The 2008 Sloppy Joe MRE meal and another FRH failure

[rattattoo]

I had full meal packs of an '06, an '07 and an '08 Sloppy Joe among the 30 or so MREs I was given by my son-in-law when he mustered out of the USMC last summer. I believe these were all issued for maneuvers while he was at Camp Lejeune NC. They came home in his pack and got tossed in a box in the event of a hurricane.
This evening I dug around in the tote down cellar and pulled out the first one that said "Sloppy Joe". It was the '08. [Sopakco 8290]

I was cooking at home tonight, but I gave the FRH a chance anyways. Nope. Another dud. Fortunately, unlike field conditions, at home there's a microwave.

I opened up the main meal pouch and gave it the sniff and tiny-taste test... it seemed perfectly fine. The taste was enough to assure me that it was yet another bland MRE meal. The '08 meal pack included a jalapeno squeeze cheese and I had a leftover salsa pack from some other meal amongst the loose stuff. I added those and put it in the microwave. It came out uncomfortably hot... I just about burned the roof of my mouth off with the first bite.
With the additions, it was surprisingly tasty. However, it was nowhere near as beefy flavored as a commercial can of Sloppy Joe™. It did have plenty of the little meat pellets and a nice tomato based sauce... it is also much more tomato-ey than the commercial Sloppy Joe™. The jalapeno squeeze cheese had kneaded up to a perfectly acceptable and creamy consistency despite it's age. Once it melted a bit from the heat and got stirred into the salsa and Sloppy Joe it provided the necessary kick and zip that was missing.

My only error was that I had torn up one of the wheat snack breads and placed it in the bottom of the bowl before pouring the sloppy Joe mixture on top. I thought that since it was included in the meal it must be intended to eaten as the carbohydrate portion. Bad idea. It ended up a pasty, glutinous mess that most resembled uncooked bread dough. I had to rake it off to the side in order to eat the meal. Even if I had used it "outta-pouch" to just sop up the Sloppy Joe mixture, I think it would've been disappointing. I would've been better off using a package of crackers.

I like the MRE Sloppy Joe meal perfectly well. It was filling and with a little addition, perfectly flavorful. However, because of the tomato-based sauce, and the lack of beefiness, I could see it being better turned into an Italian "meat" sauce with the addition of just a little oregano and it's being served over pasta.
The wheat snack bread was a major failure. I had forgotten that it's major usefulness is probably in digging a cathole. I have yet to find anything that it goes with even half decently, in my opinion the cheese and peanut butter spreads are better on the crisp crackers.

Included in the full meal pouch were a bag of the sugar-based Lemon-lime drink, a pouch of raisin/nut mix and The Fudge Brownie. I put the snack-mix and the lemon-lime aside for hiking use in the future, but I did cut into the brownie.

Even though it was eight years old [Sterling Foods 8184], it was still very moist. It is also very dense in texture, much like a molasses cookie. I cut off a few bites and tried them out. It was quite reasonably tasty although it is not particularly "fudgy" in the sense of a rich chocolate taste, it has more of a dense cocoa flavor. There is actually more flavor in the aftertaste on your tongue then in the brownie in your mouth.
A little later on I will probably break the rest of it up into a bowl and top it up with some of my coffee fudge ice cream... That ought to "kick it up a notch".

[rattattoo]

Sorry for the duplication of the picture in the review here. For some reason I can't get the second picture of the main course out of the post. It shows up again where the brownie photo was supposed to go, and despite all my efforts, can't be changed.
Clueless...

[Norton]

Great review and I learned two things very important .
(It ended up a pasty, glutinous mess that most resembled uncooked bread dough)
Not to put the field bread at the bottom AS... I would have done myself if I had this meal.
If I take it camping I will bring some tortillas or spoon it on the dry snack bread.

And The '08 meal pack included a jalapeno squeeze cheese and I had a leftover salsa pack from some other meal amongst the loose stuff. I added those and put it in the microwave. It came out uncomfortably hot... I just about burned the roof of my mouth off with the first bite.

I might have added the Cheese and Salsa also


Thanks

[rattattoo]

JFYI- it was the thermo heat that burned me, not the capsicum... I just didn't let it cool off enough before taking that first blistering bite. Adding the salsa and cheese was the redeeming factor in it turning out as well as it did.

[Norton]

JFYI- it was the thermo heat that burned me, not the capsicum... I just didn't let it cool off enough before taking that first blistering bite. Adding the salsa and cheese was the redeeming factor in it turning out as well as it did.

Thanks for making that point clear.. I thought you meant it was to spicy

[RockyRaab]

Great review. I carry an assortment of hot sauce pouches I get at fast food places because I haven't found an MRE meal yet that wasn't improved by additional spiciness. BTW, I describe "heat" as either spicy-hot or (my self-coined word) "Fahrenhot".

I have yet to have an MRE or TOTM with snack bread. A solid unbroken string of crackers so far. I have meals that list snack bread in my inventory (all either 2013 or 2014 production) but none have come up in my rotation yet. I have had one recently with cornbread, which was delicious. They could replace all the crackers and other bread items with that cornbread and I'd be one happy eater.

You mentioned FRH failure in the title but didn't address it in the post. Details?

[rattattoo]

RE: FRH failure

Oh, that was just as simple as it never came up to any kind if heat. No sizzle.
I keep having this problem with almost all the FRHs that came with my son-in-law's donation. The MREs that he passed on to me are mostly dated 2007- 2010, with a few from 2006, and 2011. I've been working my way through the older ones figuring they're the ones whose shelf-life might be getting a little bit "iffy".
Every meal that I've tried, whether as a full sealed MRE pouch or loose/mixed, has been perfectly fine. The few FRHs that have worked worked, and because they did, I didn't think to notice what packages they came out of. But I've recently taken along several of sealed pouches of older meals, and every FRH that is come out left me "cold". They all seem to date from 06, 07 and 08.

It usually isn't any kind of a big deal to me because I almost always carried along my little alcohol stove and cook mug to make coffee... But it's annoying enough to note.

[rabidwolf]

Nice review, as for your string of bad luck with FRH's. Perhaps there was a bad manufacturing run?

[rationtin440]

Just my $.02 here, but I think the FRH is an example of something that was a good idea/concept, but could have been made alot better than it was. It reminds me of the teething problems that the AR-15/M-16 system had when it was first being developed. Until they were able to figure out "hey we can make this better" there were alot of bad issues with the weapon. As for the FRH, I'm not sure exactly what could be done to improve it because it is better in so many ways than the cooking system we had when I first enlisted in the national guard: empty MCI can and fuel bars. My ambulance crew chief eventually brought a backpacking campstove with fuel to the field, but I guess that could be considered cheating.

[housil]

Usually the FRH fail only, once they got too old, nothing that happens with the troops.