What's your Favorite Freeze Dried Food for Backpacking and hiking?

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soapboxpreacher

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So we go to the range every few months and take a grill, kettle, etc to cook with. I recently took a Mountain House Mac and Cheese to go along with our brats...the stuff was pretty bad! HUGE amounts of salt, way too much sauce, and never reconstituted fully so the noodles were hard and under cooked! Bad experience! Now I have had the Mountain House Mexican chicken and rice and absolutely loved it!! I would call it chicken chili with rice! It is really tasty! I do it up sometimes during a sunday afternoon football game! I recommend it but having tried many more after that bad experience 2x with the Mac and Cheese...once during a solo trip as well.

Seems many like romen noodle but I am not a big fan. They are good but after college I would prefer avoiding them all together! I did however see a few freeze dried vegetable soup mixes like the one from Harmony House Foods that seem to be loved. They look like they would be very good as long as you take a bouillon cube and maybe some orzo. I'm guessing 10-15 minutes and it would be pretty good...and cheap. Pack weight would be small as well.

So what freeze dried stuff do you love...your favorites. As well as if you like some grocery store meals that you simply just remove the packaging and you are in business! I need some ideas for the upcoming season. My son and I will be out a lot this coming year and I want to make it a great experience on all levels! He is only 4 yet a food snub! Yeah you read that right...he is a sushi eater, steak, omelets, he makes his own soup and has made chili with me 2x. So he love to outdoor cook. When we car camp I do a few foil meals. He love foil salmon and seems to want it even at home ever few weeks! He likes the Mountain house mexican chicken and chili too! But says it a little spicy as he drinks his milk to cool it down. So once again let me know what you like to take...stuff that cant be refrigerated, light, and somewhat easy for camping and hiking. I havent tried too many Mountain House, Backpackers, or wise freeze dried so I am all ears as well as any other ways such as grocery store stuff that can work as camping food. Thanks
 
Freeze dried meals specificly geared for backpackers can be pricey, but are generally good tasting and nutritious. While pastas with spices like ramen noodles might be filling, they are generally not high in readily available nutrition and energy. As mentioned, there are quite a few dried, prepackaged foods available in the grocery stores. They vary greatly in cooking times and other ingrediants needed as well as portions they provide and pot/pan requirements. Pizza ingredients are generally not too heavy and while it does take a bit of time to prepare and cook, a fresh made pizza is a great treat on a trip outdoors. They can be made in simplified fashion useing soft flour tortilla shells or various breads. Or made traditionally using a foil pack of crust mix but in smaller pans. My Bemco oven makes great personal size traditional pizzas two at a time. "Skillet stroganoff", various potatoe packages (Au grotten, etc.), cajun gumbo mix are light and portable. Some places carry single serve meats in foil pouches like chicken, tuna, ham etc. to fill out the box meals. Soup mixes are good too if you are willing to build on the packets with extra ingrediants to make them more than flavored water.

I suggest that you visit an outdoor store if one is near and select four or five meals like Mountain House makes and try them out beforehand. They have some features that add to their value in spite of higher prices than grocery store items. For one, most of them can be rehydrated/cooked in the pouch they come in just by adding boiling water. Far less cleanup than with pots and pans coated with food cooked over a fire. You might add some spice or other ingrediants to increase the flavor, but on the whole, they are far better than they were years ago. Some fresh foods are always appreciated. I like to take some foil, a few small potatoes and maybe yellow squash to bake in a fire.

So then select the meal varieties you like from what you tried and augment that with stuff from the grocery store. Oh... and most Wal-marts now carry Mountain House FD meals, though they may stock them seasonally in some places, and not all stores carry all varieties. You can shop them online to see what is currently available. Also Campmor, REI and most other online outfitters stock larger varieties of brands and meals. Don't forget the deserts too. I like the cobblers and cherry cheesecake.
 
Codger brings up a really good point about the Mountain House type meals, the ability to cook directly in the package is really nice. If you have a Costco nearby, they have the best price I've seen for MH meals. It comes in a box of 10 meals though, so you can't pick and choose which ones you want. I picked up a box last year and costed me $42.
 
Nothing wrong with freeze dried meals, but for my typically short outings I developed a different system. I combine one of the top row items with one of the bottom row items to make a one pot meal that requires either just boiling water or a couple of minutes of cooking and a few more sitting in the pot. There are also some pasta items that can fit in with these. They weigh a combined 8-12 ounces a meal, packing 500-700 calories and 35-60 grams of protein. So they are large meals, but also a little heavier to carry. One distinct advantage with these is that if a heat source is not available, you can always eat the meat pouch to get you by.

Edit to add cost is around $3 per meal.


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Like Codger_64 and Halberdier, i buy the foil-packed chicken or ham and one of the rice mixes.

Alternatively for winter camping (when i'm more inclined to backpack), the foil-bag of chicken, some potato flakes and half a packet of gravy mix (your choice - there are many varieties) make up a yummy dinner for winter camping. Add in some butter (which stays 'packable' in winter weather temps) and grated cheese to the mix and that's eating like a king!

I wish i could find the dehydrated beef and/or pork patty that used to be in MRE's. They were awesome!!!! The "cherry's" that came to our unit would always trade them off so us 'longer-in-the-tooth' troops would stock pile 'em!!!

I've always found the pre-packaged, dehydrated 'backpacker' meals to be grossly over-priced and refused to buy 'em.
 
