How much do you know about instant noodles?

 

In the early 20th century in Japan, during the difficult period of post-war material scarcity, a businessman named Anzai Bafuku witnessed a scene on the streets of Osaka: In the cold winter, hundreds of people braved the cold wind and queued up at ramen stalls, just for a steaming bowl of noodles. The red hands of the queuing crowd and their eager eyes made Anzai Bafuku have an idea - could we make a kind of noodles that doesn't need to be boiled and can be eaten after just a few minutes of boiling water? At that time, this idea seemed almost impossible. Traditional ramen required multiple processes such as kneading, resting, rolling, and boiling, and to "speed up the process", the first thing to solve was the preservation and rehydration of the noodles. Anzai Bafuku didn't back down. He transformed his small warehouse into a laboratory and started experiments at 4 a.m. every day. Initially, he tried frying the noodles, but due to poor control of the oil temperature, the noodles would either get burnt or have too much moisture that would easily go bad. 

After more than a year of repeated adjustments, in 1958, Anzai Bafuku finally found a solution: He first made the noodles into blocks and fried them in hot oil quickly, creating a layer of fine pores on the surface of the noodles - this layer of pores was the key for the noodles to quickly absorb water. Then, he combined the fried noodles and seasoning packets into a waterproof paper tube. The world's first packet of instant noodles, "Chicken Ramen", was thus born. At that time, this packet, priced at 35 yen, was twice the price of traditional ramen, but due to its convenience of "boiling water and eating in three minutes", it quickly gained a market share in the Japanese market. It is said that on the first day of its launch, queues formed in major supermarkets in Osaka, and within just one year, sales exceeded 13 million packets. 

 

In the 1960s, with the popularity of household refrigerators and advancements in packaging technology, instant noodles underwent their first major transformation. The original "Chicken Ramen" was packaged in paper tubes, although it could protect the noodles, it was large in size and heavy, not suitable for carrying around. In 1966, the Japanese company Nissin introduced the first plastic bag-packaged instant noodles, "Mini Cup Ramen", which reduced the noodles to a single-serving size and came with a lightweight plastic cap, not only reducing the weight by half but also allowing it to be directly used as a container for boiling water. 

This innovation completely changed the consumption scenario of instant noodles. Before this, instant noodles were mostly household reserve foods, while "Mini Cup Ramen" brought it to more places such as offices, stations, and outdoor camps. In 1971, Nissin introduced "Cup Ramen" for overseas markets, dividing the seasoning packets into oil packets, powder packets, and vegetable packets, addressing the issue of regional taste differences. When this product was launched in the United States, it even triggered a "one-hour queue for purchase" craze, with overseas sales exceeding 100 million units that year. 

At the same time, the production technology of instant noodles was constantly upgrading. In the early days, instant noodles relied entirely on manual operations, with a maximum production of only a few hundred packets per day, while with the introduction of automated production lines, the production efficiency increased by nearly a hundred times. In 1970, the first fully automated instant noodle production line was put into operation in Japan. From dough preparation, rolling, cutting to frying and packaging, the entire process took only 30 minutes. The qualification rate of the noodle pieces also increased from 70% to over 98%.

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