[30 Day Challenge] Something Ridiculous

Random Observation/Comment #389: Sometimes the creativity and bizarre combinations going into food will make it more appealing for people to try. Other times, you’re just freaking weird.

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Recipe: Something ridiculous – Ramen burger

DSC_0919Luckily, the ramen burger was one of those things that everyone saw and had to try.  I totally made up most of the recipe. The only thing I learned from the advice in the recipe was that I needed to cook the ramen first and add some egg to make it stick together into a bun. After that, I just used whatever I had with the meal to make it work.  For example, because I had extra stuffing, I mixed some stuffing into the cooked ramen. Then, I added egg and separated into little mini bowls. These mini bowls were stacked on top of each other as to flatten the amount of ramen into a bun shape.

The hamburger meat recipe I followed used some of the lemon garlic parsley butter, a bit of pepper jack diced cheese (that I learned from making meatballs), and some cayenne pepper.  When cooking, I cooked the two “buns” first with lots of oil to keep the outside crispy. After the first flip, I added the meat patty . Once the noodle buns were done, I flipped the burger and covered for a minute. The noodles took around 3 minutes on each side to brown and become crispy.  I just added a bit of cheese and ketchup to complete the whole thing.

Lessons Learned:

  • Mix the ramen, stuffing, and egg separately. I imagine putting it all together first will give an uneven number of eggs in each bun. 1 ramen packet was used for every 3 buns.
  • Definitely have bowls to flatten the ramen while it’s in the fridge, but don’t press too hard or else it will break it up into pieces. Add saran wrap to make sure this doesn’t happen.
  • Flatten the ramen so you have a thin crispy layer. Sometimes a ramen bun that’s too thick will have some inconsistent textures in the middle.
  • When cooking the burger, make sure to give it a concave shape (so it doesn’t look like a contact lens). The center will naturally bulge up during the cooking process and make the whole thing flat, rather than having a smaller center surface area being cooked and edges neglected.
  • I consider the thinner burgers and buns easier to cook. In fact, I would be interested in making a large ramen burger the size of a pancake. This would probably help with serving it since making 4 separate burgers and cutting them into quarters for everyone to try as an appetizer was a little annoying.

Final Thoughts:

DSC_0998My Mom watched me make this for the first time and she kept asking me “What are you doing?” I had to answer with “It’s a secret”, even though I really had no idea what I was doing.  Alas, it turned out rather edible and a great story for all those who tried it. I think having one of these whole by myself would certainly be a meal and a half, but as an appetizer – it was pretty interesting. I’d be curious to see how to make them more bite sized without adding too much more work to the whole process.

~See Lemons Eat Ramen Burger