The Immortal Beef Stew

[Norton]

I remember the Beef and Potatoes meal being fairly close to Dinty Moore type gravy minus the carrots .

[Vlaanderen]

Hi to all,

Just picked up this thread.

In the U.K. Heinz no longer make the beef stew, nor the Irish stew. A Liverpool company, Princes, markets both types of stew.

There is a great difference between the beef and Irish stew, i.e. the Irish stew contains mutton, not beef.

As Norton stated, some bread will certainly fill you up.

Regards, Norman.

[Tedster]

Hey everybody

New guy - just wanted to chime in with my experience. I was around for the earliest issue MRE basically - had consumed the "C-Rats" as a civilian, but by the time I entered active duty in 1988 the C's were long gone, at least for the units I was in. I tried them all. As the saying goes, I was hungry!

The Beef Stew was always the favorite entree. It is still tasty, but sadly not what it once was. Everyone of course loves Steak - but good cooks know that tough cuts of meat can be made outstanding by long simmering and with lots of veggies - as good a meal as it gets, really. Well somewhere along the line in order to keep costs down probably they stopped using actual stew meat and instead use those "chunked and formed" ersatz mystery meats. Pity. I must say I am impressed with the variety, if not always the quality, of the meals and components in the latest issue rations going back several years. "Back in the day" 12 meals (with almost half of the fare, fairly rotten ha ha) it got old quick.

[Bypah]

Like everybody said beef stew is a satisfying meal in itself and always bring memories of mom's wholesome cooking....
As long as you have couple of potatoes/ sweet potatoes or other tubers, carrots, onions, spices, some flour, water and any kind of edible meat a good nice stew can be made from scratch. specially if they have all the facilities of a mobile kitchen those military cooks can make wonders.

Homemade beer stew...

[housil]

Yummi!!

[RockyRaab]

Because of this thread, I had a beef stew TOTM while fishing last week. It was a Sopacko meal dated 4123. Strangely, it was not at all "Dinty-like". The gravy was thinner and lighter, all the various chunks of meat and veggies were cut much smaller, and it was a lot blander than Dinty Moore's famous canned stew. I had to add some salt and hot sauce to bounce the flavor profile up a bit. Not at all what I remembered or expected from previous MRE Beef Stew entrees.

If they are changing this meal, it isn't an improvement.