I’ve been on a mission to transform a handful of my go-to “struggle meals” into something that feels and tastes more elevated — without breaking the bank, of course. Thus far, I’ve conquered the humble, often-overlooked canned soup, along with dinosaur chicken nuggets (a playful addition to any plate) and slabs of frozen pizza (the ultimate weeknight shortcut). My latest target is instant ramen, which remains a beloved pantry staple.

My earliest memories of slurping those warm, squiggly noodles are from sick days spent nestled under the sheets in my childhood bedroom. A warm bowl of my mother’s homemade soup, complete with a pack of instant noodles bathed in a gingery collagen-rich bone broth and topped with fresh corn, bok choy and a soft-boiled egg, was medicine. It had the power to soothe the roughest of sore throats and quiet the phlegmiest of coughs. It was also nourishing and deliciously comforting.

Throughout college, packs of instant ramen and cup noodles provided sustenance for long nights spent with the textbooks. Wet noodles and seasoned water were quick and satisfying. It was also cheap and pretty darn reliable. If I felt like putting in a bit of effort, I’d throw in a fried egg, edamame and a few dashes of hot sauce.

I’ve since upgraded my instant ramen game, playing around with different proteins, fresh vegetables, seasonings and toppings. It doesn’t take much to zhuzh up instant ramen into a genuinely good meal. My no-fail formula is as follows: noodles + your choice of protein(s) + your choice of veggies + seasoning packet + dry toppings. I’d also argue that loading up your ramen with as many vegetables as possible, namely leafy greens, is a great way to enjoy your favorite fresh produce, stress-free. What you’re left with is a colorful and hearty meal born from something so simple and nostalgic.

This is just one of many recipes I like to make when I’m craving a big bowl of noodles. I like to enjoy my noods in soup form, but you can also follow this step-by-step process for stir-fried noodles. Just drain any liquid, then cook your favorite ingredients and sauce with your choice of noodles.

The texture of your noodles is key

Arguably, the most important part of making instant ramen is choosing your noodles. Do you prefer your noodles long and thin? Or are you craving something thicker and chewier?

I grew up on Maruchan’s chicken flavor ramen noodles, which are my go-to for making soups. I also love the shrimp flavor. Open my pantry and you’ll see a glorious sight of orange and pink packets lining the middle shelf.

Nongshim Shin Ramyun is another one of my favorites, as the noodles are made to be enjoyed in a spicy soup. The noodles are springy and dense, meaning they hold their shape nicely when soaked in broth and have a nice chew.

Maruchan’s noodles, while chewy, are softer and more delicate. Cook them for longer than three minutes and they become mushy and clumpy. It’s not incredibly worrisome, just something to be mindful about when making your soup.

There are truly so many ramen brands to choose from. Sapporo Ichiban’s Tonkotsu Ramen, Nissin’s Top Ramen and Buldak’s line of spicy ramen are also stellar.

Know your flavor packet

That foil packet tucked neatly with your dry noodles is meant to be used, not discarded. I don’t care if it contains added MSG and holds a laundry list of seasonings you can’t pronounce. It’s a necessity. So please, familiarize yourself with it and use it. All of it.

Maruchan noodles come with one flavor packet. Whether your team chicken, shrimp, or beef, the individual packets are highly concentrated and on the saltier side. That strong flavor coats the noodles and produces a delicious, equally concentrated broth.

Nongshim Shin Ramyun, on the other hand, contains two flavor packets, including a dry seasoning powder (the soup base) and a packet of dehydrated vegetable flakes. The dry powder is more umami-heavy with notes of garlic and shiitake mushrooms and spicy, courtesy of gochugaru, or Korean red chili pepper.

Knowing your flavor packets will help you determine what complementary spices and condiments to add. For a hint of brightness, throw in lemon juice or dried citrus peel. For more heat, add a spoon of chili crisp and finely chopped green chilis. For an earthy, curry-inspired bowl of soup, sprinkle in a pinch of cumin and coriander or add in a few drops of toasted sesame oil.

Set your noodles aside

To prevent your noodles from overcooking and clumping, I prefer cooking them al dente (which is usually one minute less than the cooking time on the packet), removing them from the stove and then rinsing them under cold water for a few seconds. Set the boiled noodles aside in a clean bowl. They’ll be warm and brought back to life shortly when rich, warm broth is poured.

Ditch the starchy water and use chicken or vegetable stock

Yes, you can build your soup base from the water used to cook your noodles, but I prefer starting from scratch with chicken or vegetable stock, which adds richness and depth. Since I like to use all of my seasoning packets, I opt for unsalted or low-sodium stock.

Don’t skip the aromatics

Garlic, ginger and green onions — ingredients that will transform a bowl of ramen from simple to restaurant-quality. Sauté your choice of aromatics in oil until fragrant before adding the stock.

