Boy oh boy, do I love ramyan! That's "ramen" to you Occidentals. Ramyan could be the basis for one of the first-politically charged opinions I've ever had in my life. Having grown up with Top Ramen, my first encounter with Smack Ramen was characterized by contempt and mocking disdain. What the hell kind of name is "Smack Ramen" anyway? To a little kid, unwise in the ways of the world, it sounded preposterous, and Top Ramen reigned supreme. Now that I know of the "Engrish" phenomenon I wonder if they meant "lip-smacking ramen" or something, and if it wasn't actually therefore more authentic than the noodle I'd known. It's a question for the philosophers, since they can't get real jobs and therefore may only afford ramen. As for me, I've discovered a better way and I haven't turned back.

Recipies:

In a hot pot (traditional) or saucepan, boil the ramen noodles in hot water. After they're soft dump in the flavor packet, stir them up a bit, then drop in the raw egg and stir up more.

Turn off the heat source and dump in the can of soup. I suggest starting with beef stew or cream of mushroom, but you may explore other varieties of soup to mix, such as vegetable soup.

Serve with the cheese melting across it. For some reason, a slice of American processed cheese is not terrible with this, provided it has sufficiently melted.

Season to taste with Louisiana hot sauce (traditional, with American single), Tabasco, or Sriracha.

I created this dish while stationed in South Korea. The barracks were a ten-minute walk from post, plus another ten minutes to the Commisary, so we tended to stock up on food. Every room had its own dorm fridge, too, so this helped things. Buying a case of ramen was of course the biggest bang for your buck, but you can get pretty sick of it regardless of what flavors ir purports to come in, so I began experimenting with dumping other food into it. Apocalypse Stew (so-named because it would probably be the easiest food to forage and assemble after a nuclear holocaust) is just the first recipe I created with this technique. The variations practically write themselves: frozen vegetables, leftovers from whatever restaurants, etc. It's a kind of Stone Soup, except you start with ramen. It should be very popular with college students since, properly constructed, it's a very cheap lazy food to make and can be pretty nutrient-dense: the height of efficiency. Frequently your food combinations will look like shit, but it's almost always delicious and satisfying, honestly.

Boil two packets of ramen noodles in hot water with a few splashes of seasoned wok oil. Once the noodles are soft dump in the flavor packets and give 'em a stir.

When they're very done, dump in one half of a pouch of frozen spinach; stir to distribute, and cover the saucepan. Cut the heat to low/medium.

While the spinach is cooking oil up a castiron skillet with wok/olive oil and 1/8 stick of butter. Crack four eggs and cover the skillet with them. Cook them to a decent layer, breaking the yolks, sprinkle with garlic salt and then attempt to flip the whole mess. Don't worry, you're essentially making scrambled eggs, just less pretty.

Once you have a big eggy mess cooked nicely in the skillet, slice them all up with a pizza cutter for good measure and dump it all into the ramen (but only after you're sure the spinach is thawed and cooked).

Essentially, your dish is done and you can serve and eat it like so, and be content with that. It's not bad at all. However, in our advanced age of seasonings it would be a crime not to experiment with Sriracha, oyster sauce, and/or mayonnaise. Seriously, mayonnaise goes with this stuff like you wouldn't believe, and it serves as a great carrier for the hot sauce. Oyster sauce, on the other hand, leaves little room for improvement so probably you don't want to muddy it up with other seasonings.

I created this dish due to craving congee but not having any rice.

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