Mountain House beef stew from Wal-Mart, about five-six bucks and fed two men. You can't eat at McDonalds for that.
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Enertia Trail foods, also packaged under the Coleman name are the best i've found. They can be cooked in the package they come in or a pot if you prefer. also, the sauces come in a seperate package, so you can add as little or as much as you like. The MH stuff throws it all together, and can sometimes be a little overkill for my taste.
 
michaelsmith said:
Enertia Trail foods, also packaged under the Coleman name are the best i've found. They can be cooked in the package they come in or a pot if you prefer. also, the sauces come in a seperate package, so you can add as little or as much as you like. The MH stuff throws it all together, and can sometimes be a little overkill for my taste.
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I've seen the COleman brand at WalMart on occasion as well, but haven't tried it yet. As for dried beef, you can dehydrate your own or buy mild flavored commercial jerky. I've used my own venison jerky added to FD foods before. It might be just the ticket for the box of Skillet Stroganoff.
 
I usually carry Mountain House and buy it when I can catch it on sale. Full of sodium though.
My favorites are the beef stroganoff and the spaghetti with meat sauce.
Backpacker Pantry is tastier IMO, but it's also pricier.
 
I don't do much back pack camping anymore. One meal I took often would be a single slice package of Spam, and one of those Uncle Ben's precooked rice pouches. Cut the spam up, and mix with the pre cooked rice, and heat over the fire. Easy, quick, and filling. Oh yeah, it tastes great too. :D
 
I have been doing a ton reading/scouring and found out that most people hate Wise Foods dehydrated stuff. Backbackers pantry is another not so loved. As for Mountain house, it seems people really like quite a few flavors, here's the list summarized from a number of sites of people who recommended or taste tested several different meals:

Rice and Chicken (said to be good)
Mexican Style Rice and Chicken (My favorite but I havent had many, this one seems hard to find)
Granola w/Blueberries
Lasagna with Meat Sauce (2nd most recommended)
Scrambled eggs/Bacon (It has been said it is decent not great)
Chili Mac with Beef (The #1 recommended meal from MH)
Spaghetti and Meatballs (3rd most popular)
Ice Cream Sandwich
Neopolitan Ice Cream
Chicken Teriyaki (Very recommended as well)
Beef Strog (Very Popular and recommended by a number of people! in the top 5)

I am going to research Knorr and foil pack meats as a better option. They seem cheaper and you get more. Not to mention taste better. As for Backpackers Pantry well look at this!:

[video=youtube;Lt-HtvPB964]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt-HtvPB964[/video]
 
Halberdier said:
Nothing wrong with freeze dried meals, but for my typically short outings I developed a different system. I combine one of the top row items with one of the bottom row items to make a one pot meal that requires either just boiling water or a couple of minutes of cooking and a few more sitting in the pot. There are also some pasta items that can fit in with these. They weigh a combined 8-10 ounces a meal, packing 500-700 calories and 35-60 grams of protein. So they are large meals, but also a little heavier to carry. One distinct advantage with these is that if a heat source is not available, you can always eat the meat pouch to get you by.


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Thank you for this post. I'm going to try some of these combinations next time I head out.
 
Another possibility is the Zatarain's brand box packed Cajun rice products. The seem to be par-boiled and then freeze dried in a strong foil pouch. Loose the box and they are not too bulky. They make a big meal and are not single serving packages. Add any kind of meat, spam, frog. fish, etc and yum yum good. The chain grocery stores often have these at a discount. The last time I bought several they were $1.00 per box. Also, now they have a reduced salt line, although if yu are working hig and processing a lot of water, you may want the original version.
 
Some venison jerky or pepperoni sticks do double duty for me - quick, cold snack, and sliced-up and added to a re-hydrated tater or rice dish.
 
Guyon said:
Thank you for this post. I'm going to try some of these combinations next time I head out.
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You're welcome. The choices shown are the the ones I like. You can substitute Spam, jerky, pasta, instant white rice, or any number of other foods for variety.

I edited above to add the cost, around $3 per meal, and increased the top end of the weight to 12 ounces. The mashed potato and rice pouches can easily feed two, so if you double up on the meat pouch, your cost is about $5 for two heads.
 
One of the things i loved about "Bulk Food" stores was access to the powdered sauce mixes. There were so many available and all i needed to add was potato flakes or quick-boil rice for an inexpensive, light-weight meal. I'm sure if they're still around though... google will be summoned immediately!!!
 
soapboxpreacher said:
...
Scrambled eggs/Bacon (It has been said it is decent not great) ...
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Scrambled eggs/bacon (or sausage), omlets etc. are much improved over what they were in the late '60s and early '70's, but still not great. A couple of slices of fresh frozen bacon and an egg or two do not weigh that much and are still my preference. I carry a tiny nalgene of cooking oil or butter and a split backpacker's salt/pepper shaker, an aluminum "one egg wonder" skillet and a nylon spatula. So little weight for so much pleasure! Of course nowdays I cheat and use a canoe so that small weight addition isn't a factor.
 
Halbardier has a good idea, I do that a lot. I also like the foil pack spam with the mashed potatoes, and tuna or salmon with Easy Mac (I don't care for Easy Mac at home at sea level, but backpacking at 10,000'+ I find it delicious).

For the freeze-dried meals targeted at backpackers, I like Mountain House the best. My favorite is Turkey Tetrazzinini, and I am also fond of beef stroganoff, chicken teriyaki, sweet & sour pork, beef stew, and lasagna.
 
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