Umami is essential

Pour in a dash of soy sauce or fish sauce. Add a tablespoon of miso paste. Simmer dried shiitake mushrooms.

For a simpler option, sprinkle in a pre-made umami spice blend. My favorite is TJ’s Mushroom & Company Multipurpose Umami Seasoning Blend.

Throw in all the toppings…even if it’s not authentic

I like sprucing up my ramen with fresh bok choy, baby corn, spinach and pickled red onions. Go crazy with your leafy greens. Add in any veggies that need to be used up. Make things tangy and controversial with pickles. For dry toppings, I like nori sheets.

Finish with a jammy egg

Need I say more? Once the broth has been poured over the noodles and the toppings have been added, complete your glorious bowl with a soft-boiled egg. A fried egg is also great if you’re not a fan of a runny yolk.

The post How to upgrade instant ramen into a genuinely good meal appeared first on Salon.com.

This Guacamole recipe is balanced and refreshingly simple, and it always gets compliments from whomever tries it! Ripe avocados, onions, cilantro, lime, salt, and jalapeño are all you need. Our Go-To Guacamole Recipe  Guacamole is one of those recipes that confused me for years. I was young and naive, and for some reason, I was […]

Like embellished denim and indie sleaze, frozen yogurt is back. 

The signs of the froyo renaissance are everywhere. First, like any food trend worth its mettle, acquiring the treat at a hip purveyor might include a long line. In New York City, wait times could be upward of an hour and might include hairstyling or a DJ while you cool your heels. Meanwhile, ice cream upstarts like Van Leeuwen have started introducing their own froyo offerings. And then there are the many wellness influencers freezing their beloved yogurt at home with a few dollops of chocolate or peanut butter for a DIY “indulgence.”

The third wave of froyo resembles the previous crazes in one key way: The dessert is still marketed and perceived as a healthier choice than other treats. Every time it comes out of hibernation, frozen yogurt has revealed something about the diet culture of the moment, and this resurgence is no different.

This go-round, the emphasis is on froyo’s super ingredients — namely, the probiotics and protein in each bite. Mythos Greek Frozen Yogurt, for instance, promises “godly probiotics in every bite…supporting gut health and overall wellness,” as well as “prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics, and enzymes to support your digestive, metabolic, mental, and cognitive health.” It’s all about highlighting what the treat does have, whereas previous froyo fads differentiated the dessert by underscoring what it lacked, namely: fat, lots of calories. 

On the surface, today’s wellness culture focuses on being additive as opposed to depriving yourself and counting calories, which we saw in previous iterations. The idea is balance: balanced diet, balanced gut. The word “holistic” gets thrown around a lot. But the same motivation — a desire for thinness — underpins it, even if the language has become less explicit. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing in every swirl of the latest froyo renaissance. 

Where froyo went and why it came back

Liz Moskow, who predicts food trends as a principal at consultancy Bread and Circus, didn’t have to strain her third eye to foresee the resurgence of frozen yogurt. “The buzzwords in the wellness realm — longevity, gut health, bone health, high protein — all lead back to yogurt,” she told Vox. She described frozen yogurt in particular as “that permissible indulgent way to get more protein in a dessert moment.”

Frozen yogurt first took off in the 1980s, as Americans obsessed over health and exercise — including President Ronald Reagan, who set up a gym at the White House. It was the heyday of fitness stars like Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons. The treat promised all the enjoyment of “naughty” frozen desserts, like ice cream, without the fat. Imagine: a guilty pleasure sans guilt. TCBY (full name: The Country’s Best Yogurt) was the standard bearer of the era. 

But the collapse of the low-fat diet trend, and consumers’ desire for overall low-calorie treats as opposed to just low-fat ones, brought an end to froyo’s first wave. “When you remove fat, you have to add flavor, typically with sugar,” Moskow said. Froyo’s status as the healthy alternative lost credibility once overall calorie counts came into play.

When froyo reemerged in the 2000s and broke wide in the early 2010s, tabloids and Tumblr were awash in a toxic sea of body shaming. This time, the flavor du jour was “tart,” which played up the natural taste of the yogurt and gave it another veneer of health. After all, it wasn’t sweet and rich like ice cream. At destinations like Pinkberry and Menchies, you self-served your yogurt and piled on toppings from a well-stocked buffet of options. And sure, you could opt for a mountain of fresh fruit, but you could also select gummy bears, Reese’s Pieces, and other confections. So, yet again, froyo receded “when vilification of sugar started happening,” Moskow said.

