Emart24 Yeoshin Mala Xiangguo, Spicier Version [Korean Food]

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Korean convenience stores have quietly turned mala xiangguo into an everyday meal, and Emart24 has been leading that shift. Today’s pick is the Chef Park Eun-young Deossen Yeoshin Mala Xiangguo, whose name roughly means “the stronger goddess.” It is an upgraded take on the Yeoshin Mala Xiangguo, a light and easy mala dish that has been popular at Emart24 for a while. I love anything mala, and I genuinely enjoyed the original, so I’d been wanting to try this one. The heat is supposed to be dialed up this time. Let’s see how it turned out.

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📋 At a Glance

• Product: Chef Park Eun-young Deossen Yeoshin Mala Xiangguo
• Brand: Emart24
• Price: 6,900 won
• Net weight: 366g
• Calories: 630 kcal (sodium at 130% of the daily recommended intake)
• Main contents: wide glass noodles, enoki mushrooms, wood ear mushrooms, fish cake, quail eggs, burdock root, cocktail sausage, shrimp, bean sprouts
• How to heat: 2 minutes in a 1,000W microwave
• Verdict: ★4.0 — less sodium, more numbing aroma, and an easy way to get your mala fix.

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Yeoshin Mala Xiangguo Price and What Changed

Among all the mala xiangguo products convenience stores have released, Chef Park Eun-young’s collaboration is just about the only one that has stayed on shelves for a long stretch. This release turns up the heat on that original. The flavor is not the only thing that changed, though. The contents were tweaked a little as well, and the original menu item has not been discontinued. Both the mala character and the raw spiciness are stronger here. That means you can finally get the mala fix the earlier version left slightly short. The price stays at 6,900 won, the same as before.

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The total net weight this time is 366g and the energy content is 630 kcal. Sodium, unsurprisingly for a mala xiangguo, lands at 130% of the daily recommended intake. Still, the original came in at 376g with 498 kcal and a striking 273% sodium. So it seems sodium actually dropped as the heat went up. Meanwhile the slight change in contents nudged the calories per gram a little higher.

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What’s Inside the Tray

Let’s take a quick look at what you actually get. Because this is a mala xiangguo, it looks fairly chaotic at first glance. However, products like this are not made by tossing everything together and weighing it out. Each component is prepared separately and portioned to a set ratio. Look closely and you can pick out the individual parts.

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Fish Cake, Wood Ear and Quail Eggs

Starting from the left, you can spot fish cake, wood ear mushrooms and quail eggs. Do you pile on the wood ear when you build your own mala bowl? I’m a fan, so I always add plenty. Compared with the previous version, the wood ear portion here feels like it grew a little.

The middle is taken up by enoki mushrooms, which looks strikingly different from the bean sprouts that filled the previous version. Alongside them you mostly see burdock root, cocktail sausage and shrimp. A few bean sprouts still made the cut. Is hoping for beef on top of all that too greedy? The last version tasted surprisingly good, so I’d happily pay a bit more if beef were added.

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A Solid Layer of Wide Glass Noodles Underneath

The toppings hide it, but there is a substantial bed of wide glass noodles at the bottom. The headline ingredients don’t look all that different, so I suspect the extra calories come from a larger noodle portion. That said, a closer look shows fat went up while carbohydrates stayed roughly the same. Moreover, that points to extra oil going in to carry the heat.

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Taste Test: How Hot Does It Actually Get?

Time to dig in. I heated it for two minutes in a 1,000W microwave. That looked like plenty, so I gave everything a good stir. The spicy aroma rising off the tray is noticeably stronger than the previous version. I started with a bite of enoki and a few other bits.

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Buldak-Level Heat With Real Numbing Aroma

The heat and the mala aroma are clearly a step up from the previous version. If the old one sat just above Shin Ramyun on the spice scale, this one edges toward Buldak stir-fried noodles. That shift is exactly why it tastes closer to what you get at a dedicated mala restaurant.

The Ingredient Mix and Those Noodles

The ingredient mix is decent too. Of course, part of why we go to mala tang and xiangguo restaurants is picking exactly what goes in the bowl, and that freedom is hard to replace. Still, the things you’d want as a baseline are all here: wide glass noodles, simple vegetables like enoki, cocktail sausage, wood ear and shrimp. That made it satisfying enough to eat as is.

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Personally, those wide glass noodles won me over. Sitting at the very bottom seems to protect them, because they never turned stiff after heating and slid down smoothly. They had also soaked up plenty of sauce. Turns out my assumption that microwaved convenience store meals always go dry was just a prejudice.

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Watch Out for the Sichuan Peppercorns at the Bottom

Overall the heat lands around Buldak stir-fried noodles or just a notch below, as I mentioned. The numbing tingle that defines mala is definitely stronger than last time, and that signature buzz comes through well. That said, there are some Sichuan peppercorns sitting at the bottom of the tray. Be careful they don’t come along for the ride when you pull up the noodles.

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Final Verdict on the Deossen Yeoshin Mala Xiangguo

The original mala xiangguo was already decent, but this one cuts sodium while pushing the heat and the numbing tingle higher. That makes it a great fit for anyone who wanted a bit more kick. It sits around the mildly spicy end of what a specialty restaurant serves, so it never felt like a chore, and I enjoyed it more than I expected. If you want a quick, light mala xiangguo for one, this is an easy recommendation. For anyone traveling in Korea, it’s also one of the simplest ways to try mala xiangguo without hunting down a restaurant.

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The fact that the original Yeoshin Mala Xiangguo stayed on shelves at 6,900 won thanks to steady popularity is covered in (Korean source) Seoul Economic Daily’s report on the Emart24 mala xiangguo.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How spicy is it compared to Buldak ramyun?

Roughly the same as Buldak stir-fried noodles, or a touch below. On top of that raw heat, you get the numbing Sichuan tingle that Buldak doesn’t have. Watch for the peppercorns resting at the bottom of the tray.

Q. Do I need any cooking equipment beyond a microwave?

No, a microwave is all you need. Two minutes at 1,000W was enough to heat everything through, after which you just stir the tray to coat the ingredients in sauce.

Q. Is it worth buying over the original version?

If you found the original too mild, yes. Both cost 6,900 won, but this one drops sodium from 273% to 130% of the daily intake while raising the heat. The trade-off is 366g instead of 376g and 630 kcal instead of 498 kcal, plus enoki mushrooms in place of the bean sprouts.