Entrées

Recent Entrée Reviews

Mountain House Chili Mac with Beef

Here's an easy to prepare hot meal to enjoy while out on the trail, it's the Mountain House Chili Mac with Beef. Mountain House makes many freeze-dried meals, but this is one of my favorites. Here's my how-to-prepare video review of the Mountain House Chili Mac with Beef. This is a tasty, easy to prepare meal that really warms you up on a cold day. Please check out my video review below: ...or at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-s4jduehBI Full review

Good To-Go Chicken Gumbo

Good To-Go's Chicken Gumbo was amazingly gumbo-like. Delicious spicy chicken and rice with lots of okra that provided flavor and texture hard to imagine in a backpacking meal.   Maine made and field tested in Baxter State Park We packed along a few bonus meals on our Baxter trips this year. One was this double portion of Good To-Go's Chicken Gumbo which we shared as a late lunch after making camp on a short hiking day. We both were happy about how that turned out so let's dig into the review. Instructions… Full review

AlpineAire Spicy Sausage Bolognese

Good portion, but not very exciting to eat. Functional if you are hungry. It just didn't live up to expectations.   Another mid-trip on-trail review, so please pardon the format.    This meal sounded good on the label, but was not very joyful in camp. Filled the belly, but not with happiness.  Instructions & Ingredients:     I tried using the EZ fill method and regretted it. Use the full 2 cups of water.      Dining Experience:    It looked and smelled promising when I opened the… Full review

Backpacker's Pantry Mashed Potatoes & Gravy with Beef

Simple, satisfying food that is exactly what the label says. Tasty goo! Mashed Potatoes & Gravy with Beef Needed a few extra meals and grabbed one of these. Posting this mid-trip so apologies for the rough format.   Instructions & Ingredients:   I gave it the 2 cups of water it asked for, mixing well and letting it sit for over 20 minutes. It was perfect with goo and meat but no crunch. The package was a great insulator keeping the goo hot . Nutrition:   Dining Experience:    Dry it… Full review

Stowaway Gourmet Las Pollos Hermanas

Spicy! Right. Another dish from Stowaway Gourmet. Another dayhike, with this meal eaten for the express purpose of testing things before serious backpacking begins. Down to business. Las Pollos Hermanas: Chicken Sisters. One expects chicken. One gets...chicken. Big, identifiable, flavorful chunks of chicken. And spice. So much spice. Just only barely this side of too much spice. And I like spicy food. Actually, it wasn't that spicy, but it was spicy enough that it was difficult to differentiate… Full review

Backpacker's Pantry Mashed Potatoes & Gravy with Beef

Quick and easy, surefire side dish or light dinner. Once again, in search of the perfect mashed potato breakfast meal, I returned to Backpacker's Pantry. Their past offerings have been stellar. Would this be a repeat? Sadly, no. Rehydration, even of the beef chunks, was a breeze. It's never a guarantee that red meat will actually or fully rehydrate, but this did. The mash was, as ever from BP, excellent. But the gravy...something ain't right, there. I mean, it's a beef gravy, so the overall brown… Full review

Peak Refuel Sweet Pork & Rice

An excellent balance of sweet and spicy. Surprisingly good. I had eaten a Mountain House Sweet and Sour Pork not too long ago.  And it was waaaaaay too sweet. Like, I couldn't finish it sweet. So I was very wary of this offering, although I'd had good luck with Peak Refuel in the past. I was happily surprised by the balance of spice to sweetness. Upon opening the package, HUGE chunks of pork greeted me. I followed the directions to the letter, and the pork shredded out nicely when stirred, fully… Full review

Stowaway Gourmet Jambalaya with Shrimp

Fantastic, and a fantastic diversion from the usual freeze-dried fare. Big, easily identifiable chunks of vegetables. Big, whole shrimp. Delicious sauce. Almost perfect. I added an extra half cup of water and gave it an extra five minutes of "cooking" time, and it was just about perfect. A couple pieces of shrimp were just a little chewy—that's it, the rest were *perfect*.  The flavor was authentic compared to most every jambalaya I've had—right down to that sort of weird I-don't-know what… Full review

Stowaway Gourmet Chana Masala

A lovely, creamy break from the usual salt-bombs. Another solid meal from a relatively new company, Stowaway Gourmet's Chana Masala is a pretty darn tasty dish. It is perhaps a little on the small size for an end-of-day backpacking meal, but it is just the right size for a midday meal on a long day hike. I added an extra quarter cup of water and an extra five minutes of rehydration time based on the usual requirements of rice—it was not necessary. This may have contributed to a perceived mildness… Full review