Only One Of Totino's New Instant Ramen Cups Is Worth Buying

A few weeks ago, the internet's curiosity was piqued when it was leaked that a new Totino's branded product was about to hit store shelves — and it wasn't going to be in the freezer aisle. That's because the new product isn't pizza rolls, it's instant ramen.

General Mills, the parent company of Totino's, is not only releasing two types of Totino's cup noodles, which are cheese pizza and Buffalo-style chicken pizza flavored, but two El Paso-branded products as well: fajita and beef birria-flavored instant ramen. Totino's has been on a bit of a marketing kick lately, with an unsettling-sounding Totino's and Cinnamon Toast Crunch collab, along with its first Super Bowl ad (which was admittedly pretty good), so in retrospect I'm not too surprised that this is happening. But could this be good? And do we even need another ramen selection on these crowded store shelves?

Nissin Foods, owner of the Cup Noodle brand, is already known for its own wacky novelty products, including the strange pancake breakfast-flavored ramen cups that I admittedly liked more than I should have, so apparently General Mills believes this category of stuff is going to sell well. The new ramen flavors are coming out in April, but General Mills sent me an early preview sample, and as your resident wacky food taste tester, I thought I'd see how these Totino's noodles tasted and if they're worth your time and money.

I'm always curious as to what I'll find in a container of instant noodles. Sometimes there are packets you need to add at various times in the cooking (okay, microwaving) process, and other times, everything comes already mixed together. In the case of Totino's cup ramen, the flavor powder is mixed in with the loose noodles. And speaking of the noodles, if you're expecting a brick of the thin squiggly ones, don't be surprised when you see stubby fettuccine-like ones instead. I found the choice of noodle shape interesting, because I could already tell that they weren't chopstick friendly. I wasn't even convinced they'd be fork friendly. They also looked more like air-dried pasta than they did typical fried instant noodles.

The directions are simple; you just remove the lid, pour water up to the line in the cup, microwave it for two-and-a-half minutes, and let it sit in the microwave for two more minutes to finish the carryover cooking. Another detail I found interesting was the volume of water you need — you end up filling most of the empty space in the cup with liquid. The image of the noodles on the front don't depict ramen with broth, so I'd assumed it was just going to be the thick sauce-like kind that clings to the noodles, but no, this was apparently intentioned to be a brothy concoction.

Once the noodles had cooled enough to humanly handle, I stirred them up and scooped up a spoonful. And yeah, trying to use a fork with these would have been pretty difficult for me (though I don't doubt your forking talents one bit). The broth does vaguely smell like the center of a Totino's pizza roll, with a tangy and very lightly tomatoey scent, but unfortunately, that's pretty much where the similarity ends.

That's because the soup itself is disappointing. It barely tastes like tomato sauce, or even tomato soup, and the cheese element might as well not exist at all. It's barely tangy, and despite how flavorful it potentially appeared to be, it ended up being disappointingly bland. Spoonful after spoonful confirmed this fact. It's sort of like a vegetable soup without all the vegetables in it. And the fettuccine-style noodles are more like regular pasta, which is fine, but that makes the whole thing read more like an American noodle soup versus a ramen. I felt like there was so much potential for this, but in the end, these Totino's Cheese Pizza-flavored noodles aren't what they say they are, which is a complete bummer. If you want pizza rolls, go get them, they're just a few aisles over and they take less time to heat up in the microwave anyway.

All was not lost, however. As soon as I smelled the Buffalo-style chicken pizza ramen, I knew my luck had changed. That's because it smelled remarkably like Buffalo wing sauce, in a genuinely appealing way. One spoonful of the broth confirmed that it also tasted like Buffalo wing sauce. It's tart and tangy, though I'm still scratching my head over the "pizza" descriptor, because it tastes exactly how you'd expect something labeled "Buffalo" would, with no hint of pizza.

There is cheese in the ingredients list, specifically cheddar, but I couldn't pick that out in terms of flavor. I pictured little bits of diced celery in this with a sprinkle of blue cheese crumbles, and though I haven't partaken in any munchie-inducing shenanigans in years, I could see this being a perfect stoner snack, especially if you don't want to spend a whole lot of money on wing delivery. If you want any more evidence that I liked this one, I ate the whole cup, while I barely touched the cheese pizza ramen. And it was first thing in the morning.

So between the two, the Buffalo chicken noodles are definitely the way to go. Just ignore the whole pizza concept and the fact that they're more like fettuccine noodles than instant ramen ones, because those are incidental details that are easy to get hung up on. If your curiosity ends up getting the better of you, they'll be available exclusively in Walmart starting sometime in April. And skip the cheese pizza noodles before I get a chance to say I told you so.