US military MRE reviews.

Norwee · 2019-01-12 23:30:00

So i bought an crate of US military MRE surplus and thought i'd share some reviews here since it was quite an experience. Here is a list of the menus in case you're interested:
http://www.dla.mil/Portals/104/Document … e/m037.pdf
The crate contained menus 13-24 so let's start with some of what I've eaten so far.

MENU 13 "Vegetarian Cheese Tortellini in Tomato Sauce"

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Cheese tortellini: The main was ok, the sauce had a prevalent tomato flavor which was surprisingly enjoyable and it fit well with the bits of pasta, i tasted literally no cheese in the pasta itself but overall the combination of pasta and tomato works well. The best compliment i can give is that it tastes SLIGHTLY better than cheap cafeteria food, so it's not too bad for something that comes out of an MRE pouch. This main goes well with the hot sauce included in the accessory kit, it binds the flavors and gives the food a pleasant spicy kick.
Thumbs up!

Chocolate dessert pudding: The pudding powder was reconstituted with water after shaking vigorously and created what sort of could pass as "pudding" as an result. It was quite runny and to be perfectly honest it had more the consistency of what came out of my you-know-what after eating the crackers with peanut butter rather than any actual pudding i had ever seen, but the flavor luckily was consumable. Imagine the most cheap and fake artificial chocolate flavor you've ever tasted and it would be quite close to what this was. There were also some bits of weird slime in the mix, but nevertheless i gulped it down without too much trouble.

Peanut butter, chocolate flavor + Crackers combo: The crackers taste like crumbly pieces of dryness with absolutely no flavor by themselves, while the peanut butter tasted like overly strong, slightly nauseating peanut butter with an slight aftertaste of chemical chocolate flavor. It doesn't combine well with the crackers as it literally just tastes like dry peanut butter on dry crackers with no real enhancement of the flavors, the chocolate was a nice touch for making me feel even more sick after eating this. I think i just hate peanut butter in general because i absolutely did not enjoy it.

Trail mix, recovery: This was a mix of unsalted peanuts and almonds as well as round crisp balls i guess were made from corn or something. The nuts were dry and horrible as I've never been a fan of unsalted nuts, while the crisp balls tasted like the cheapest kind of snack imaginable which i'm guessing was put into the trail mix to lower the cost of producing it. Did not enjoy.

Grape beverage powder: Tastes like Kool-Aid. Lot's of unnecessary food coloring which makes it feel very artificial.

Coffee: Coffee is included in most but not all of the meal kits and comes with creamer, and either sugar or artificial sweetener. On it's own it tastes just like the generic low-quality coffee you'd expect. The creamer makes it more milky, but i don't like the taste so i don't use it most of the time. The normal sugar doesn't really sweeten it, while the artificial sweetener does a much better job.
Not too bad when there's an artificial sweetener included, but if there's only the normal sugar packet i really hate it.

Slightly disappointing but not too bad meal overall. I did feel sick for some hours after eating it, but it went over relatively quickly. The meal also came with way too little toilet paper (probably only good for one wipe or two) one wet wipe which could maybe wipe your hands before discarding, some generic mint gum, salt, spoon, flameless ration heater (FRH), useless plastic hot beverage bag as well as an paperboard sleeve.

MENU 14 "Vegetarian Creamy Spinach Fettuccine"

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Spinach Fettuccine: This ranks up to the most horrible meal I've eaten in my life. The sauce is absolutely hideous and tastes like burnt plastic, there are some sort of pasta slices all over which resemble pieces of cardboard when chewed, the spinach is everywhere but tasteless, there are about 2 tiny sliced bits of mushroom inside the entire meal which doesn't even taste of anything. The hot sauce included makes the food even worse as it changes into extremely spicy battery acid and doesn't redeem the taste at all. After doing all i could to salvage the meal by peppering the meal with salt and hot sauce it became even worse somehow as i immediately had to lay down and suffered with extremely painful cramps and stomach trouble for the rest of the day.
Thumbs down.

Chocolate first strike bar: This was the best component in the entire meal, i was skeptical at first since it had this weird consistency of compressed brown **** with pieces of corn in it, but after tasting it i was pleasantly surprised. It was an refreshing chocolate taste with the consistency of a corn bar. Seriously great MRE dessert! Thumbs up!

Peanut butter + Crackers combo: The same dry horrid experience as in the last meal, except without the chocolate aftertaste this time. Still not enjoyable and i believe it contributed to the severe cramps i received after this meal.

Salted pretzels: This was just your average store bought salted pretzels. Nothing to really say here.

Chocolate protein drink powder: Drinking this after reconstitution with water the first thing i noticed was how incredibly artificial and fake the chocolate taste was. The weird taste was so strong that it was almost nauseating. Even though i added the correct amount of water and shaked the bag like nobody's business it still had disgusting clumps of protein powder that would occasionally come into my mouth as well.

