Japanese Cold Ramen

For hot summer days, some of us crave for "cold" food to cool us down.  Japanese cold ramen is one of those foods.  I believe it is a Japanese version of Chinese cold noodle.  According to my husband who used to live in Japan for a few years, Japanese eateries serve this ramen noodle with ice cubes underneath the noodle on the serving plate.  I did it once at home, it was kind of interesting and unique.  Without the ice, it is still perfectly a good meal.

I have always use store bought cold ramen noodle kit package, they come in fresh noodle package located in the refrigerator section or dry cold ramen along with other dry ramens in most Asian markets.  There are a few fresh cold ramen Japanese brands but I only know of one dry cold ramen brand (see photos below).  Making the noodle sauce from scratch is actually quite easy - peanut sauce, hot sauce, or sweet vinegar sauce, and more.  I believe peanut sauce is more popular or well known compared to the others.  I will update this post once I have tried it myself.

Ingredients:

• 1 packet of dry cold ramen per serving, fresh refrigerated one comes in 3 servings
• decent amount of cucumber, thin strip cut
• decent amount of carrot, think strip cut
• decent amount of egg, thin omelet strip cut
• decent amount of ham or other cooked meat, thin strip cut 

fresh ramen in a package

dry ramen in a packet

Instruction:

1. Follow the package instruction on cooking the noodle, drain and rinse with cold or ice water, set aside in serving bowl
2. Nicely put the vegetables and meat on top of the noodle
3. Sprinkle the sauce over it, mix well before eating

Note: you can substitute other vegetables or meat as you wish, such as shiitake mushroom, beansprouts, etc.