You’re a poor college student getting ready to replenish your stash of instant ramen cups – don’t do it! Let me suggest a more healthy and more taste-bud-thrilling option. You’ll still get your ramen, but you won’t get the unpronounceable ingredients list in your body. You have a couple options, but one main path to success.

1. Go to a grocery store and get a packet of ramen noodles, not pre-packaged to just nuke&go, but to boil in hot water or a microwave for a while.

Okay okay, not ramen per se, but I’ll tell you a secret – it doesn’t actually matter

2. Steal vegetables from the salad bar in the dining hall Go get vegetables to add to your noodles, in place of the vegetable flavoring powder. Peppers, tomatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli etc will do. Also mushrooms.

3. You can either cook the vegetables in oil until they smell good or leave them to put on top after the noodles are done. If you want to cook them, you can add some oil to whatever you can put on the stove — pot, skillet etc (hopefully you have a pot for the noodles, though)

If this counts as sautéing, then do that.

4. Boil water in a pot and then put the noodles in for 4ish minutes, or as long as the directions say. Yeah, don’t throw out the package.

Good to practice your guesstimating

5. Make sure the noodles as soft as you want them, then drain the water and place in a bowl. Add the vegetables with whatever other fixings you want like soy sauce, that red rooster sauce, salt/pepper etc.

Doesn’t that just look so much healthier?

That’s the basic rundown if you are culinarily challenged. Other variations include making a broth with the miso soup packet things (significantly less unhealthy than styrofoam noodle cups) with the water, cooking the vegetables with the noodles, and making a real broth with meat and everything (lol).
If you’re hard up for real cookware, you can put the noodles in a bowl with water and microwave them until the water is boiling, and add a miso packet to have soup. Anything like this is better than the Maruchan Ramen in the campus convenience store. Sure, it’s “convenient”, but if you take 7 more minutes, you can make a real meal and have some for tomorrow. Read that essay while the noodles cook.
*Special thanks to Tommy for being as good a cook as I am a baker 😛