Man Fixes Sink With Ramen, but Can Noodles Really Be Used to Repair a Broken Sink?

It's incredible what somebody can do with a little hard work, elbow grease and a 3-ounce pack of ramen noodles. According to a video that went viral on Instagram, those three things are all that's needed to fix a busted porcelain sink.

The video went viral after being posted to Spanish Instagram humor account arquitettando. It depicts a person stuffing a cracked sink with some starchy ramen, seasoning it, and after an extra few steps, voila! The sink seems to be in pristine condition following the ramen fix.

Some users were skeptical of the repair method, saying certain video cut timings made the process appear fake. One theory was that the video had been cut in reverse of how events actually occurred, implying that the man started filming with a perfectly good sink and tore it down bit by bit, recording each step until we get the broken one that's seen at the video's start. Another user believed the sink was broken at one point but that the man fixed it with normal means and only pretended to use ramen for the patch job.

Others believe the video's legitimacy, noting that the noodle handyman seemed to use epoxy and resin on the ramen. Tweeter Tom Bishop said the combination of chemicals and the ramen's starch quality can replicate ceramic to a degree, and that the paint at the end could waterproof the ramen fix to avoid being damaged when the sink inevitably gets wet. However, he warned against leaning on a sink fixed this way, as the base is still just ramen.

The original video appears to stem from Xiubandrng for his account on Douyin, which is essentially China's version of TikTok. Xiubandrng is basically a celebrity in China for his Douyin account, but it hasn't become a household name in the West yet, likely due to lack of content accessibility. TikTok and Douyin are owned by the same company, ByteDance, and offer similar platforms, but you can't access Douyin content on TikTok, and vice-versa.

From a brief glance at his Douyin channel, Xiubandrng regularly films seemingly impossible fixes that he is able to restore to their original form. In one of his videos, the MacGyver-like handyman restores a damaged hardwood floor using crushed oyster chips and the same chemical combination as in the ramen video. He impressively replicates the wood grain found on the original floor by carefully painting over the repaired area. Xiubandrng consistently uses starch-based products in every video, lending credence to the Twitter users who said the ramen fix was legitimate. Though even if it's real, the fix is certainly difficult to maintain.

While Douyin's account is not available stateside, we were able to find a compilation of Xiubandrng's greatest hits in a Facebook video.