Meals Ready to Eat, any one use them?

[joy of essex]

Hello, for a number of reasons I 've become fascinated  by MREs or ARPs.

That is military ration packs; you'd be amazed by their variety: halal, Kosher, gluten free and so on and so forth.

Sadly, contrary to my expectations the French one does not contain a small bottle of wine; I did hear once that it did.


Thinking about ordering some  for use  when I become a steward @ Glastonbury  and perhaps for overnight camping

So, does anyone use them or  used them in a previous career?

If so, would  you recommend them?

[Oscar's dad]

I'm old enough to remember the launch of Pot Noodles.  They blew my mind... "You mean I can have a hearty meal by just adding hot water to a plastic pot?" Yes, I appreciate a Pot Noodle isn't haute cuisine but I have remained fascinated.

So I am very interested in this topic 

[joy of essex]

 Dive in

https://www.mre-empire.com/collections

[Oscar's dad]

Dive in

https://www.mre-empire.com/collections

 

[Oscar's dad]

Mind you, the other thing which fascinates me is cooking elaborate meals on camp stoves which camping.  I've managed to cook a delicious full steak dinner with trimmings and a passable pizza using a Trangia

[Mr Larrington]

Just don’t touch the USAnian stuff; during Gulf War v1.0 they weren’t known for nothing as “Meals Rejected by Ethiopians”.

[chopstick]

Many years ago, in the school CCF (70s - & a state school), we had "compo" (composite) rations.  We would always over-order for weekends away and stock up the radio room with the surplus.  Mostly tins, sachets and tubes (jam and margarine both came in tubes like toothpaste tubes iirc).  Sugar came in a tin, as did boiled sweets and chocolate bars.  Mock turtle soup & mashed potato came in sachets.  Stuff like beans and sausages came in tins, as did milk - condensed.  I'm not a tea drinker but I think tea came as an instant powder.

I've been only using campsites the last few years and so don't need such ready-meals but I am contemplating some bivvy-bag overnighters and would very much like a few of the backpacker type sachet meals to fall back on.

From what I've seen/read about what's available, I'm not so keen on the military stuff - dubious suppliers/sources (I gather most military stuff is not supposed to be sold to the public) and not especially compact/lightweight for the calories.  The prices seem too steep too.

I've had a quick look at the Firepot brand and similar and they look quite good though not cheap either (but, I think, comparable to the military stuff and no dodgy dates or source).  At least they do a 1000 calorie sachet, which is the sort of thing I'd want.  Supplemented with biscuits, peanuts, cake, pasties etc., and I reckon that'd do the trick.  A pub meal would help too 

[T42]

Just don’t touch the USAnian stuff; during Gulf War v1.0 they weren’t known for nothing as “Meals Rejected by Ethiopians”.

ISTR them also being called "The Big Brown Bag of Barf".

[MikeFromLFE]

We've recently bought some of the meals from Parsleybox to keep in the cupboard in case we are both proper poorly again.

We tried the Chicken Arabiatta yesterday evening because neither of us could be assed to cook proper food. We agreed that it was really good, although the portion size was miserly.

I'm not sure how camping-friendly these are - the instructions say to microwave or oven cook, but I strongly suspect that heating thoroughly in a pan would work just as well.

One of the prepper forums reckons that the use by dates on these are very conservative - ours have 12 months, but apparently they'll keep in excess of 3 years.

[Captain Nemo]

Unless you are going somewhere remote in seriously lightweight mode, why bother.

I've used similar civvy stuff on remote hills:

https://expeditionfoods.com/collections/800kcal

https://expeditionfoods.com/collections/desserts

That's a 1200kcal evening meal (excluding coffee and biscuits).

No need for a lot of cooking kit, just a water otter and a billy for boiling water and brewing up. The meals rehydrate and are eaten direct from the bag (with your trusty titanium folding spork). They are not cheap!

As far as brewing up is concerned, if real coffee is your thing and you are hunkered down in a tent at over 3000m with a blizzard blowing outside, I can highly recommend the AeroPress Go

"Meals Rejected by Ethiopians" pre-dates GW1; possibly from a time when our colonial cousins were calming things down (not) in Mogadishu (Somalia aka Ethiopia-by-the-Sea) - "Blackhawk Down" and all that...

