I love the convenience of instant ramen. Pour over water, wait patiently, eat. That’s often great for a snack, but when you need a proper meal to keep you full for hours, it tends to fall short.
Making up new recipes that are quick, simple and easy is one of my favourite things to do and it’s exactly what I’ve done with Nissin Demae Ramen Chicken to turn it from a snack into a hearty and delicious meal.
Ingredients
- 100g pack of Nissin Demae Ramen Chicken
- 1 piece of chicken (any cut you like)
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1cm ginger root
- 1 carrot
- ¼ sweetheart cabbage
Method
- Season and cook your chicken to taste, then let it rest while you prepare the noodle soup (see notes below).
- Finely grate the garlic and ginger, then add to a small saucepan with the seasoning and sesame oil from the noodle packet.
- Add 500ml of water and bring to a boil.
- Meanwhile, wash and chop the cabbage. Peel the carrot and continue using the vegetable peeler to create long thin ribbons of carrot.
- Add the dried noodles, cabbage and carrot to the boiling saucepan. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes, gently stirring the vegetables through the noodles as they soften.
- Cut the rested chicken into bitesize strips or chunks.
- Pour noodle soup from the saucepan into a large noodle bowl, top with the chicken, and enjoy!
Tips on Making the Best Chicken Ramen
Just a few extra tips and tricks that I use to make the best tasting ramen ever.
Choosing Your Chicken
You have a few options when it comes to your protein source for this meal:
- Chicken breast: this cut can often be quite dry once it’s finished cooking… however it will be drenched in the broth of this soup, so it’s a decent choice.
- Chicken thigh: always the best flavour in my opinion. I’d recommend 2 chicken thighs per person for this recipe.
- Pre-cooked chicken: turns this 15 to 25-minute recipe into a 4-minute recipe. Solid choice if you hate cooking.
- Bone-in chicken: if you aren’t in a rush, definitely get chicken on the bone and roast it slow in the oven. The meat will taste so much better.
- Skin-on chicken (recommended): adding a layer of crispy chicken skin really elevates the meal by adding some much-needed texture.
When taking photos for this recipe, I used a chicken leg (thigh and drumstick combined), seasoned generously with sea salt and black pepper, then roasted for 30 minutes in a 190°C fan oven. This resulted in beautifully tender meat and crispy skin.
I only used half the meat for this recipe.
Vegetable Tips
The ginger and garlic add so much depth to the noodle broth so don’t skip them! I use a cheesegrater but you can chop them very finely instead.
I cut the cabbage quite thickly – around 1cm strips. It softens very fast so if you go too small it will almost disintegrate.
Conversely, the carrot needs to be cut as thin as possible. I put firm pressure down on my vegetable peeler and drag it down the length of the carrot to get a long ribbon that’s approximately 1mm to 2mm thick. If your carrot is any thicker, it won’t soften in time.
Price Breakdown
Nissin Demae Ramen Chicken is notoriously cheap. Here’s a breakdown of the costs I paid (accurate as of March 2026 in my local Morrisons supermarket):
- Noodle packet – £0.75
- 1 carrot – £0.09 (from a 1kg bag at £0.69)
- ¼ sweetheart cabbage – £0.19 (from a single cabbage at £0.75)
- ½ chicken leg – £0.46 (from a pack of 4 at £3.65)
- 2 cloves garlic – £0.04 (from a pack of 4 bulbs at £0.87)
- 1cm ginger root – £0.15 (from a pack of 125g at £1.55)
So the total cost of everything that went into my bowl was £1.68.
Even if you buy all the ingredients in the full-size packets (as I did), the total you’ll spend is £8.26… and you’ll have so much leftover for other meals in the week.
Finding Flow in Food
If you want to reduce the resistance of your food, the key is to choose ingredients that are seasonal and grown locally to you. Here in the UK, the garlic, carrots and cabbage can be sourced from UK growers at the supermarket. You can even try growing them yourself (see my guide to growing garlic to start). Ginger can be grown at home too, though it won’t thrive as well in our climate.
The noodles are the only part of this meal that carry some resistance from being imported.
However, a huge part of finding flow in food is also about listening to your body and intuition. Flow is found by navigating resistance optimally, not always by avoiding it entirely. So sometimes having a delicious and warming experience by eating these Nissin Demae Ramen Chicken noodles is worth that extra resistance.
If you find this interesting, you can learn more about flow and resistance in The Navigation Codex.
