Tag Archives: MRE

MRE Showdown pt 2

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USA

Welcome to part two of the MRE showdown where we focus on US meals ready to eat.  These are individually packed meals rather than a full day in a package.

These were also purchased from Amazon and depending on where you buy them can cost as much or as little as 40% for three meals as the Russian ration pack.  I did like being able to read what the meals were so there weren’t any big surprises on the entrees.

First up was the Chicken Pesto Pasta.  You can see below the contents packaged and then unpackaged with the associated accessories.


The contents of this meal were the chicken pesto pasta, Italian bread sticks, cheese spread, patriotic cookies, cinnamon bun, lemon lime drink mix, powdered red pepper, coffee and accessories, toilet paper, matches, moist wipe, gum and the chemical heater.

I used the supplied chemical heater to warm up the entrée and it worked very well.  The contents are that visually appealing but when I added some of the ground red pepper it tasted fairly decent. The chicken looked and tasted like chicken and the pasta wasn’t mushy and there was a pesto flavor so it lived up to the billing but didn’t really exceed expectations.  The Italian bread was soft, dry and broke up easily.  It had some specks of herbs and made a decent platform for the cheese spread.  Oh the cheese spread.  It was essentially cheez whiz in a pouch instead of a can so if you like that you’d love this.  The patriotic cookies were like sugar cookies in shapes as the name says; Statue of Liberty head & torch, Uncle Sam’s face and hat, the flag and the letters USA.  They were tasty.  Last but certainly not least on the food front was the cinnamon bun.  Another casualty of preservation by limiting moisture.  It had a good flavor but was very dense and dry with a very thin liquid layer of cinnamon in the middle.  The drink mix made a Gatorade like drink that wasn’t bad and provided some electrolytes and carbs.  The coffee was standard instant coffee, nothing notable.  Overall I’d say this was a pretty passable meal not something I’d want daily but certainly something I would complain about if I was out in the field.

Next up on the hit parade was the cheese tortellini in tomato sauce.  In the spirit of balance I decided to try a vegetarian option because they exist.  As you can see from the picture it also wasn’t going to win any prized for presentation.

 

The meal had the tortellini, soda crackers, peanut butter, an energy bar, mango-peach applesauce, grape drink mix, the accessory pack with hot sauce and powdered raspberry drink mix and the highlight of the MRE and hearkening to their roots a pack of M&M’s.

The tortellini tasted just like you’d get from a can in the store and benefitted greatly from the addition of the packet of hot sauce, which was from Louisiana was not Tabasco.  The crackers were a bit like the bread from the previous meal in that they were dry and fragile but didn’t have snap like a crispy saltine cracker does.  They were passable with though when covered in the peanut butter which had a nice peanutty flavor.  The mango-peach applesauce was a sweet mush that had a vaguely mango taste if you didn’t think about it too much.  The energy bar was one of those chewy sort of chocolatey bars that you feel like probably had some other kind of good for you stuff but didn’t care bad enough to check the label.  It was typical for its type.  The grape drink tasted like an artificially grape flavored Gatorade wannabe.  The M&M’s were of course melt in your mouth, not in your hand delicious.  Final assessment of this one is that even if it was vegetarian it was very edible and honestly quite filling.

The final entry in the US MRE lineup was Mexican Style Chicken Stew.

 

Although it did not look pretty it was my favorite of the 3 meals.  It had a surprising amount of chicken and it was spicy enough to justify the Mexican label.  In addition to the stew there were “vegetable crackers”, Cheddar cheese pretzels, cheese spread, applesauce with raspberry puree, a lemon lime beverage powder and oh yeah! M&Ms again.  The vegetable crackers were dry and a bit odd but I crumbled half in the stew and cheesed the other half so they were edible.  The cheddar cheese pretzels were simply cheese Combos.  The applesauce did have a faint raspberry flavor but otherwise it was unremarkable.  Of course the M&Ms need no additional detail.  It was a very edible meal that definitely fills you up.

In the final tally I have to give the win to the US MREs for taste and overall quality.  If you’re looking to grab something for your next camping trip grab some MREs and remember to pack out your garbage.

