Pizza and ramen. Could there be a more perfect union?

Two staples of the collegiate diet, they seem perfect for each other. What one lacks, the other has. Consider the three main components of a college diet: Fat, pizza’s got plenty of that; salt, one packet of ramen flavor will spike your blood pressure for an hour; and carbs, the more the better.

If one believes in the direct correlation between the unhealthiness of a food and how good it tastes, then pizza and ramen together produce a one-two combo only potato chips can beat.

As you can probably guess, this week’s recipe involves ramen and pizza. But before we get to that, let’s talk a bit about how ramen is made.

Ramen is mainly flour, water, a bit of oil, and possibly eggs (depending on the brand). Mainly though, it’s flour. All the ingredients get mixed up, and then rolled out in huge sheets of noodle. The noodle sheets (which are hundreds of feet long) are cut into their recognizable wavy shape.

The noodles then get cooked in what can be equated to a giant convection oven. They are then cut into the bricks we buy, and dropped into a giant deep fat fryer. That’s right, ramen is fried in a vat of 400-degree fat. No wonder it’s so yummy.

Finally, the noodles get paired with a flavor packet, wrapped in plastic, and shipped to a grocery store near you. Oh, and when it comes to the flavor packets there’s only one word you need to know — salt.

Ramen Pizza

Ingredients:

2 packages ramen

Directions:

Cook both packages of ramen. Strain completely. Mix egg and milk. Add to ramen and stir (this is going to be the crust). Cover pizza pan or baking sheet with tinfoil and spray with non-stick spray.

Dump ramen mixture onto pan, and form it into a pizza shape — make sure it is not too thin, or thick (you don’t want sauce to leak through, but you want the noodles to get somewhat crispy). Cover ramen with spaghetti sauce. Place toppings on pizza and cover toppings with cheese, or vice versa.

Bake at 350 degrees on bottom rack for 25 to 35 minutes (the best way to tell is by the cheese; don’t let it get burned). You’re done.

— by Tanner Koomar