10 Minute Spinach Ramen

A super simple spinach ramen bowl that can be made easily for lunch or dinner, with basic and cheap ingredients! You have carbs, protein and green vegetables present for a healthy meal. This is a handy recipe to have up your sleeve through the winter and can be easily adapted to suit your tastes and the contents of your fridge.

Spinach ramen for the win! This is a super basic ramen bowl recipe for you, nothing authentic, but a cheap staple that is worth learning and eventually adapting to suit your needs.

It’s one of the first recipes I ever published here, and I recently revisited it and remembered how great it is as a work from home lunch. It’s a healthy, cheap and tasty meal when you just need something fast.

Healthy: Because it has some carb (noodles), some vegetables (spinach and chili), and some protein (fried egg).

Cheap: Because if you choose the right noodles, these are all very inexpensive ingredients! You can even use frozen spinach. The toasted sesame oil can run a little pricier but you use the tiniest amount.

Tasty: We use a stock cube (bouillon cube) and soy sauce for a quick broth, which is fine but might be bland. Once we drizzle some toasted sesame oil into the broth, we have something super tasty, because this stuff is so potent and delicious. Lots of black pepper helps give it an edge too.

Recipe Tips & Customization

• Your noodles don’t need to be “official” ramen, they can just be egg noodles if that is easier to find and/or cheaper.
• Your broth or stock can be whatever your preferred brand is but get the ones you enjoy the taste of. I am using a simple supermarket brand vegetable stock cube in this recipe, and it’s all good and fine. I have previously used imitation chicken broth however, which I definitely prefer, but can’t always track down. If my broth feels a little meh, I’ll up the toasted sesame oil since that’s my big flavor source here.
• You can of course make this with a ramen packet that comes with seasoning. Those are generally well seasoned broths, so you may not want the soy sauce or toasted sesame oil (though a few drops of the toasted sesame oil on the egg are still a good idea).
• You can use frozen spinach! Just add the frozen cubes to the broth at the end, instead of fresh leaves, and keep the heat on long enough for it to defrost.
• The chili and black pepper give it a kick, but it’s pretty mild. If you want it properly spicy, add the seeds from the chili and maybe a little chili oil into the broth.
• You can always, always add more to this recipe. Add some garlic and/or dried mushrooms to the broth, add some additional vegetables to the bowl, add some chili garlic sauce, whatever you feel is right.