And now, we’re back in the ring with froyo for another round, amid an intense cultural focus on GLP-1s, proteinmaxxing, and gut health. This time, there are a lot of scientific terms getting thrown around. The website for Culture An American Yogurt Company, which has two outposts in New York City, cites the World Health Organization and Harvard Medical School to vaunt the benefits of its probiotic cultures and names the specific bacteria strains they use (Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium lactis, in case you were curious). The toppings on offer at many of these shops — fresh fruit, manuka honey, organic dates, and granola — also provide a halo of health. They seem “better for you, and even a little more posh,” Moskow said. 

While probiotics definitely take center stage this time, other ingredients are also getting their moment. For example, Meli Frozen Yogurt, in Miami Shores, promises six grams of protein per serving (and “zero regrets”). Yogurt Club in Manhattan briefly sold a banana milk-flavored froyo with collagen, which the company claimed in a social media post “improves skin/nail/hair health.” 

Will eating froyo actually improve your digestive tract and confer all of these other health benefits? It depends. Dietary probiotics are generally good for you, and yogurt with live cultures is considered a high-quality source. But it’s not clear if having froyo every so often will do a ton for your microbiome. (Poppi, a soda that promised it was “gut healthy,” settled a lawsuit last year; the plaintiffs argued that the company improperly labeled and marketed its products, and that merely drinking one can wouldn’t benefit the gut.) As for collagen, however, studies about its effectiveness when ingested have been inconclusive or simply haven’t occurred. “There isn’t enough proof that taking collagen pills or consuming collagen drinks will make a difference in skin, hair, or nails,” Dr. Payal Patel and Dr. Maryanne Makredes Senna wrote for Harvard Health’s blog in 2023. And things weren’t looking much better as of 2025. 

Still, the focus on hair, skin, and nails isn’t surprising in our current moment.

“It’s a lot easier to say, ‘Well, I’m eating this for gut health’ instead of ‘I’m eating this because this whole cup has 80 calories,’” Mikala Jamison, writer of the Body Type newsletter and the forthcoming book The Forever Project, told Vox. The current iteration of froyo is intertwined with the broader trend of “clean” living and the “clean girl.” Take Mimi’s Frozen Yogurt, which is located near New York University and regularly has lines around the block. Mimi’s describes itself as “Clean & Natural Froyo…Light as air, full of care.” But “clean” is similar to “plant-based” or “natural” in that it doesn’t really have an agreed upon definition in the food world. It’s mostly vibes-based and can be as much about morality as much as it is about nutrition.

Meanwhile, “light as air” isn’t particularly subtle. Mimi’s has collaborated with Shark Beauty to style people’s hair as they wait in line, further connecting frozen yogurt to a specific aesthetic. Mikono, which just went from pop-up to brick-and-mortar in Chicago, was part of a Porsche & Pilates event, tagging the Instagram post about it “#healthy.” Myka, a growing chain in more than 20 cities with long lines at its Paris outpost, says its product “is more than frozen yogurt: it is a way of understanding life. A way to enjoy what is simple, natural, and effortlessly beautiful.” 

Jamison coined the term “luxe lean” to refer to the current cultural moment: “Your body needs to be lean, not fat, look like you work out a little bit. But also, you pair that with these luxury signifiers. You have a blowout, you have the expensive workout set, you have the nails, you have the glowing skin.” As she sees it, it’s a body type that is also a class and status signifier. You want to look good without implying that you tried to look good, while still communicating that looking this good costs money. 

She wonders about the legacy of the body positivity movement. While some people have given up the pursuit of thinness and are making a concerted effort to build a world where women aren’t constantly denigrated for their weight, there is also an active cadre of people publicly advocating for being as skinny as possible, at the same time that GLP-1s are impacting every aspect of American life. And then, there are the people caught in the middle. “Maybe they do want to lose weight, but they don’t want to admit it because that doesn’t seem like the correct, feminist, progressive, body positivity whatever thing to do,” Jamison said. 

And that’s where the current froyo trend stands: promising “wellness” while letting the impetus for it remain unsaid. 

But if you simply love frozen yogurt, enjoy this renaissance while you can. Moskow expects it to “wax and wane” as it has in the past and, especially, as studies emerge that show the health benefits of ice cream: “I think we might be at peak yogurt.”

Just when we thought summer’s most perfect veggie couldn’t get any more delicious, corn FRITTERS graced our palettes. These crispy-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside, lightly spiced fritters are a must-try appetizer or side!

Not only are they incredibly delicious, but these fritters are vegan, optionally gluten-free, and SO easy to make! Grab your mixing bowl and 10 basic ingredients, and you’ll be enjoying fritters in 30 minutes or less.

