Noodles in an instant when everything else is falling apart

Sometimes you don’t want to chop on onion. You want to tear open a packet of noodles that come with three instructions and don’t ask you questions like “Are you going to be hitting your KPIs this month?”

Waiting patiently in the back of your cupboard when you need them at the end of the month, the end of your tether, or the end of a particularly humiliating day. Comfort food for people who are too tired to make comfort food. Something warm. Something salty. Low input. High reward.

We’ve come a long way from the Pot Noodles and Super Noodles preferred in the 1990s and early 2000s. Instant ramen noodles crept into the limelight after being marketed to the younger generation. Beige Super Noodles were an after school meal. You are Pot Noodle in your student kitchen that smelled like bin.

Then your mate’s “I only eat Shin Ramyun now” era started coinciding with their obsession with people eating at Japanese convenience stores. The insanely spicy Cabonara Buldak you tried to find in the shops for ages because you saw people eating on TikTok. The Parasite movie noodles. Your £5.99 artisanal ramen kit that now comes with a compostable sachet of broth and eco branding. Ocado’s sales of instant noodles have risen 50% year on year since 2023.

Throwback to 2002 marketing when Pot Noodle ads ran with the line “the slag of all snacks”, which featured blokes sneaking off to eat a Pot Noodle. Unsurprisingly they were banned from TV after receiving complaints.

The instant noodle is a rare meal that exists on each end of the spectrum of your emotional state. “I have £1.20 to my name and no will to cook” or “I actually ferment my own Korean cabbage now”.

East Asian brands like Indomie, Samyang, Shin Ramyun, Mama, Nongshim travelled across continents, cultures, and corner shops to become a key player in our pantries. Once you’ve enjoyed an Indomie with a sticky soy, hard-boiled egg, and shallot combo, it’s hard to go back to the pale, powdered chicken flavour pretending to be a meal. Making packet noodles is probably the closest some of us get to meditation. Follow the instructions. Switch off. Wait. Enlightenment (eat the noodles).

Noodles don’t ask you to be productive. They give you the option. They sit there soft, steaming, and uncomplicated and let you exist. Just broth, spice, and silence.

They’ve kept us going through deadlines, comedowns, breakups, fallouts, and quiet nights in after long, loud days. The kind of dinner you eat sitting on the floor in your towel, because you meant to shower but couldn’t face drying off yet.

Sometimes you don’t want dinner. You want spice, salt and no decisions. Stop spiralling! You’re eating noodles. Good job.