Favorite Freeze Dried Meal?

So I finally tried a Mountain House Chilie Mac. WOW! That's YUMMY!

What's your favourite freeze dried meal?

I started a project to give the different meals personal ratings, but then I discovered I'm allergic to some ingredients. So I stopped the project. Before I stopped, though, I liked teriyaki chicken and beef stroganoff.

Mountain House Beef Stroganoff

keep going guys...got a gift certificate from Cabelas, and thought I'd get a couple of the #10 cans....

spagetti, beef stew, chicken patties mashed taters, beef stroganoff, chilimac(mentioned).

Lee

I too agree with the Mountain House Beef Stroganoff. I also enjoy the Mountain House Beef Stew, The Chicken Stew and their Wild Rice & Mushroom Pilaf.

You might also be interested in this website , though there are many like it.

Take care,

Stargazer

I'm a big fan of Mountain House teriyaki chicken, Chili-mac and the breakfast entrees. Serving size are great too.

Chicken breast and mashed or seafood chowder, both from Mountain House.

Jerry

Tried two more Mountain House on the weekend: lasagana with meat sauce got three thumbs up and the chicken terryaki got two thumbs down and one indifferent.

Nice thread.

I like Mountain House Beef Stew. Backpacker's Pantry Beef Stew? Not so much.

Mixing instant mashed potatoes into the Mountain House Beef Stew is definitely a fav.

One to stay away from: Backpacker's Pantry Jamaican Jerked Chicken. YUCK.

HJ

+1 for my #2 choice

My #1 is Backpackers Pantry Pesto Salmon Pasta

Les(The Southern Gentleman),I think you should try to make a trade(your Cabelas G/C)to Phadreus for something a heck of a lot more Palatable & life sustaining!or try some small portions of Mountain house,before making such a Rash decision of actually owning such large portions(#10 cans) of that muck,Yuck!Ok,on the topic again,The ONLY palatable item Mountain House provides is their Freeze dried Ice Cream,that's not only my opinion,but the whole truth as well!

Trying MH Beef Stroganoff for lunch today. YUM! I don't like it as much as the chilie mac but it's really good.

EDIT: This one's a little too salty for me to finish the whole thing. I got through about half. If hubby and I were sharing it would be just about the right amount. (He likes salt even less than I do.) I think. We might want to suppliment it with something else to push the calorie count up. I've got a desk job so I'm strictly taste-testing today.

Hey jac. You mentioned having relatives bring you retort packs of spam, tuna and salmon if I remember correctly?
Here in the colonies we have retort rice dishes also. Some even already have meat in them. Zatarains are good. I have seen others including uncle bens I think. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the heads up, Snake! Ima gunna upgrade my shopping list to include some of that and also some of those IDAHO instant potatoes.

I tend not to eat freeze dried on the trail, but I do sort my years into BPG and APG - Before Packit Gourmet and After Packit Gourmet. http://www.packitgourmet.com/

Mountain House tends to be more available, and up to trying another freeze dried brand I was quite happy with the beef stroganoff and the raspberry cobbler (didn't MH once make a blueberry cobbler?) You can only get packit gourmet via mail order I think, but the meal variety is enormous, and it *all* tastes so good. Try it, you'll like it.

I have no fiduciary interest in MH or Packit Gourmet, just a happy customer. FWIW I also like that PG has a discount program for Scouts (15%)

Thanks for the tip Lono. We'll have to try packit! A discount for Scouts? hmmm......

Np jac. I enjoy your posts. You are a very savvy prepper. We need more ladies like you. The instant potatos come in pouches fairly compact saving time from measuring and repacking from the boxess and they come in flavors. Just add water gravy mix is nice in the field as well. I have recently discovered Knorr mini cubes. You crumble them into food. I found onion and chipotale. Btw we have Hormel completes here. Turking and dressing, roast beef and potatos with gravy, chicken breast etc. A retort bowl which can be heated in boiling water or eaten cold in the field. A former co-worker swears she has seenoodle dishes in retort packaging in various grocery stores. I'll watch for them and advise if they look edible.

Wise is another company with high quality, generally great tasting meals: http://wisefoodstorage.com/

I haven't tried Wise yet. I read a review they were too salty. That could have simply have been that reviewer though, doing his taste testing at home. In the field I like more salt. Have you heard anything about the compressed freeze dried foods like mountain house had in the 70s? I heard someone talking about it at a show as they passed my tables, but not what company.Thanks.

Thanks so much, Doug. I will check them out!

Thanks Snake. Kudos go to my fellow ETSers. I was hopelessly lost and overwhelmed before I got here. I still have a lot to learn but am enjoying that process now. THANK YOU ALL!!




