Inspired by hunger
In 1958, Yasuo Ando invented the world's first package of instant noodles-"Chicken Spicy Noodles", when he was 48 years old, and the inspiration for developing instant noodles was born as early as 1945.
After World War II, Japan was seriously short of food, and people were so hungry that they even ate potatoes and seedlings. Ando Bai Fu occasionally passed a Lamian Noodles stall and saw people in shabby clothes standing in a long queue of twenty or thirty meters against the cold wind. This aroused his great interest in Lamian Noodles, which he felt was a huge demand of the public. But he didn't start research and development. It was not until his credit portfolio went bankrupt when he was chairman that he lost almost all his property in an instant that he decided to shift his career focus to "food".
1In the spring of 958, Yasuo Ando built a humble hut of 10 square meter in the backyard of Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, found an old noodle making machine, and then bought 18 kg of flour, cooking oil, etc. , and immersed in the development of instant noodles.
The truth realized through repeated development
The instant noodles envisioned by Ando are instant noodles that can be eaten immediately as long as hot water is added. He set five goals: delicious, never tired of eating; Can be a conventional product of family kitchens, and has strong freshness; Simple, no need to cook; Cheap price; Safety and health.
At the beginning of the research, I was completely in the exploratory stage. I got up at 5: 00 in the morning and got into the cabin at once. I study until one or two in the middle of the night, and the average sleep time is less than four hours. This kind of day lasted for a whole year without a day off.
In the noodle business, he is a complete layman. The ingredients of noodles are exquisite and learned. He tried all the methods he could think of, but when he put it on the noodle machine, some were loose and some stuck together. Throw it, throw it, throw it. The whole development has become a repetitive process, with no hope in sight. Later, I finally realized an experience: food pays attention to balance. The development of food is the process of pursuing and discovering this unique and wonderful balance.
Later, Mrs Ando's cooking inspired him. There are countless holes in the dough of fried food, just like sponges. This is because the skin of noodles is blended with water, and the water inside will disperse during frying, forming "holes". Add boiling water and it will soon soften. In this way, the problems of preservation and cooking can be solved at the same time by soaking noodles in soup to make them tasty, then frying them and drying them. This kind of "instant hot oil drying method", which he called, soon got a patent for the method of making instant noodles.
Put the noodles in the paper cup.
1966, Ando made his first trip to Europe and America, hoping to find a way to introduce instant noodles to the world.
When he took chicken Lamian Noodles to the supermarket in Los Angeles, he let several buyers try Lamian Noodles. They shook their heads in embarrassment. It turns out that noodles have no bowls. All they found was a paper cup, so they divided the chicken Lamian Noodles into two halves and put it in the paper cup, filled it with boiling water, and they ate it with forks. After eating, I threw the cup into the dustbin.
Ando suddenly realized that he had the idea of developing instant noodles in cups in his mind. The container decided to use a new kind of foam plastic, which is light in weight, good in heat insulation and low in cost. The shape of the cup is the size that can be picked up by one hand.
On the plane returning from the United States, Ando found that the top of the pistachio aluminum container given by the flight attendant was a sealed cover made of paper and aluminum foil. At that time, he was confused about how to preserve this problem for a long time and wanted to find an airtight material. The aluminum cover of instant noodles in the cup was fixed at that moment.