Beef Ramen Noodles (Slow Cooker)

Beef up your weeknight dinner routine with Beef Ramen Noodles made in the slow cooker. These flavour packed noodles with vegetables simmered in a sweet and savoury sauce will become your family’s ‘most requested’ dinner recipes.

There’s something so satisfying about dinner simmering slowly in a crockpot or slow cooker, especially when it’s a ‘dump and go’ recipe. Slow cooked Saucy Crockpot Taco Meat is a taco Tuesday crowd pleaser while shredded Slow Cooker Mississippi Pork is a gameday favourite.

If you’re just here for the noodles, may I suggest trying these quick Spicy Peanut Noodles with chicken or Szechuan Ground Pork Stir Fry Noodles featuring ground pork.

Slow Cooker Beef Ramen Noodles

Weeknight dinner doesn’t get any easier than these slow cooker Beef Ramen Noodles. Start with browned beef, then add shredded carrots and sliced red pepper. It all simmers together slowly, allowing the flavours to concentrate in the sweet and savoury sauce.

This tasty, yet economical and time saving recipe features infamous packages of instant ramen noodles. They are added to the crockpot during the last 30 minutes of cooking time to ensure they stay nice and toothy, not mushy or soft as they soak up the sauce.

Best yet, this Beef Ramen Noodle recipe is customizable in so many ways. Change the protein to ground turkey, ground chicken, ground pork, or even finely sliced sirloin steak or flank steak. Add your favourite veggies and feel free to spice things up by adding red pepper flakes, Sriracha sauce, or garlic chili sauce.

An Economical Recipe

Most of you know already how much I love leftovers and reducing food waste. However, there’s nothing I love more that a good deal! In these days of inflation, I find that I tend to seek out grocery store deals even more than ever.

Feeding a hungry family (and well) can be quite expensive but if you know how to look for deals, you can save quite a lot of money. All it costs you is a little of your time. I highly recommend scouring online flyers, looking for price matching opportunities, and batch buying.

One grocery item that I batch buy regularly is ground beef. I look for weekly sales and bargains on ‘family’ sizes, then repackage the meat as soon as I return home.

This recipe features some of that repackaged (extra lean) ground beef and a few packages of instant ramen noodles (3 for $1.50 at our nearest dollar store). It’s a great ‘fridge cleanout’ recipe which uses up any veggies that are languishing in your fridge.

Though the recipe calls for two packages of dried ramen noodles, you can add one package-or three. It’s up to you. As the noodles cook, they soak up liquid and release starch. Add one package if you like plenty of broth or three if you want saucy noodles.

Ingredient Suggestions for Beef Ramen Noodles

There is no hard and fast rule about which ingredients should be in this Beef Ramen Noodle recipe and that’s the beauty of it. You will have more success if you combine veggies that have similar cooking times and cut them into equal sizes. Think of the following ingredients list as a ‘suggestion’ for one delicious way of making this Beef Ramen Noodle dish.

• Extra Lean Ground Beef
• Carrots
• Red Bell Pepper
• Green Spring Onions
• Garlic
• Soy Sauce
• Brown Sugar
• Beef Stock
• Instant Ramen Noodles
• Sesame Seeds

For best results, I highly recommend using extra lean ground beef in this recipe. If you do intend to use regular or even lean ground beef, be sure to thoroughly drain the meat after browning it. Otherwise, the dish will be quite oily as it sits in the slow cooker.

Other ground meats, such as ground pork, chicken or turkey will also work in this recipe. Note that they still require browning before being added to the slow cooker. Alternatively, you can also add thinly sliced and browned flank steak or sirloin steak instead of ground beef.

For easy preparation, I buy matchstick carrots. However, feel free to slice whole carrots into matchsticks by hand or use a handy vegetable peeler style tool that slices the carrots into matchsticks.

Feel free to add orange or yellow bell peppers instead of or along with the red bell pepper. Other veggies such as broccoli, snap or snow peas, sliced kale (and other greens), and sliced mushrooms would also work in this recipe. You can also add minced fresh ginger root to the ground beef and garlic as it cooks.

If you want to add sliced onions, in addition to the green onions, sauté them with the ground beef for a few minutes before adding them to the crockpot. This recipe is a great place to use the entire green onion. Chop the whites and greens separately, then add the whites (and some greens) to the slow cooker while reserving some chopped green onions to garnish the dish before serving.

The sauce for this dish is highly complex and filled with umami flavour even though it only contains three ingredients. Soy sauce is filled with umami and often contains a lot of sodium. Since it’s one of the main components, I highly recommend using low sodium soy sauce if you can.

The same goes for the beef stock or broth. Homemade is always best, with high-quality reduced sodium beef stock a close second. Use chicken stock in place of beef stock for a milder flavour.

How to Make Slow Cooker Beef Ramen Noodles

Add the extra lean ground beef to a hot skillet and brown it over medium heat (use olive oil as needed). Use a wooden spoon or spatula to break up the beef as it cooks. Once the beef has browned, add the garlic, and cook for another two minutes.

Next, transfer the browned ground beef and garlic to a slow cooker. Add the matchstick carrots, sliced bell pepper, and chopped green onions (reserve some to use as garnish).

To make the sauce, mix the soy sauce, brown sugar, and beef broth (plus Sriracha or Chili Garlic sauce, if using) together in a small bowl or measuring cup. Pour the sauce over the beef and veggie mixture, then stir to combine.

Cover and slow cook on the low setting for 4-6 hours. Finally, about 30 minutes before the end of cooking time, nestle the two packages of dry ramen noodles in the sauce (discard the flavour packets or reserve for later use).

Replace the lid and cook on low for another 30 minutes, or until the noodles have softened. Drizzle a teaspoon of sesame oil (optional) and stir it in before portioning the noodles into bowls. Garnish the Ramen Beef Noodles with sesame seeds and reserved green onions.

For a ‘low carb option’, skip the ramen noodles and serve in lettuce cups or skip the noodles and serve this beef ramen recipe over steamed rice.

If you make this Slow Cooker Beef and Noodles recipe, please be sure to leave a comment and/or give this recipe a rating! Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Pinterest for my latest recipes. Also, if you do make this recipe, please tag me on Instagram, I’d love to see what you guys are making! Thank you so much for reading my blog.