Burger Ramen
"It tastes like a cheeseburger with water on it."
DID YOU THINK YOU WERE SAFE FROM ME HERE? Normally you would be. But I had to be the one to make burger ramen. It was my calling. I was destined to bring this dish into the world.
Unfortunately, I succeeded.
Burger Ramen
By: Kyle Decker
Ace Attorney is a video game series with comical localization: specifically, it’ll just plaster American names over clearly Japanese items without actually changing them. For example, one character constantly mentions ramen in the original Japanese, which is changed to burgers in English. So it felt only natural to combine the two.
KYLE
So, we see this very tired wight with a blue suitcoat eating a bowl of burger ramen as he’s just waiting for the streetlight to go.
It turns out that ramen burgers are actually a thing? Like, a common thing? Which is weird to me, but apparently they taste good. But I’m not making ramen burgers.
I’m making burger ramen.
My main references were this Framed Cooks recipe, this Recipe Tin Eats recipe, and this Reddit post where the commenters insist that American cheese is the only cheese that belongs in ramen.
Gonna be honest, didn’t really use these recipes. I’m comfortable calling what I made today a Kyle Decker original. Not proud, but comfortable.
In the spirit of instant ramen, my goal with this recipe was to make something that was quick and cheap. So while you may argue that shallots and green onions are too fancy for this recipe, I’m going to argue that I already had them in my fridge.
I started by cooking the chopped shallot in olive oil on medium-high heat. I originally wanted to caramelize it, but 45 minutes at a minimum is way too long. So a quick 1-2 minute sauté until fragrant will do. I then added some ground beef and half a roma tomato (I have GERD, okay?), before changing the temperature to medium-low because I’m a coward and was afraid the beef would burn while I prepared the bacon.
We’re microwaving the bacon because even though it’s a sin, it’s fast and can be done while I’m preparing the rest of the recipe. So into the nuke box for four minutes it goes. Just gotta tuck it in to its paper towel bedding, first.
While the bacon “cooked,” I turned the beef pot back up to medium-high, cooked until brown, and transferred everything into a bowl. I then added water to the empty pot, both to save on dishes and to make a recipe that includes professional-sounding words like “emulsify.”
The emulsified water beef mix took slightly longer than usual to boil (probably because of the beef? Unsure), but once the water was boiling, I stuck in my instant ramen rafts and cooked like usual.
The bacon is done! Never microwave bacon.
Once everything was cooked, I added half of a seasoning packet to each bowl, as well as the meat and veggies. I decided to try two different ramen flavors to see which worked better: beef or soy sauce.
Can’t forget the cheese!
Beef was the clear winner. It actually tasted like a cheeseburger (thanks in large part to the overwhelming taste of American cheese - I probably could have gotten away with half a slice). My hope with the soy sauce was that it’d taste like a fusion of classic ramen and cheeseburger, but even when I added in the full packet of seasoning, it didn’t taste like a “fusion,” it just tasted like less burger. So beef wins.
But even so, something was missing. Something fundamental to cheeseburgers.
There we go.
Ketchup genuinely put this recipe together and I will DIE on this hill. It helped balance out the overwhelming cheese flavor, and once it was added, the burger ramen became a complete success! Just read these glowing reviews.
"It tastes like a cheeseburger with water on it."
-Emily Decker“It succeeds at what it sets out to do, and that’s the problem.”
-Kyle Decker“I don’t like thinking about it.”
-Hallie Koontz
That being said, there’s still room for improvement. Instead of going fancy with the green onion, just throwing in actual lettuce might have added some nice crunch. I also completely forgot to add garlic powder, and as a garlic lover, this shame will stay with me the rest of my life.
And all joking aside, I think this recipe is actually alright! It’s not something I would choose to make again, but it is something that I genuinely could imagine young kids loving.
The Actual Recipe
Prep Time: 10
Cook Time: 10
Servings: 2
Ingredients
[When possible, substitute these with cheaper options or whatever you already have in your pantry.]
2 packages beef-flavored ramen instant noodles
Ground Beef (4 oz/113 g)
4 slices bacon
Half an onion
1 Roma tomato
2 green onions
2 slices American cheese
Whatever stuff you like on a cheeseburger, in the amount that would be on a cheeseburger
Ketchup (to taste)
Cooking oil
Directions
Wash and dice onion, tomato, and green onions.
Sauté onion in a small drizzle of oil on high until fragrant.
Add beef.
After a few minutes, add tomato.
When done, place the beef mixture in a covered bowl and add water to the now-empty pan to emulsify.
Cook noodles according to package instructions in the emulsified pan.
Cook bacon in microwave on high for four minutes, covered on both sides by paper towel.
Chop up bacon.
Add 1 package beef flavoring to the ramen. Discard the other package.
Mix the onion, beef, tomato, bacon, and green onion into the ramen.
Place the finished mixture in two bowls, adding one slice of American cheese on top of each. Let stand for a minute or two so the cheese can trap the heat and ensure all the ingredients are warm [I have no idea if this is actually what happens].
After a few minutes, mix in the cheese.
Add ketchup, if you’re freaky.