Mountain House Wraps filling
Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2011 12:54 am
Hey everyone,
I was thinking the other day that it would be kind of fun to do a food review of the Mountain House Wraps filling. Mountain House has had these on the market for awhile and I think somebody briefly mentioned these in another thead last year. Well, I was at my local REI outdoors store this weekend checking out the clearance items and they had some (more like very few) Mountain House pre-packaged food on sale. I saw one of the Wraps filling pouches and since Chicken Salad sounded good, I figured I'll give it a shot and let the rest of you know.
So, with this it's basically easy to prepare. You rip the top off, add 10 fluid oz (or 250 ml) of hot water, let sit and then stir. Pretty easy. The first impressions after adding the hot water and stirring were questionable, but since I had to go to work I figured I'd let it sit for a few hours and then check it again. After 6 hours, it looked a bit better but more like off white, with a tinge of yellow coloring but it had thickened up. I could definitely smell the chicken and see some the cranberries, pumpkins seeds, and there was a wiff of onions to round the contents out, but not much else.
The consistency was somewhat thick, not like what you would find at a supermarket deli or backyard BBQ event but close. For tortillas I used up 4 MRE tortillas and I must say they fell apart pretty quick, so I would make a suggestion to bring bigger, heartier ones from the market. I had just enough filling for the 4 tortillas and that was it. The calories on the filling packet said it was only about 130 probabaly not enough for some but for me I threw in some chips and a drink and I was satisfied for the rest of the afternoon. I was involved in heavy physical exertion so I was pretty satisfied all day.
My basic conclusion to this was it was okay food, not the best, but not utterly replusive. The filling is a good idea to the mainstream freeze dried food that the company puts out, as a low cost alternative (i.e. chicken salad vs. beef stew or lasagna). And since I bought this on clearance it did provide more bang for the buck. I think this would be more prefered as an low cost addition to food supplies, storage or using it to hit the trail backpacking or hunting. It certainly does require very much prep time and totrtillas are very shelf stable and can fill a person up for not a whole lot of money. I know we don't talk that much about the civilian freeze dried foods here on the forum but I think this could start a new trend on how we look at backpacker food.
I was thinking the other day that it would be kind of fun to do a food review of the Mountain House Wraps filling. Mountain House has had these on the market for awhile and I think somebody briefly mentioned these in another thead last year. Well, I was at my local REI outdoors store this weekend checking out the clearance items and they had some (more like very few) Mountain House pre-packaged food on sale. I saw one of the Wraps filling pouches and since Chicken Salad sounded good, I figured I'll give it a shot and let the rest of you know.
So, with this it's basically easy to prepare. You rip the top off, add 10 fluid oz (or 250 ml) of hot water, let sit and then stir. Pretty easy. The first impressions after adding the hot water and stirring were questionable, but since I had to go to work I figured I'd let it sit for a few hours and then check it again. After 6 hours, it looked a bit better but more like off white, with a tinge of yellow coloring but it had thickened up. I could definitely smell the chicken and see some the cranberries, pumpkins seeds, and there was a wiff of onions to round the contents out, but not much else.
The consistency was somewhat thick, not like what you would find at a supermarket deli or backyard BBQ event but close. For tortillas I used up 4 MRE tortillas and I must say they fell apart pretty quick, so I would make a suggestion to bring bigger, heartier ones from the market. I had just enough filling for the 4 tortillas and that was it. The calories on the filling packet said it was only about 130 probabaly not enough for some but for me I threw in some chips and a drink and I was satisfied for the rest of the afternoon. I was involved in heavy physical exertion so I was pretty satisfied all day.
My basic conclusion to this was it was okay food, not the best, but not utterly replusive. The filling is a good idea to the mainstream freeze dried food that the company puts out, as a low cost alternative (i.e. chicken salad vs. beef stew or lasagna). And since I bought this on clearance it did provide more bang for the buck. I think this would be more prefered as an low cost addition to food supplies, storage or using it to hit the trail backpacking or hunting. It certainly does require very much prep time and totrtillas are very shelf stable and can fill a person up for not a whole lot of money. I know we don't talk that much about the civilian freeze dried foods here on the forum but I think this could start a new trend on how we look at backpacker food.
Just to keep things practical and be easy for yourself. Then again some MRE's would be my next choice. The MH meals would be great if you had some prep time and weren't going full throttle on the trails. 