MREInfo.com

Hello! Craig here, this is going to be my first review ever!
I decided to dig into my collection of various cases of MRES I've been collecting and meaning to review and I think it's finally time that I start cracking these open more frequently along with writing detailed reviews of each meal.
So tonight I went with personally one of my most anticipated meals, only because it wasn't known as a very favorite meal amongst its service and that it's been discontinued for some time now. So let's do this! Menu number 4 Country Captain Chicken

Case is from early 2004 seeing that some of the items enclosed in the meals range from the end of 2003 until the beginning of 2004

Here's the entire contents layed out. Honestly, looks like a pretty solid meal, especially those peanut butter M&Ms! It seemed as though the FRH was inoperative, as expected and was most likely due to poor storage of the meals for all of these years. So I opted for letting the entrée and side sit under some hot water for a couple of minutes and in the mean time I decided to start with the cheese... And let me be the first to say that was a NO GO, the cheese was brown and it had a nice, shiny plastic look to it! Yum!! But as usual still retained that wonderful processed government cheesy smell... Mmmmmmmm... Here it is! All plated up in it's scrumptious glory... The smells weren't horribly repulsive but then again they weren't what one would say... Gourmet... First up is the crackers... They were intact, two solid cracker. They smelled normal with a slight whiff of cardboard... One noticeable thing is the shiny, waxy greasy coating on the crackers. I've seen this before, it's kind of odd. But overall they tasted fairly bland and were up to my little expectations. Next I'll try the entrée, the chicken itself. The first thing that struck me is the slightly off putting smell of spice or something. You could tell that they tried to go in a very specific route of flavor with this one. It had a brown sauce and a couple of small bits that I couldn't identify along with tomato and a "breading" that would just scrape off of the cutlet. This was probably the weirdest part of the chicken... It had turned into this dark brown color as seen in the picture, you could tell it was separated and reformed, obviously... Judging by the consistent texture and color. But still weird! And now for the taste test... Ew! This was an immediate spit out, absolutely disgusting. It tasted just as it smelled, horribly seasoned with a hint of plywood. The cutlet held up all of these years but was definitely a NO GO on it's initial maiden voyage into my mouth and back onto my plate!! Now onto the side dish, noodles in butter flavored sauce. This was pretty straight forward. It had a slight buttery smell but it was also hindered by yet another cardboard/plywoody smell... AWESOME! So I went for it. I guess it wasn't that bad but I couldn't follow through with getting it down. It tasted very bland with a buttery note. It was actually similar to how it smelled. Overall... Not very good. At all. So it gets the NO GO. Okay! Now time for a little desert! I'll start with the "toaster pastry" I was hoping that it could bring some life back into this meal but... Once again I was let down. It turned out to be cinnamon, and it tasted as such with a wonderfully strong metallic taste! So yeah... I was all set on that. It looked and smelled fine though. Onto those M&Ms! I was pretty excited for these because I've never even had them before. As you can see in the picture the candy was intact and had very nice color in each piece, but each piece had an odd waxy coating that seemed to melt from the heat of my hand. But that didn't stop me! They tasted fine! Chocolate with a nice overwhelming peanut butter flavor! These were good... You just had to get through the waxy coating. And I just hit the 10 picture cap for this post that I just found out about haha. But! I will post additional photos below.

Overall this meal was a definite NO GO, I can see why it was very short lived and wasn't favorited by many.

Even Ace steered clear of this one! Well that's it for my review of Menu number 4 Country Captain Chicken, leave a comment and let me know what you think or if you've also had this meal! I'll be doing more reviews soon seeing the I have case A and B from 2004 and a case from 1993, go ahead and let me know what you guys would like to see next!
Thanks for reading everyone and stay hungry!

Here's a picture of my hand after holding those M&Ms Date code off of the Crackers And a little bonus... A picture of the Tabasco sauce... This confuses me... The bottle is perfectly sealed. WHERE DID NEARLY HALF OF IT GO!!! Haha

Great review and I too use my dog as a partner when testing these meals.
I also tried the toaster pastery last week and found the filling was super skinny.
Not a proper made in Battle Creek Michigan Kellogg's USA POP TART

Thank you for sharing your pictures and your tongue with us

CCC had only a very little few fans, most peoples didn´t like it for it´s almonds. Mrs. Housil loves it...

I guess this is one of the very rare examples of a realy spoiled MRE. I have eaten "tons" of 2003 MREs so it wasn´t the time that killed it. Do you have the TTI sticker still on the case?

Thanks for the review Craig! It's a shame that it was spoiled, but like you said that's probably just from how it was kept. I keep my MREs in a cold, dry room in the house that's usually right around 60F. Some people keep theirs in basements, but only do that if you've got moisture completely under control. Like housil suggested though, check the TTI sticker and compare it against this:

We used to call this one, "Country Crapt'n Chicken"....

Thank you for the responses everyone!
Here's a picture of the TTI I know that both of the cases I have have seen a lot haha, I believe that the person I purchased them from said that they were a gift from hurricane Katrina... So obviously they've been sitting in a hot, humid basement for 9 or 10 years. Oh well! That doesn't stop me! I still have plenty of menus to review haha.
But definitely, even if I did have this back in '04 I would still be repulsed by it.

This menu is truly up high on my "biggest MRE fails list" if you will, it's right up there with those mouth watering frankfurters... Haha.

Yeah that's definitely been exposed to too much heat over time, but like you say there are still going to be tons of edible items throughout the case. I don't think I've ever had one of these rations - I can't imagine the breading holds up even when it's fresh though. I'm gonna have to find and try one someday anyway

You should see the case I have from 1993 haha... But as long as everything is still sealed I have no problems with trying it. And yeah! I think everyone should try this meal just for the experience. I kind of try to seek out the older cases because I like to try the discontinued meals and test how well they held up.

Cmcilm94 wrote:Thank you for the responses everyone!
Here's a picture of the TTI

Ouch...