I think we needed to shop together some time.

That's a good point Snake. I found the MH stroganoff too salty but might not if I had exerted myself today. Hmmmmm... field test, me thinks.

I just noticed Wise this week while watching the tv show, Doomsday Bunkers. They had a commercial during the episode.

Frankly, when you get hungry enough, it all tastes good.

Very true. The best thing I ever ate was a cold, hard burger, with congealed cheese and bun, and nothing on it. After a long hard morning in the bush with our Scouts it was delish!!

Enertia Foods is another good food source that I've tried and liked.

I'm a big fan of freezer bag cooking and the associated website, lots of good ideas for ready made food and how to put together your own meals from different stuff - it can be quite inexpensive, quick to prepare, healthy and taste great. http://blog.trailcooking.com/

Really for me my favorite meal is when someone else has cooked it - I'll go filter water, prep tents, shovel away snow and do other chores if someone else takes charge of the cooking. If I'm hiking with my friend Kirby we tend to eat late, as neither of us fancies ourselves as a cook.

LOL@Lono's appreciation of someone else's cooking. Sounds like good team work to me.

I do like dooking, especially over a camfire. I've done a little freezer bag cooking and definitely want to try more. I'll check out that website. I'm always on the hunt for new recipes.

We're looking at freeze dried and dehydrated just for emergencies. (Although the MH Chilie Mac may make it into regular rotation and at least one of us has high hopes that we'll rind a good Mac n cheese.)

I kind of enjoy cooking, mostly because the inevitable consequence of cooking is eating, my true passion. I rather enjoy baking, the only one in my family to do so, again primarily because it usually results in banana nut bread, food of the gods.

You mention dehydrated and FD foods mostly for emergencies. I think you need to be thoughtful here. Both those foods require water to prepare, something that well might be in short supply. The main advantage of D/FD foods is light weight, a critical factor if you are backpacking or bugging out for long distances on foot and reasonably decent water is readily available along the route. In desert conditions, it is often just as sensible to carry canned or retort packaged foods containing water to supplement the gallon of two of H2O you are already packing. Apple sauce is one of my favorites for these situations, along with a beef stew and the like - a very high percentage of water. Often you can prepare a cheap supermarket meal like mac and cheese with adjustments to the cooking - use half the amount of water, bring to a boil and let the pot sit in a cozy for five minutes, and eat - cheap, light, and nutritious.

Mmmmm banana nut loaf.....

I agree about the water usage. Most of our emergency supplies are canned or frozen but I figure having something lighter, in case we have to hit the road, is a good idea, and an emergency situation isn't the time to try it for the first time. Now that we're finding some we like, we'll likely start taking them when backpacking and camping. An added benefit to this experiment!

i just buy the #10 cans 0f meat.



i found that the meals were too full of filler and spices that left an after taste.burping up Chile Mac all evening and making a extra bannock to kill the stomach burn was not worth it.
here's my take on the meats.the beef tastes like beef but turns to dust from handling in the can.on canoe trips i had to put it in a hard plastic jar to keep the bits from crumbling.the freeze dry pork chops are very good,real pork centers but they need to be soaked in hot water for a long time to soften up.i put one in the left over hot water i made for tea when i pulled into camp and a few hours later at dinner they were still to hard to fry,i chopped it up and boiled it it a stew for dinner and it was still chewy.next time i would put the chop in a zip lock with hot water at breakfast and hope it would be ready by dinner.
the sausage bits are tasty,they don't crumble like the beef but have a very strong taste of pepper and the other spices that go into sausage.i used it for adding to rice packs.
the chicken will most likely be my choice for meals on the trip this year.i'll add 3/4 of a cup to a rice pack and get more of a meal than the single serving freeze dry chicken packs,and chicken tastes,well like chicken,so it can go into anything without a after taste.

Perhaps of lesser gods. But take your BNB recipe and toss in some more fruit, spices, and other secret ingredients and get the stuff Thor and Odin would command...........Fruit Cake!!!

Be careful with that my friend. Maybe OK in colder weather, but soaking 4 hours or more at temps between 40 F and 140 F and you will be brewing up some of the food poisoning beasties that can ruin you trip.

This week we're trying the Coleman dehydrated meals that have appeared in Canadian Tire stores in recent months. They're not as big as MH stuff, 1 person vs 2. We tried the dirt and worms and s'mores last night and they were winners, with the dirt and worms getting top votes. The cheesecake and entrees are next on the menu plan!

Um... first, why are they in tire stores? And what are dirt and worms?