Easy Jalapeño Corn Fritters (Vegan) from Minimalist Baker →

This is my go to side salad that I make often, whether it’s for two people, four, six, or ten. A good side salad strikes a balance of ease and satisfaction, and this has become my old reliable for simple dinners at home and entertaining.  The Key Ingredient Is Kind of a Big Dill The […]

Dakgomtang is a comforting Korean chicken soup with tender chicken and a light, slightly milky broth. Served with rice, soy sauce relish, and spicy seasoning paste, it makes a delicious and satisfying meal.

Friends! The fluffiest, most satisfying, Nutella lover’s dream dessert is here: vegan ice cream made with chocolate and hazelnuts. It’s creamy, dreamy, oh-so delicious, and kind of perfect! Especially when craving a sweet treat on a warm summer day.

Just 6 ingredients required for this (dare we say) MASTERPIECE. It’s going to be on repeat in our ice cream maker all season long. Grab your cones. Let’s make Nutella ice cream!

Vegan Nutella Ice Cream from Minimalist Baker →

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A bubbling Korean spicy fish stew made with tender whiting and a rich, savory broth. Warm, comforting, and perfect for sharing with family!

While recently making our tahini cookies for what felt like the millionth time, we thought, Why not add chocolate to this party? The result was even better than we imagined. Introducing: fudgy chocolate tahini cookies studded with chocolate chips! They’re vegan, gluten-free, and absolutely delicious — like a brownie and cookie in one!

All you need for these? 1 bowl, 8 ingredients, and about 20 minutes.

Fudgy Chocolate Tahini Cookies (1 Bowl!) from Minimalist Baker →

Chow Har Kew is a luxurious version of a Chinese Shrimp and Vegetable stir-fry, with crispy, golden shrimp! Deep-frying meats or proteins—in this case large shrimp—and then tossing them in a velvety sauce makes a Chinese-banquet-worthy dish.  The name Chow Har Kew is the way this dish usually appears in English on Chinese restaurant menus, […]

If you’re looking for a decadent, elevated hot chocolate with wholesome ingredients, this one’s for you! We’ve been serving up this frothy, tahini-infused, super dreamy hot chocolate, and even cocoa connoisseurs agree this one deserves accolades.

Despite being naturally sweetened and blended with water, it’s perfectly sweet, deeply chocolaty, and velvety on the palate. It even sneaks in healthy fats, fiber, protein, and cinnamon for balancing blood sugar levels.

Tahini Hot Chocolate (Super Dreamy, Protein-Rich!) from Minimalist Baker →

The texture and flavor of a cookie with the ease of a bar? Talk about the perfect dessert! Introducing: cranberry orange cookie bars! 

These chewy, buttery cookie bars are packed with zesty orange flavor and pops of tart cranberries. Your new go-to treat awaits with just 1 bowl and 8 ingredients required! Did we mention they’re vegan and gluten-free? No one else has to know.

Cranberry Orange Cookie Bars (Vegan + Gluten-Free) from Minimalist Baker →

Ever followed a restaurant on social media, found yourself drooling over everything they posted, and then realized you’re too far away to place an order? When in that predicament, the only solution is to get into your own kitchen. And so, this Kabocha Chickpea Miso Soup — inspired by Salud in Bend, Oregon — was born.

It’s everything you want in a soup: comforting, nourishing, brothy, packed with that fun squash you bought without a plan (just us?!), and SO quick and easy to make!

1-Pot Kabocha Chickpea Miso Soup from Minimalist Baker →

We’ve long admired the super talented gluten-free chef and baker Aran Goyoaga. But our status went from fans to super fans last year when she posted a video of the fluffiest gluten-free dinner rolls we had ever seen. They looked like fluffy, dreamy clouds — how could they possibly be gluten-free?! We wanted to reach through the screen to make sure they were real (translation: eat the whole pan 🤤).

Then earlier this year, Aran announced she was writing a new cookbook(!!) and we nearly started doing cartwheels.

Pillowy Gluten-Free Pita (from Aran Goyoaga’s Cookbook) from Minimalist Baker →

Fall has three essentials: cozy sweaters, warming soups, and PUMPKIN BREAD! Whether your fond memories of this spice-filled treat are from Starbucks, Grandma’s house, or your favorite box mix, we’re bringing you alllll the nostalgia! This homemade gluten-free + dairy-free pumpkin bread is FLUFFY, tender, spice-filled, and has the perfect balance of sweetness and pumpkin flavor!

Just 1 bowl and simple ingredients required for this fall classic.

The BEST Gluten-Free Pumpkin Bread (1 Bowl!) from Minimalist Baker →

Fermenting can't get easier with this fish sauce based ferment of pickled peppers in soy sauce. It's made with traditional Korean green peppers that are mild, sweet, juicy, and super crispy. The flavorful juice in the peppers squirts out with every bite, so be careful!