems - where do I start - the taste, the ingredients or the nutrition?! Let's start with a product description. From the package: a ramen noodle bowl; chicken flavor with vegetables and shiitake mushrooms. Please don't believe the hype! This is a ramen noodle bowl and nothing but ramen noodles. The 3 little pieces of dried up veggies, carrots, things that shouldn't even be referred to as vegetables, are nothing to brag about. The shiitake mushrooms? Please don't tell me you are referring to those 3 small, dark brown, rubbery things I saw floating around in the bowl of soup. as for the carrots - I'm sure they were once carrots in a former life, before you chopped them up into super tiny pieces and dried the life and the taste out of them - leaving small orange-ish rubber blobs.

The taste: tastes like ramen noodles gone bad. There is a flavor that I just can't describe. It is like the soy sauce lingers on my taste buds and the smell (of soy sauce) permeates my nostrils every time I go to drink some of the soup. Unpleasant.

The nutrition: Lord have mercy - I am just drinking salt water - 73% of the recommended daily amount for sodium?! Geez - my blood pressure might be going up as I type this. 350 calories, 9 grams of total fat which is 9% of the RDA and 22% of the RDA for saturated fat, along with 61 grams of total carbohydrates.

Ming Tsai - I haven't had ramen noodles in years - ever since I actually took a look at the nutrition facts of Nissin Cup of Noodle Soup [read the dietTrash review]. I can't imagine why you would want your name associated with not only ramen noodles, but with a product that manages to make one of the easiest things in the world to make - taste disgusting! I would have been better off buying the cheap ramen noodles, than paying for this - although I'm not sure how much it costs because it was sent to me by my aunt.

I have a serious headache now, and I think it might be from salt overload. I didn't finish this bowl or soup, and I suggest that you think twice before you get this. I much prefer Annie Chun's FreshPak Noodle Bowl: Miso Soup and Udon Soup.

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