Anytime Jac. As a bachelor I had to learn how to shop.

I love to cook. I haven't heard of this freezer bag system you speak of.

Don't forget canned tomatos Hiker. You have the solid to satisfy your hunger urges and your body treats them like water. Just a little trick I learned from an old cowhand.

LOL! Camping food and tires? Seems perfectly natural to me! Can Tire started off as an automotive service centre and store. It grew (before my time) to include outdoor sports, gardening, electronics, housewears, etc. Getting their catelouge every year when I was a kid was more exciting than the Sears Christmas catelouge!

Dirt and Worms is chocolate pudding with cookie crumbs and gummy worms. Messy and yummy.

Thanks jac. I like camping ane weapons catalogues.

I was going through the pantry and came across a dinner that my wife gave me last Christmas. MH Chicken Pot Pie w/ Mashed Potatoes. Friday's lunch!

I got distracted and forgot to report back on the Coleman Southwest Chili meal.

I don't like that it's got 2 bags inside the main pouch. Extra garbage makes this Scouter grumpy, even though it's just two small celo bags. Each bags corresponds to a seperate cooking step. You're supposed to add the seasoning pack after the meal has cooked. BAH! I dumped it all in at once. It didn't seem to have any noticable impact on the final product.

I do like that the Coleman outer bags are small than MH, so no need for extra long untensils and less mess on the hands while eating. I used a regular soup spoon and it worked just fine.

All in all, I liked the flavour of this one. I especially like the corn nibblets. Not sure that I like it more the MH Chili Mac, but I'll definitely do this one again.

Finally got around to trying a few more this week:

MH Breakfast Scramble - very tasty but it was a little too heavy for a regular day at home meal. On the trail it would be brilliant.

MH Buffalo Style Chicken (Envelopes ate it as it without a wrap) - YUM! This might be my new favourite. The only negative is that I found some of the chicken a little tough. I'm going to do a side by side taste test with chili Mac & beef at lunch today and see if I really have a clear favourite.

Backpacker's Pantry Cheesecake (Plain) - Tasty. The consistency is more like a cheesecake pudding/mousse with Graham crumbs but it tasted just like cheesecake. I ate the whole thing, but in my defense it's a room temp meal that works well when you don't have time to sit and eat and entire hot one.

Our local Walmart has started caryying those Idaho instant potatoes so we tried one of each flavour over the past couple of weeks. They're a hit. The home style version was the favourite, herb & butter the first runner-up and garlic and butter came in third. They rocked on sheppard's pie, btw.

I really like that MH Buffalo Chicken! I could probably eat it three times per week!

Yup. It's my fave. SO much flavour! It's got a nice kick but it's not overpowering. It's also got 100 more calories (390) than Chili Mac and Beef (290). I had it solo but it would be excellent in a wrap or with rice or noodles.

I love that it's really low carb. Yeah, I'm one of those guys!

Hey Jacqui,not that it matters to me ( I dont buy the low salt line),but whats the sodium rating on those packs if you could tell us. Some folks really dont like salt,thinking feeding relatives.

Thanks!

Mountain House Meals Nutritional Info:

http://www.mountainhouse.com/nutr.cfm

I wouldn't want to eat them every day at home!

Thanks,I can see the salt people would freak out!

It's nice that they have a low sodium line. I doubt that very few of us consume enough FD for high sodium to make a significant difference.

True.I have relatives that freak if it lists 10mg sodium,really.

Ramen is freeze dried, right?

My husband and son were home alone and in charge of making dinner the other night. They had some leftover roast beef and a full pantry and fridge to work with and his is what they came up with:

Spicey Prime Rib Ramen

1. While the water boils for ramen noodles, cut leftover beef, green onion and spinach into bite sized pieces.
2. Add meat and veg to bowl with noodles and seasoning pack and cover the works with boiling water.
3. Add a generous spoonful of horseradish.
4. Wait for noodles to get soft, stir and enjoy.


it was so yummy! it's given me a hankering to try ramen with MH Buffalo Chicken...

We tried MH Mac n Cheese this week. not as good as KD, but what is? really good though! my son liked it better than the Coleman Mac n Cheese, and I agree.

Sounds good,I love the green onions in Ramen.

Me too, Spuds. If I could only have one thing to go with my ramen, I'd be hard pressed to choose between them of Frank's hot sauce.

I tried a breakfast version last weekend: make the noodles minus the seasoning pack. When they're cooked, drain the water and add brown sugar and cinnamon. Kind of like oatmeal but not as good. REALLY not as good as the instant steel cut oats I found recently. YUM!!