Ramen Mom’s Mazemen

There really isn’t much art to making mazemen (mixed noodles). It’s so easy with such basic ingredients its almost guaranteed to taste good. Bon Appetit posted their kimchi, bacon and poached egg version recently which got my taste buds salivating for some. I had everything on hand and invited my number one critic my mom as the noodle taster. I didn’t follow the recipe and instead relied on the seasonings I use to make fried rice. I didn’t have fresh ramen noodles so I cheated and used the frozen Sun Noodle packet instead. I boiled the noodles per instruction, drained and rinsed in cold water. In the meantime I fried up bits of bacon (helpful hint use kitchen scissors to snip the bacon. Works better than a knife) and set the crispy bacon aside. Then with the bacon fat already in the pan I added some cut up kimchi along with some of the reserved juice and cooked until soft for a few minutes. In another frying pan I made a sunnnyside egg making sure that the yolk wasn’t firm. Need the oozy yolk to mix in to the noodles afterwards. The best part of the dish in my opinion. Then I added the bacon to the pan along with the noodles and mixed it up. This is where I just eyeballed the seasonings adding a dash of fish sauce (I like Red Boat no sugar added to it), mirin (rice wine), rice vinegar, sesame oil, tamari (you can use soy sauce if you like). Chop up lots of green onions and add to the noodles and mix it up. Save some of the onions for garnish if you like and add some kimchi to the noodles afterwards for some crunch. This dish is positively divine and my mom agreed that it was very tasty. She suggested that I reserve some of the noodles to make extra crispy and then put the mazemen on top. Great idea! I made some for ramen boy as a quick lunch but since he is such a picky eater I used extra bacon and scrambled egg instead. Same seasonings but I added sirarcha as an extra kick. He’s picky but he likes spicy. Go figure. I think this would be a perfect pre-race carbo loading dinner I will have to consider making this again in the future. For me this time.