Ramen Trivia Quiz - Food Facts

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About this app

You probably think ramen noodles are yellow because there is egg in them. There isn't. Wheat flour contains pigments that happen to be colourless in plain water and turn yellow the moment they meet an alkaline solution - which is exactly what kansui, the alkaline water used in Chinese-style noodles, provides. Nothing is being added. A colour that was always in the flour is simply becoming visible. Ramen noodles made without a trace of egg come out just as yellow.

The milky white of a tonkotsu broth is not an additive either. Keep pork bones at a hard rolling boil long enough and the broth turns white on its own. In Kurume, where that white broth is said to have started, the story goes that someone simply left the heat up too high.

This app collects stories like those as three-choice questions. The only ones that made the cut are the ones that make you say it out loud the moment the answer lands.

1. A round fits in a coffee break

Five questions to a stage, about thirty seconds each. No background required. Read it, get surprised, move on. On the train or in the last few minutes before bed, you always stop at a clean break.

2. The answer is not the end of it

Every question comes with an explanation. Right or wrong, you then find out how it got that way. With the yellow noodles and the white broth alike, the best part is the last line of the explanation.

3. For people who just eat ramen, and for people who know it well

Three levels: First Bowl, Regular, Noodle Expert. First Bowl uses no technical vocabulary at all - the colour of the noodles, the white of the broth, a clay pot arriving still bubbling. If you already know your way around a bowl, start at Noodle Expert.

4. From how noodles and broth work, to the bowl in one particular town

What kansui actually does inside the dough. Why a higher gauge number means a thinner noodle. The job that the film of fat on the surface is quietly doing. Why Kochi serves its ramen in a clay pot. How a shop in Wakayama charges you for the boiled eggs sitting on the table. Both the making of it and the places that serve it.

5. Widely repeated explanations that turn out to be wrong

Yellow noodles come from egg. Menma is named after the Chinese menmaji. Katsuobushi holds a Guinness record as the world's hardest food. All three get repeated as common knowledge, and all three fall apart when you look them up. In questions like these, the version everyone believes is the wrong answer.

6. Ramen outside Japan

The couple who opened what is said to be the only ramen shop in Reykjavik. Why Brazilians call instant noodles "miojo". How Korean keeps two separate words, one for the instant kind and one for a bowl in a shop. What happened to ramen once it left the country.

7. Works with no signal

Every question is stored in the app. Underground or in the air, you can open it without thinking about the connection.

8. Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese, French and more

Reading the same question in another language turns up something new.

Sources were checked

Everything here is based on documented events and research: food chemistry papers, food history scholarship, company statements, news reporting. Where a story is a legend, a popular belief, or genuinely disputed, the explanation says so. Nothing unverified is used as a correct answer.

Good for you if

- You like ramen but have never looked into how it is made
- You enjoy hearing about a world you know nothing about
- You want something worth telling other people
- You are looking for something that ends at a clean break

There is a lot you don't know yet about the bowl you eat all the time. From the first question, you will want to tell someone.

What’s new

Initial release.