Vegetarian MRE review - menu 12 - penne with vegetable sausage crumbles

[RockyRaab]

That's a good one, but my all-time favorite veggie MRE is the Ratatouille. Possibly because there are fewer preservatives in them, the veggie meals seem to be tastier to me. Maybe they try a little harder to make it flavorful to make up for the lack of meat. All I know is the veggie ones are pretty darn good.

Having said that, nobody seems to want the Veggie Taco Pasta ones. At my local AF base, they have a bin of TOTMs. The last time I pawed through them, there were about 50 meals total - and 48 of them were VTP. I had one when they came out and thought they were just okay. I'd eat another one if that was what was available, but I'd much prefer a Ratatouille or a cheese tortellini.

[gundog4314]

I never understood why people shy away from either. I rather enjoy them. In fact I have this planned for one of my next reviews.

Cheers

[gschultz9]

I have to confess to being a little prejudiced against the veggie options. It's not that they're actually bad, it's just that I'm a meat-eater and hearing that something's vegetarian just kind of sounds scary. Of course I've learned over the years that a vegetarian MRE is far from some tree-hugging health food. Probably my two favorites among the veggie options are the Cheese Tortellini that Rocky mentioned (always liked that one) and the long-departed Veggie Burger. The idea of that one scared me the first time I had one. I figured, if I'm going to have a burger I want a Beef Patty! But I was pleasantly surprised by it and didn't really think of it as a veggie burger so much as kind of a "mystery meat" patty. I suppose the generous amount of BBQ sauce it was swimming in had a lot to do with that!

[gundog4314]

I hear ya G but there are times when I question the "realness" of the meat in MREs when TVP is so easy to disguise in a sauce. I mean did you get a good look at the "chicken" in tha country captain chicken ration? I've eaten plenty and never have seen a breast that looked like that. Case in point I bought some TVP beef just to try it. Re hydrated it and made tacos. No one except me knew and it tasted exactly the same.

[RockyRaab]

Gundog, you are so right. I don't know what they make that "chicken" in the chicken fajita out of, but it looks and tastes more like a pencil eraser than meat. It's some kind of extruded goo cut into uniform rectangular chunks - nothing like cut-up pieces of actual chicken.

[cavguy]

I actually used to get a headache if I ate the veg. burger MRE! After that I try to stay away from MRE's that use mostly TVP...

[kwiklot]

I found the vegetarian menus to have the worst snacks thats why we always used to shy away from them, veggie burger had the worst snacks by far the only one people would fight for was cheese tortellini because it was packed to the gills.

[SentientTootsieRoll]

Just had the 2014 version of the menu last night, and I was quite happy with the selection of snack items in it. The entree was pretty good, but adding just a tad of hot sauce brought the flavors out.

[RockyRaab]

Excellent job. I'm glad you were able to have food items completely new to you; that's half the fun of rations.

[Woodland]

That's a good one, but my all-time favorite veggie MRE is the Ratatouille. Possibly because there are fewer preservatives in them, the veggie meals seem to be tastier to me. Maybe they try a little harder to make it flavorful to make up for the lack of meat. All I know is the veggie ones are pretty darn good.

Having said that, nobody seems to want the Veggie Taco Pasta ones. At my local AF base, they have a bin of TOTMs. The last time I pawed through them, there were about 50 meals total - and 48 of them were VTP. I had one when they came out and thought they were just okay. I'd eat another one if that was what was available, but I'd much prefer a Ratatouille or a cheese tortellini.

I used to like the Ratatouille but the new Taco Pasta is better at any day of the week (and so was the Vegetable Lasagna). This is my subjective opinion because I like hot and spicy meals.Taco Pasta tastes like the commercial,canned Chili Beans w. Beef we have here and I love that .Among the ingredients is "vegetarian beef flavor base" or something... I have three Taco Pasta MREs at the moment but I'm planning to buy more (preferably Wornick or Sopakco)
Spicy Penne is also quite good.Cheese Tortellini is almost tasteless,needs salt but at least it's not textured soy protein