#did i accidentally add so much 2x spicy buldak hot sauce to my food and proceed to eat a huge bite without letting at cool and almost choke

[playingplayer2]

I'm very sorry but if you don't like spicy food we can't be friends almost everything I cook is spicy and giving homemade food is my love language

If you can't eat spicy food bc of, like, ibs or ibd then you're okay but you're on thin ice lmfao

[shoelace-and-friends]

Buldak Bokkeum Myun (Korean fire noodle) review: Mala, Cheese, Jjajang, Stew type

I’m half Korean, I like spicy foods. Hot wings? Fuck yeah. Hot cheetos? Fuck yeah.  Hot sauce on everything? Fuck yeah. Hot salsa? Fuck yeah. Jalapeño slices? Fuck yeah. 

So I decided I wanted to try fire noodles to see how well I could handle them. I bought every flavor except for the ice/cold stir type (which is only for sale in the summer, and thus not currently available). 

Anyway spoiler alert...they are at a completely different level. 

Mala type 

This is the first one that I’ve tried. I initially bought this one accidentally mistaking it for the original version. Anyway, out of the four that I’ve tried so far, this is probably the only one that I didn’t really care for. I guess I’m just not really a fan of the flavor of the mala spice mix. I didn’t really even get much of a sichuan vibe off of it. If anything, it kind of had like a taco spice mix quality to me that I thought was weird for a ramyun. It didn’t taste good on the eggs I added in either. 

Also spice level wise, this one was the hardest for me so far. I was sort of fucked from the beginning since I realized that my milk had expired at the time, and therefor I had nothing to drink with it. My first bite made me cough. This stuff was making my nose run like crazy and shit. Shit kinda hurted actually.... 

Tbh, I ended up not eating very much of this one before just throwing out the rest. Not just because it was hard to handle the spicy, but also just because I didn’t like the flavor anyway.

However, in Mala’s defense, I accidentally skipped the last step of the cooking process. After boiling, you are supposed to stir-fry the noodles. I forgot to do that part. It might’ve been more tasty if I did that but...I doubt it would’ve helped the flavor much. 

Cheese type 

This one was a HUGE step up from the mala flavor, and is probably my favorite so far. First off, the heat on this one was a lot more bearable than the mala one. It was still spicy, but it wasn’t to the point that it was difficult to consume. To my understanding, this is basically the standard fire noodles, but with an additional cheese powder you add in while you are stir-frying it in the pan. There wasn’t very much cheese powder though,and I also read online reviews saying that you can’t taste the cheese very much. So I added and mixed in just a bit of shredded cheddar cheese to give it a little extra cheesiness. That probably made the noodles a bit more mild, but I didn’t add that much. Stir-frying the noodles gave it a nice final touch. I stir-fried some egg in with it which made it even more delicious. 

Anyway, this was very tasty and delicious, and one I can see myself regularly buying. I finished the entire bowl with no problem. 

Jjajang type 

For those of you who do not know, jjajang is the sauce that goes on jjajangmyun, or korean black bean noodles. Jjajangmyun has a very savory and sweet flavor, and I also happen to really like it. Jjajangmyun happens to be one of my favorite foods. 

However, the fire noodle version is most certainly not your typical jjajangmyun. I was frankly surprised. When I finished making it, it looked just like an ordinary jjajangmyun, with its dark brown coloration of the sauce on the noodles. If it weren’t for the spicy smell lingering from it, I probably would not have been able to tell the difference. 

I read online that this version has the lowest number of scoville units of all the fire noodles. Also, jjajangmyun is supposed to be sweet. I was expecting this to be sort of a less offensive, sweet-and-spicy noodle. 

...Anyway, it was not. This thing is almost entirely spice. The sweetness of the jjajang was there, but it was very subtle in comparison. I could not finish it, but I did eat like 2/3rds of it before giving up, so that’s something I guess. It was good actually, just still freaking spicy. I drank a lot of strawberry milk with this. The spice level was not as bad as mala was though. 

I still have two packs of this flavor left. If I make this again,  think next time I’ll also add in some Chapagetti flavoring packets (a brand of regular instant jjajangmyun) and maybe some oyster sauce to balance out the spice more, to give it more of the jjajang taste. 

The looks of the jjajang fire noodles are very deceiving. So long as they have a weak sense of smell, you could probably prank a friend by convincing them this is regular jjajangmyun. 

Stew type

The stew type fire noodles are prepared in a different way than all the others. The others have you boil them, drain out the water, and then add the sauce and stir-fry.  The stew type only requires boiling, with no draining of the water so that you get a nice, spicy broth. 

When I prepared the broth, it was this deep, dark, bright, nuclear, devilish, UNGODLY red color, which intimidated me. Knowing how hot fire noodles could get and that this was one of the ones that supposedly had a higher number of scoville units, ...I added 3 slices of american cheese (and some egg) and let them melt into the broth to try to make it a bit milder. 

What resulted was a rather thick broth that even with the cheese, still had a very bright reddish-orange color. 

Eating it was actually not that hard. There was still a little bit of a kick, ...though not that bad of one. I think I may have judged the broth by its color and overestimated how spicy this version would be. I kind of wished I only added one or two slices of cheese instead of three. 

Adding too much cheese to the broth brought the spice level of this one down to maybe the level of Jin or Shin ramyun (two other Korean ramyun brands known for being spicy, but not nearly as spicy as fire noodles), if not milder. This one was a bit of a disappointment, but that may have been my own fault. At least it was still a very tasty disappointment. 

Maybe someday, I’ll try this one again and see how well I could survive it before modifying it. 

I still have the original, 2x spicy, carbo(nara), and curry types at home with me to try yet. 

Hopefully, I can survive those and get those reviews on my blog as well. Ngl I am fucking scared though, I thought I was someone who could handle spicy foods fairly well, but clearly my white half is completely nerfing me here. (In my defense though...fire noodles are hard to eat for a lot of full Koreans as well)

Anyway fully white folks, don’t try these at home lmao.