Eat Your Games: Final Fantasy XV’s Cup Noodle With Egg

It’s approximately 10:00 am EST the morning of Friday, February 8 when I start thinking about Cup Noodles.

In the world of Final Fantasy XV, yesterday, February 7, was team chef/squad mom Ignis’s birthday, which meant I woke up to a link to a fan-made cookbook in our Sidequest Slack. The cookbook, called That’s It!: The Unofficial FFXV Community Cookbook, is impressive in its scope, containing recipes for all 111 dishes Ignis can make throughout the game.

“Who’s going to write the next cooking and games article?” asked Nola Pfau, chef extraordinaire of Aunt May’s wheatcakes from Marvel’s Spider-Man.

“There better be cup o noodle in there,” said Sidequest editor-in-chief Melissa Brinks.

As anyone who has played Final Fantasy XV will probably know, no discussion of the game’s extensive menu is complete without discussing Cup Noodles. As a result of Square Enix’s partnership with Nissin Cup Noodles, the instant ramen was heavily featured throughout the game. Players pass a Cup Noodles billboard early on, go on a sidequest to make the perfect cup of Cup Noodles later, and can even have main character Noctis wear an incredibly silly Cup Noodles helmet that significantly increases his HP recovery rate.

While I generally consider myself past the instant ramen-eating days of my youth, I have devoted many hours of my time to Final Fantasy XV. Is it destiny that I write the next Eat Your Games article? Gathering ingredients and cooking in Final Fantasy XV was certainly one of my favorite things to do, an interest that has since transferred to Kingdom Hearts 3’s newly introduced cooking system.

I will do it. I will make the Cup Noodles. Specifically, I will make Cup Noodles With Egg because eggs and Cup Noodles are the only ingredients I for-sure have in my kitchen. It’s not the most glamorous recipe or even the one I’m most interested in making, but as a noted soup enthusiast, I feel extremely qualified. It seems like the perfect lunch to eat on a work-from-home day.

If you would like to follow along at home, here are the ingredients, per That’s It!:

1 egg (Ignis uses zu eggs, but substituting a common chicken egg is fine.)
1 Nissin Cup Noodles, any flavor (I have chicken)

That’s it. Those are the only ingredients. You will also need boiling water to hydrate the noodles.

The instructions are simple:

1. Cook and season your egg however you desire—but remember, if your egg ain’t scrambled, you’re doin’ it wrong.

I could eat marinated, soft-boiled eggs in my ramen all day long, but since the scrambled egg is a personal favorite of Gladio’s, I will scramble my egg. While I am warming the pan in which I will prepare my egg, I decide to heat up the water for my Cup Noodles. I don’t have a kettle, which Ignis would probably scoff at. I decide to microwave my water and hope for the best. I cook the egg in a little bit of butter, because if I’m doing this I might as well go all out.

2. Pull back Nissin Cup Noodles lid to dotted line. Fill cup to inside line with boiling water.

3. Close lid. Let stand for 3 minutes.

I do this.

4. Remove lid. Stir well, add egg, and enjoy.

I also do this, although enjoying will have to wait a moment because these noodles are the approximate temperature of the sun’s surface.

In the in-game photo, it appears Ignis has augmented the Cup Noodles with a sauce. (Some sort of hot sauce, I would guess?) I decide to add some sriracha, because the prospect of adding buffalo sauce feels wrong. I season the broth with a few shakes of garlic powder and black pepper, because what’s the point in eating anything if it hasn’t been liberally seasoned with black pepper? I skip salt, reasoning that Cup Noodles probably surpass the daily recommended value for sodium.

Ignis also appears to have added some dill. I don’t have dill, but I do have chives and also, I love chives. I delicately sprinkle my sriracha-ed egg with chives (for the ‘gram, which is what kids these days call Instagram).

Like any good millennial, my next move is not but to eat, but to carefully document my Cup Noodles from multiple angles. It photographs well. I post a photograph in Slack.

“That looks really good actually,” Melissa, Cup Noodles disliker, says.

When I do get around to eating my Cup Noodles, they’re better than I expect. I don’t love the noodle texture, but the flavor is tasty for instant soup.

It’s about as good as it gets for Cup Noodles, I think, good enough that I would consider eating this for lunch on the regular. (But not too regular because 1170mg of sodium is fully half of the daily recommended intake. Half! I feel like I’m still young enough that maybe I don’t have to worry about my sodium intake, but also, why risk it, maybe.)

Despite my love of soft-boiled eggs, I concede that Gladio is right and scrambled egg is the way to go here. Would I recommend this? Sure! The garlic, sriracha, black pepper, and chives are a nice addition to the broth, it tastes good, and is super easy (and inexpensive) to make.

That’s It! is free to download, and you can do so at the book’s website. If you would like to view the recipe for Cup Noodles With Egg, it can be found on page 160.

Read more in the Eat Your Games series.