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Cup Ramen, known to Westerners as “Grade A college student feed,” is perfectly formulated with enough sodium and other preservatives to both fuel late-night study sessions and cure massive hangovers, but nobody’s ever accused it of being a gourmet food.

We decided it was time to change that to bring the magical stomach filling goodness of Cup Ramen to a more mature palate. We took the shrimp, logic-defying dry meat cubes, powder and noodles from a bunch of chili shrimp-flavored Pioneer brand Cup Ramen to make a selection of restaurant-worthy dishes. Here’s how:

(You’re going to need 15 entire cups of noodles for these recipes, but we promise it’s worth the strange looks you’ll get in the grocery checkout lane.)

  • Chili Shrimp

We’ll use the Cup Ramen’s weird, dried out mutant chili to make this ubiquitous Chinese take-out treat, otherwise known as “ebi chili” here in Japan. Add a little water to bring those suckers back to life, mix with a little flour and fry. Add some onions, seasonings and you’re basically done.

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  • Processed Meat Block Hamburg Steak

Take those school lunch-grade meat cubes and mush them together. Add some thin-cut chives, flour, eggs and mix. Pat them into ovals and grill them up. The meat cubes have already been cooked at the Cup Ramen plant using some futuristic method we probably don’t want to know about, so just enough to heat is fine. Ta-daa!

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  • Chinese Style Yakisoba

Fry some pork, mushrooms, peppers and spinach. Whip up some soup from the Cup Ramen powder and throw it in. Add soy and some flour to thicken. Now heat up the ramen noodles in a pan and combine. Would you look at that; thrown on a plate it actually looks pretty good, even if we say so ourselves!

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The verdict:

Beautiful! You wouldn’t even know these mouth-watering dishes were made from preservative-laden bachelor chow. While still preservative-laden, the finished products were dead-ringers for their from-scratch counterparts. Delicious!

And since everything is (technically) edible right out of the cup, you don’t have to worry about under-cooking any of the ingredients. What more could you ask for!?

This one is absolutely another hit from the RocketNews24 Chef’s Lab. Be sure to check back to see what other outrageous concoctions we come up with.

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▼ All hail the mighty Cup Noodle!
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[ Read in Japanese ]