Hello! I’m a Naver blogger,

and also a Nexon Picker, PisTime.

January 16 is International Hot and Spicy Food Day.

A day to blast your stress away with something hot and spicy!

And honestly, gaming can get pretty stressful too.

When that happens, I sometimes blow off steam by making myself some ramyeon.

Hero Ramyeon, released through a MapleStory x GS25 collab,

is a seriously spicy ramyeon that comes in at 23,000 Scoville.

Honestly, I’m not very confident with spicy food, so I’d never dared to try it before,

but then I started wondering... what if I combined it with cucumber ramyeon?

Cucumber has that crisp texture and cool, refreshing scent,

so I thought maybe it could tone down the spicy Hero Ramyeon just a little..?

That little bit of curiosity was enough to make me try it!

Boil the ramyeon,

and julienne the cucumber!

Hero Ramyeon is a cup noodle, but the recipe is closer to bagged ramyeon,

so I boiled water in a pot and added the powdered soup base, chopped green onion, and mushrooms.

While that was boiling, I julienned some cucumber and set it aside.

I heard the more, the better, so I actually prepped more than what you see in the photo.

Add the egg and perilla oil,

and keep the cucumber separate from the noodles!

First, crack in one egg,

then, when the noodles are almost done, add a tablespoon of perilla oil.

The perilla oil helps get rid of that cucumber smell!

Then I took out only the noodles,

turned off the heat, and added the cucumber to the pot.

That way, the leftover heat cooks the cucumber just slightly!

Perilla oil cucumber ramyeon,

finished with Hero Ramyeon!

Then I poured the broth and cucumber back over the noodles.

The look of it was a little unusual, and I may have boiled it down too much since there wasn’t much broth left,

but still... I believed in it!

For reference, the extra soup packet included with Hero Ramyeon

can be added based on your own taste.

For me, 23,000 Scoville still felt like too much even with cucumber,

so I went for a more manageable 15,000 Scoville!

And once I ate it that way, it tasted better than I expected.

The heat didn’t feel artificial at all—it was just plain delicious spicy flavor,

plus the aroma of perilla oil and that crisp cucumber crunch!

Of course, it was still spicy, but it was tasty enough that I could handle it!

The cucumber’s distinct smell was gone, and it tasted so good that I actually wished I’d added more.

But the broth was still too much for me.

It was so spicy that I ended up finishing the meal by just picking out the poison mushrooms.

So today, I tried making Maple Hero Ramyeon

with a cucumber ramyeon recipe.

To be honest, I haven’t tried the original Hero Ramyeon by itself,

so I can’t really say whether it’s a perfect combo or not,

but for my taste, I was pretty satisfied with it.

I’d buy it again too.

That said, the family member who ate it with me didn’t rate it very highly.

So just keep in mind—it might be a bit divisive!