1) Crunched up and dry with a small amount of seasoning. It's a lot better tasting than it sounds.

2) In soup form with leftover chicken & possibly shredded cheese.

3) Add some crunch to that salad. At a friends I had an Asian style salad with Ramen bits. The Ramen + ginger dressing made my day.

Many ideas can be adapted for the trail but its nice to hear them all. How do you like your Ramen?

I buy those miso soup packets and use them instead of the MSG-filled soup base that is provided.

cold rehydrated with some oil based salad dressing.

Cooked and drained, then pan fried into Lo Mein :-)

almond butter and hot sauce!!

With freeze-dried onion, garlic powder, dried chili, soy sauce, Justin's peanut butter, and a generous squirt of black sesame oil. Discard the enclosed MSG and shmaltz packette, which isn't fit to eat.

>> I buy those miso soup packets...

Rats. I thought I was being original. I do this, too.

with some Knorr soup powder. I like either the cream of Spinach or French Onion. Makes it richer and you can change flavors. Also,I always bring a bit of extra virgin olive oil with me and dab it on everything...
Last time I brought along some Taco Bell hot sauce packets I picked up for free; pretty good

Miso soup still has quite a bit of naturally occuring MSG in it. Probably about as much as the ramen packets. Pretty much anything with "hydrolyzed ---- protein" listed in the ingredients, or any kind of fermented soy product like soy sauce or Miso will have lots of MSG. The only reason it's not added to the Miso in purified form and listed in the ingredients is because there's already so much in there naturally. It's used to give a savory, meaty flavor (called "umami") to foods.

MSG is just a version of the amino acid Glutamic acid, which is present in most protein. Eating any kind of meat or vegetable protein will result in the release of glutamic acid when the protein is digested. The problem is that eating food with pure MSG added to it results in a flood of glutamate in the bloodstream, which may not be very healthy. But there is considerable debate on whether typical food doses cause high enough concentrations to be harmful. there is evidence both ways.

The truly gross thing in the ramen packets is the amount of sodium. that's probably much worse for you than the MSG.

In my opinion, the soup base is much worse than miso soup because of the dehydration it causes. I'm pretty sure that the amount of MSG as well as sodium is much higher in the provided soup base packets.

Agreed on the Miso soup packets. I too was camping with them, then looked at the Nutri list:

WOW! "BAM!" "SWOOSH!"

Afraid my internal system would dry up and blow away before I got home!

I went to my local health food store, they had some wonderful vegi instant broth that was very low in sodium, fats, etc.

Great source for high quality-low Kcal chocolate powder to sprinkle on my meals for a nice cocoa flavor.

You don't have to use all the seasoning packet. I use about half of it but you may not need any of it depending on the recipe.

I use a low sodium all natural vegetable bouillon instead of the packets. Way tastier and way healthier ;-)

I just take Miso paste in a small snack bag. I always have bags of it in the fridge because we eat it a lot at home. Comes in red or white. It keeps pretty well. On Winter trips it will keep forever.

Actually, I prefer the Chow Mein noodle line put out by Nissin; they cook up really well as a FBC meal (better than Ramen), have less sodium than Ramen(600 vs 800 mg), and they come with two packets: one is the soup and the other contains dehydrated veggies and meat (beef, chicken, shrimp, etc.). Maruchan's Yakisoba is a similar product with even less sodium at 480 mg. One of either of these makes a meal for me!

When Nissin discontinued their baked ramen line this year (jerks!) I bought up the entire stock that the local Fred Meyers had. I had er...um...200?

I'll be eating till 2011..lol!

Sarah, next you go through Monroe, stop at the Grocery Outlet...they had some baked ramen that was not the Nissen brand. That is, if you think you might need more!

Oh yeah! The teriyaki yakisoba is really good!

I like mine as provided with some carrots, small strips of ham, and some green onion :)

At home I crush it into small pieces and put it in a baggie with chicken bullion and some dehydrated, cooked, turkey. Sometimes I add some "Just Veggies", mixed freeze dried vegetables.