Northmountain

From Northmountain Blog

We’ve always kept a selection of Mountain House dehydrated food packs in our 96-hour kits and bug-out-bags (BOB’s). Our selection of verities have always been narrow: spaghetti w/meat sauce and blueberry granola.




We love the taste of them and chose them for that reason, thinking that we wanted something to eat that was a known quantity.


Over time, I’ve picked up most of the entree’s and other items offered by Mountain House and added them to a separate food bag. Unfortunately, we didn’t take the time to taste some of them. Fortunately, they aged to the expiration date during the last few months, so we decided to eat them over ten consecutive days and keep notes about our tasting experience.


We were surprised that our taste buds have either changed in that time frame or the taste of them was different than it was at the taste test center in the store. Certainly, our memories couldn’t be faulty….


That said, the taste test has reinforced our earlier selection of ‘favorites’.. Here are our subjective taste rankings and results:

Granola w/Blueberries	#1 favorite breakfast. This entrée is so good, they should sell it as breakfast cereal in the store. Makes its own milk.
Scrambled Eggs w/Ham	2nd (tie) favorite breakfast entrée. Not bad at all. Just remember to pour off any water that wasn’t absorbed.
Scrambled Eggs w/Bacon	2nd (tie) favorite breakfast entrée. Not bad at all. Taste stayed with us all day. Pour off excess water at the end of the reconstitution time period.
Beef Stew	Ok but I wouldn’t want to use it in an emergency bag. The taste was a little ‘off’ to our taste and the beef never fully reconstituted.
Green Peas	Not ranked. We mix the peas with potato pearls as a quick and easy side dish.
Pork Sausage Patties	Ok, but they aren’t a good slice of turkey, etc.
Blueberry Cheesecake	#1 favorite dessert (tied). We don’t eat many desserts but this one topped the list.
Raspberry Crumble	#1 favorite dessert (tied). I personally like the crumble a little better than the blueberry cheesecake but again, it is subjective to the pallet of the taster.
Spaghetti w/Meat Sauce	#1 favorite lunch / dinner entrée. This selection is excellent. It reconstituted perfectly in 10 minutes. 4.5 oz in bag with 2 cups water (16 oz).
Lasagna w/Meat Sauce	#2 (tie) favorite lunch / dinner entrée. This selection is excellent. It reconstituted perfectly in 12 minutes
Pasta Primavera	#2 (tie) favorite lunch / dinner entrée. Be sure to let it fully reconstitute – it takes a little longer than noted on the package unless you use a water with a rolling boil.
Beef Teriyaki w/Rice	#3 Middle of the pack. A little spicy. The beef didn’t fully reconstitute after 12 minutes. Left a slight after taste that is hard to define.
Chicken Polynesian	#3 favorite lunch / dinner entrée. The selection is excellent. It reconstituted almost perfectly in 10 minutes. 6.44 oz in bag with 2 cups water (16 oz).
Sweet & Sour Pork w/ Rice	#4 favorite lunch / dinner entrée. The taste was good. Let it reconstitute for 14 minutes (4 minutes longer than instructions), but the meat didn’t fully rehydrate. 6.0 oz bag with 2 cups of water (16 oz). A little stomach upset.
Chicken w/Rice	#4 favorite lunch / dinner entrée. The selection was excellent. It reconstituted in 10 minutes.
Seafood Chowder	Last place entrée. The entrée can’t be recommended. It has a very strong sea food flavor and didn’t reconstitute very well. Some of the chunks were ‘chewey’. It made our stomachs upset – digestion issues.

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