Even worse than the first MRE, i got sick for a long time after this meal and i blame the fettuccine mainly, otherwise there were the standard included accessories with one new addition, a box of matches. I have no idea why it's included here since i don't see much need for matches when the meal can be heated up by activating the flameless ration heater just by using a bit of water. The gum tasted of cinnamon this time, i definitely do not like that strong flavour of cinnamon so that was yet another reason to hate this meal

MENU 15 "Mexican Style Chicken Stew"

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Chicken Stew: This main consists of chicken and chili bits covered in a lot of extremely spicy sauce. There was a bag of crushed red peppers included which made it even more spicy than necessary in my opinion. The sauce was so overbearingly hot that i could barely taste any of the actual food bits outside of the extreme burning sensation in my mouth after just a few mouthfuls of this stuff. I often get runny nose from overly spicy food, so i had to blow my nose constantly while eating this. From what i could barely discern the chicken bits tasted fine, but the sauce totally ruined it.
Thumbs down.

Apple sauce with raspberry puree: I expected a nice and runny consistency but the apple sauce felt just as much of an puree as the chunks of raspberry did. The fruit/berry combo tasted ok, but i really just wish this would be more of a sauce like the title implies so i don't get confused about whether or not i'm supposed to chew or just drink it. Slightly artificial flavor but i actually kinda like it.

Salted pretzels with cheddar core: These pretzels are much thicker than the thin pretzels you'd eat usually and each pretzel has a small amount of kinda disgusting processed cheddar spread inside of them which i really don't like. The mix of regular salty pretzels with strange artificial cheese just doesn't cut it for me. If this is an actual snack sold in the US civilian market i feel sorry for anyone who has eaten them.

Cheese spread with Jalapeno peppers + Crackers combo: The cheese spread tastes surprisingly good on the crackers, which makes me happy because i got really sick of the processed peanut butter. The cheese spread tastes like heavily processed cheddar cheese, except it's spreadable and has a spicy Jalapeno kick which gives it some great flavor. Definitely a step up from the last meals! Thumbs up!

Chocolate first strike bar: I've already reviewed this one, there are apparently 3 different variants so i'm a bit dissapointed i got another chocolate type, but it's still just as great of an dessert as last time!

Cocoa beverage powder with chocolate hazelnut: Tastes exactly like a normal warm cup of cocoa. It's quite pleasant, but i can't really taste any of the supposed hazelnut flavor that's supposed to be in it.

Lemonade beverage powder: A strong taste of sour lemonade which is the least artificial tasting drink powder i have tried so far, it was quite refreshing and i could even make it stronger or weaker depending on how much water i mixed it with. Thumbs up!

Bit of a up and down with this one, some components are almost palatable while others are just incredibly bad. Gum was spearmint this time.

That sums up some of my experiences from this box of meal kits so far. I can continue the reviews if people are interested.

Minimania, Different55, Slabdrill, IanJanes

Minimania · 2019-01-13 00:01:37

I don't know why but I'm weirdly fascinated by this. I would not mind reading more reviews.

Norwee

TaskManager · 2019-01-13 01:00:07

post pics

Minimania

Slabdrill · 2019-01-13 01:59:18

this reminds me of the canadian MREs i've had
some of the food names are even the same!

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TaskManager

Minimania · 2019-01-13 02:06:24

Slabdrill wrote:

this reminds me of the canadian MREs i've had
some of the food names are even the same!
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https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ … image0.jpg

You say Canadian but the pictures are upside down like Australia

TaskManager

mikelolsuperman · 2019-01-13 02:43:55

What are military MRE?

Norwee · 2019-01-13 11:00:03

Those two components you show look identical to the ones in the US ration slabdrill. That’s interesting, i guess the Canadian military receives many components from the same contractor.

I might show some pics Crybaby, i forgot take any for the older reviews, but i could take some for when i make newer ones.

Mikelolsuperman, you can just google exactly what you said and get answers... MRE stands for "meal ready-to-eat" and it’s a field ration designed to be shelf stable and last a long time in storage.

Official Everybody Edits Forums

#1 2019-01-12 23:30:00, last edited by Norwee (2019-01-13 01:09:52)

US military MRE reviews.

#2 2019-01-13 00:01:37

Re: US military MRE reviews.

#3 2019-01-13 01:00:07

Re: US military MRE reviews.

#4 2019-01-13 01:59:18, last edited by Slabdrill (2019-01-13 02:01:20)

Re: US military MRE reviews.

#5 2019-01-13 02:06:24

Re: US military MRE reviews.

#6 2019-01-13 02:43:55

Re: US military MRE reviews.

#7 2019-01-13 11:00:03

Re: US military MRE reviews.

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