Cup Noodle’s Nissin creates a way to elevate your ramen, but it might be more hassle than it’s worth.

Like many people in Japan, and right around the world, we love our instant ramen — so much so that the makers of Cup Noodle know to get in touch with us whenever they have a new product in the pipeline, and that’s what they did recently when they sent a surprise parcel to our office.

P.K. Sanjun was tasked with the job of opening the box, and when he did he reeled back in surprise as there was a giant chicken head staring at him from inside.

Taking a second look, he realised this was the yellow head of the mascot character for Chicken Ramen, a super popular variety of instant ramen from Nissin, the makers of Cup Noodle.

P.K. has had his own head in the sand recently, being busy with other projects, so he had no idea what the chicken head was about. Scanning his inbox for the email from Nissin, he quickly learned that this was in fact a kitchen gadget called the Shirotama Maker.

This cleverly designed product allows you to make perfect “shirotama” (literally “white egg”), a popular ramen topping. Shirotama — a raw egg, cooked ever so slightly with the heat of the broth so that the yolk remains silky smooth and the albumen around it becomes white — is an essential component for any Chicken Ramen meal, as each chunk of ramen has a divot in the middle expressly for the egg, and this gadget is designed to control the drip of the boiling water in such a way that you get perfect results every time.

▼ When you add boiling water, it only hits the albumen, turning it white while leaving the yolk raw.

According to Nissin, this is an innovative world-first that took over a year to develop. It was created in response to customers who had expressed their disappointment at not being able to make their Chicken Ramen with shirotama that looked as good as the ones shown in commercials.

For now, the gadget is only being made available to 1,000 winners of a special lottery, so P.K. felt he was in a privileged position to try the Shirotama Maker. He immediately put it to the test to see if it would deliver on its promise to cook a perfect shirotama egg for his Chicken Ramen.

▼ Step One: Remove the top portion of the head and place your Chicken Ramen inside.

▼ Step Two: Drop the raw egg into the circular divot in the ramen.

▼ Place the top part of the head on the gadget.

▼ Remove the lid with the handle and pour in hot water.

▼ Close the head and wait for three minutes.

▼ After three minutes, remove the top portion of the head to reveal…

▼ …

▼ … your shirotama-topped ramen!

▼ However, this wasn’t quite the perfect shirotama P.K. had been hoping for.

It may have been a little different from what he’d imagined, but he couldn’t deny that it had turned the albumen beautifully white while keeping the yolk nice and supple.

▼ For perfection-seeking P.K., though, he felt as if he’d let the chicken mascot down with his poor kitchen skills.

If he’d taken a little more care with the placement of the ramen and yolk, he could’ve achieved a picture-perfect result, but the gadget did deliver on its promise to create a shirotama with very little effort.

▼ However, the effort saved in creating the egg was expended later on, in washing the gadget.

So if you’re lucky enough to win the lottery and receive the gadget, you’ll have a lot of fun using it, but if you aren’t one of the lucky winners, you don’t have to feel like you’ve lost anything. You may not have the gadget, but you can still create a respectable shirotama with a careful, slow pour of water on the egg white, and best of all, you won’t have four extra items to wash up afterwards.

Related: Shirotama Maker Lottery
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