Celebrating 45 years of instant noodles, Nissin rolled out a special cup noodle called Big Cup Noodle Mystery Meat Festival. If you've have the regular Cup Noodle from Japan, you get these little cubes of dehydrated ground pork with every cup. In the imagination, you're never quite sure what kind of meat it is, so mystery meat it is with every Internet rumour.
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| Mystery Meat 45 Anniversary Cup Noodle |
Anyhow, they loaded up these large size big cup noodles with 10 times the number of cubes of meat to celebrate this anniversary, playing along with the popular culture myth of mystery meat. When I went to Japan, I went looking for this as it was supposed to have been re-released in early November after selling out in September after the first release.
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| Very nice looking packaging with a big 45 on it. |
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| It is quite festive looking from the side view with colorful little figures climbing on cubes of meat. |
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| Back of the cup. |
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| Lid |
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| Once you peel the lid back you can tell it is full of the meat cubes. That's a lot of meat! |
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| I poured in hot water and waited the three minutes for the noodles to rehydrate. |
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| The top of the noodles was just covered in meat cubes. The was a great aroma of soy broth and the meat cubes in the air when I peeled the lid back. |
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| One of the things I did was really mix up the noodles and meat as I wanted to make sure that everything was hydrated. |
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| Finally I dug in and it was good. Tastes like a more intense, meaty version of their regular cup noodle and I think there were more green onions added too. |
I'm glad I managed to find this special cup noodle. It was just fluke I was in Japan when they were out, but it was still a bit of a search. I managed to find it most consistently at Lawson convenience stores, but only a few at time as I think it was still pretty popular. Other convenience stores don't seem to stock these special noodles as much. For 205 yen (around $2) it was a cheap souvenir.
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