Heater Meals Southwest Style Chicken w/ Rice

[housil]

Today I had for lunch a 2009 expired:






Note no beverage can and the entree in a bag


Dried out seasoning


I had to add all salt that came with it


The fruits were covered with a "white layer", but still edible (I guess as I´m still alive after dinner...)

[LogDayFreshHots]

Greeting Housil. All in all it looks pretty good. I remember when the MRE technology was first making its way into the civilian market. The Heater Meals seemed really popular and started showing up in surplus catalogs. This is the first Ive seen in years. Actually, I thought they stopped making them but to be honest, I wasn't really looking. Just noticed from time to time when they didn't appear in the later surplus catalog.

Wow... all the salt? Geez... I would have thought they were loaded with it. If they're 2009 or older maybe storage over time?

The white coating on the fruit mix is probably powdered sugar. For all the cooking shows I watch here in the states I should be able to easily recall the European term for powdered/ confectioners sugar! Drawing a blank Housil - sorry. But its probably a dusting of powdered sugar to help prevent the fruit from becoming a sticky blob over time and to add some sweetness. Ive noticed from my MCI and earlier rations that the oils from the sugar packets will leach out over time and make the packs transluscent. So maybe they add some powdered sugar to the fruit mix to prevent clumping as well as to make up for the lost sweetness as the natural oils bleed out over time?

Or... maybe I should just pack M&M's up my nose and shoot them at the television!

[housil]

The white coating on the fruit mix is probably powdered sugar.

That´s a nice suggestion!

[norge]

its natural fruit sugar,when you dry fruits and store them for some time the sugar
draws out on the out side.

cheers ken

[LogDayFreshHots]

its natural fruit sugar,when you dry fruits and store them for some time the sugar
draws out on the out side.

cheers ken

Agree with you Ken

But whenever I come across fruit or sweets that have been stored for a long time and they start to 'bleed' sugar, Ive noticed it tends to recrystalize.

Manufacturers will usually take fruit pieces like this, something that could be sitting around for a while, and will toss it in a confections coating pan with some powdered sugar to provide an additional coating to help keep it from sticking together. Like dusting a cake pan with flour to prevent sticking.

But I agree that natural sugars over time will have the same effect. Check out the bits of fruit in a cereal box. It has that same white dusty coating also. Grated Romano cheese will often list 'potato starch' or something similar 'to prevent caking (clumping)' in the ingredients.

I guess the only way to really know for sure what they did with that fruit is to check the ingredients to see if they added any 'coating' to the pieces?