 

 

 

MRE Showdown

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USA & Russia pt 1

I had an idea for a do ahead blog to drop in some weekend when I wasn’t able to do the normal blog.  I thought it might be interesting to compare MREs from different countries with the US being one for sure.  The only other country’s rations I could find easily was Russia’s so I ordered up some of each.  Due to the fact that there are multiple meals involved this will be a two part post starting with the challenger, Russia.

The Russian one actually is one package for a full day or 3 meals whereas the US ones are packed one meal per package.  Neither one had what I’d call anything like a normal breakfast but both have fairly high calorie count as you’d expect to need if you’re doing strenuous activities often associated with military life.

The Russian arrived first and as you can see in the first photo it was vacuum packed.  Inside is a cardboard container with a nicely packed series of packs and containers.  Now this is all in Cyrillic and I don’t read Russian so this is pretty much a by guess and by golly although some I could figure out.  So here’s what was in the box:

3 large foil tins, 2 small foil tins, 1 small round can, 4 packs of crackers, 2 individually packed tea bags, one pack of coffee, one mystery foil pack, one pack with peaches I figure is a desert of some sort, a pack of powder with fruits & vegetables on it I figure may be a drink powder, 3 packs of sugar that are at least 2 tablespoons full, salt and pepper packets, 3 two packs of what I assumed were wet naps (they were), 5 charcoal tablets for water purification, 3 waxy tablets and a foldable heater, 6 matches and a striker, 3 spoons, 3 napkins, some weird little plastic device and something that is clearly a pill of some sort.

Since I wasn’t planning to start a fire on my table I threw most of the accessories in my emergency zombie apocalypse stash.  I decided one big tin, one small tin / can, one pack of crackers, one of the other packs and a caffeine source would make a meal.  Here’s the first batch.

The first big tin turned out to be rice and meaty flavored fat dish, allegedly beef.  It honestly had a fairly decent flavor with a  bit of black pepper added. The crackers had a kind of stale taste that was the first thing you noticed and was a bit off putting but I powered through.  The little can turned out to be filled with a cheese flavored substance much like the old C rations had canned cheese but this wasn’t quite that good.  It did have a mild cheese flavor and covered the cracker taste but that’s about all you can say for it.  The mystery foil pack had jam that made me wish I still had crackers left.  It was sweet and tasted like a cross between apple and apricot.  The tea I heated in the microwave and it was nice and strong and a packet of the sugar made it something to carry you through a few more hours.

Here are the contestants for the evening meal.

The tin that looks like dog food was a salty beef in liquid and the white stuff is congealed fat.  When heated it the beef was tender and swimming in what I’m going to call broth.  The beef wasn’t bad but there was so much liquid it had to be part of the equation so I took half the semi-rancid crackers and broke them in to small shards and added them to the mix.  In addition to soaking up the “broth” it had the added benefit of softening the crackers and masking their taste.  The smaller tin had a meat paste that sort of tasted like patê if you’d never actually had any.  The other half of the crackers were devoted to this delight.  The final course in this meal was the fruit bar thingy.  As the picture showed it definitely had peaches but also finely chopped nuts and a peppery taste from some spice.  It wasn’t bad but it’s not going to be on my “gotta get me more of that” list.  So filling but not a meal I’d really want to have again.

The last I only snapped after the lids were removed as my enthusiasm waned but I supplemented with a nice snap of the tea and coffee.

 

The big tin had a beef stew in it and was actually the best of the lot.  It was mainly potatoes and beans in gravy but there was enough meat to let you know it was beef stew and honestly was fairly good.  The small tin had eggplant paste the consistency of pumpkin pie filling but not the taste.  I didn’t know how you were expected to eat it but I busted out another pack of the crackers and used it as a dip.  It wasn’t as disgusting as it looked but it was filling.  The green pack was a drink powder but didn’t have much of a distinct flavor and the coffee was everything you’d expect instant coffee to be.  I didn’t but if you added a bag of the sugar to the coffee that would get you moving for a while.

The beef stew and the tea were definitely the highlights of this package.  To reflect my final judgement let me tell you what should be a joke in the Russian army if it isn’t already.

Why did the Russian dog lick his butt?  Because he was trying to get the taste of the Russian MRE out of his mouth.

To be fair the packaging was well done and the contents efficiently packed.

Part 2 will be 3 US MREs.