[Notsototalnewbie]

Never tried the army ones but have had all the vegetarian/vegan Firepot dehydrated meals which are ok. Some of the Summit to Eat ones are also ok, and recently had a LYO one that was really nice.

They are expensive but as husband is coeliac it's a nice easy way of getting a reasonably balanced meal that definitely won't make him ill (like some pub food can if they're lax) and it's great not to have washing up if you're a place with limited water or washing up facilities.

Sometimes I try and save money if it's just me on a bivvy overnighter by taking cheap noodles and a bit of cheese but it generally means I wake up hungry in the middle of the night so I'm better off having a meal with more protein. Blacks often do offers on these meals and they've got a decent shelf life.

Sometimes I take one of the baby food sachets of fruit puree for dessert (often on multibuy offer) to kid myself that I'm being healthy and getting one of my five a day. But also chocolate.

For coffee I like a decent coffee bag.

[Lightning Phil]

Had these when bivouacing high in the alps

https://snackfully.co.uk/collections/look-what-we-found

[andrew_s]

The freeze dried stuff (Firepot, Expedition Foods etc) can be worthwhile for a cycling trip if resupply is likely to be awkward, so you're carrying food for several days.
I found it good pre-Covid, when I did a version of the Cairngorms Loop (outer loop, more or less, extended to the west via Lochs Garry, Rannoch, Ossian, Laggan & Ericht).
Too expensive for routine use though.

An insulated pouch to keep it warm is worthwhile, and I'd suggest a long spoon rather than a fold-up if you eat out of the pouch, as would be normal.
I sort the brew-up with teabags - much more portable than all this coffee paraphernalia.

For the odd night, wet stuff like LWWF is quite good, provided you take the carbohydrate part (spuds/pasta), as they are mostly just the stew part of the meal.

[Lightning Phil]

They offering ready meals with your pint?

[Quisling]

The freeze dried stuff (Firepot, Expedition Foods etc) can be worthwhile for a cycling trip if resupply is likely to be awkward, so you're carrying food for several days.
I found it good pre-Covid, when I did a version of the Cairngorms Loop (outer loop, more or less, extended to the west via Lochs Garry, Rannoch, Ossian, Laggan & Ericht).
Too expensive for routine use though.

An insulated pouch to keep it warm is worthwhile, and I'd suggest a long spoon rather than a fold-up if you eat out of the pouch, as would be normal.
I sort the brew-up with teabags - much more portable than all this coffee paraphernalia.

For the odd night, wet stuff like LWWF is quite good, provided you take the carbohydrate part (spuds/pasta), as they are mostly just the stew part of the meal.

+1 for the Firepot stuff.  Tasty, veggie/vegan options, choice of pack sizes and choice of waterproof or fully recyclable packets.  Just add boiling water, seal the bag and wait until ready. They stayed surprisingly hot too.

[trekker12]

We took a couple of MRE's in 2019 when we walked the lower half of the Cambrian way for the more out of the way areas we weren't going to pass a vallage shop. They are pretty good. You get loads of variety and choice. They are pretty good value as you get a couple of decent meals and desserts in the box, sweets, gum, snack bars and various other goodies.

The drawback is weight. They are designed to be ready to eat at any time by a soldier on the ground. They may not have to stop and cook dinner or worse be in a situation where lighting a fire/cooking stove is simply not a safe thing to do. As a result the meals are ready cooked and hydrated so they are heavy when compared to dried expedition foods.

We only took a box between two of us for 6 days of walking as we knew we would pass village shops near most of the places we would camp. If relying on packed food for five or six days then dried food is probably a better choice unless you stand a chance of being shot or captured somewhere you stop for dinner and light the trangia....

I noticed around the time of the first lockdown most of the Army surplas websites stocking them had quickly zero stock. Either the world really was going to end and the preppers stashed them all or they decided to keep them for themselves. I've not looked since to see how available they are.