MRE Experiment: Menu 12

My son and I like to watch science experiments on YouTube, like the Backyard Scientist channel and the Crazy Russian Hacker channel. Lately, the Crazy Russian Hacker has been filming the unpacking and consumption of MREs that people mail him from around the world. (MRE stands for Meal Ready to Eat. For more information on military chow in the field, click here.) It’s fascinating to see these military food kits, particularly the ones that include breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

We like to get out and do things we see on video, within reason. Including science experiments. As I don’t have a 25-pound Gummy Bear and a bunch of M-80s to ram up its poop chute, let alone a slow-motion camera to capture what happens when it explodes, I figured the next best thing would be to acquire an MRE myself so we could see what was in it and how it tasted. Unlike the men and women in the United States military, we’re doing this in ease and air conditioning; we’re not fooling ourselves into thinking we’re roughing it in any fashion. The MRE I got is Meal 12: Penne With Vegetable Sausage Crumbles in Spicy Tomato Sauce.

Everything came in this one package. Note the helpful description on the front.

 

Clockwise from top left: non-dairy creamer, sugar, chewing gum, instant coffee, salt, Tabasco sauce

 

Clockwise from left: heating kit, matches, toilet paper, wet wipe, hot beverage container, spoon

 

Clockwise from top left: nut raisin mix, lemon-lime drink powder, penne with vegetable crumbles in sauce, white wheat snack bread, energy bar, chocolate peanut spread

Because we were eating this at home, I put all the non-food items, including the gum, coffee, creamer, and drink powder back into the bag and slipped it into our emergency kit in the hope that we would never have to use it. You do have one of those, don’t you? You should.

The first thing we tried was the energy bar, which tasted sweet, with a faint hint of chocolate. My son loved it, despite how dense and filling it was. We couldn’t finish it in one sitting.

 

The gorp was pretty standard.

 

The snack bread had a spongy sort of consistency and a strange, almost tart flavor on its own. Not very good. However…

 

The bread made a good vehicle for the chocolate peanut spread, which tasted a little bit like Reese’s peanut butter cups, though not as sweet.

 

Here’s the entree, before heating: penne pasta with vegetable sausage crumbles in spicy tomato sauce. It came in this nice, industrial plastic pouch.

 

When heated, it was really quite good for food from a plastic pouch. The pasta was mushy, but the sauce had a bright, spicy flavor. Not as filling as that energy bar, however.

 

Even my son liked the pasta.

I was lucky to get the penne in tomato sauce variety; if it had been tuna noodle casserole or something similar, I would’ve had to pass on trying the main course. Obviously this isn’t as good as a home-cooked meal prepared by people who love you, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. If I can get a different variety, perhaps from another country, I’ll try that.