army ration packs
 

Trying to simplify my trip and thought about getting some army ration packs. A while back the bbc forced some spotty youths in cammo to pretend they liked them but they acually seemed impressed with them..

anyone tried the just add water meals and were did you get them from?

cheers (golden wonder need not reply) well maybe just one curry one :thumbup1:

Not the British stuff, but have you ever tried to google (or YAHOO)?? In my opinion, well, the MREs (former C-rations) are not too bad, but you can't compare them with a "regular meal" - just thinking of my army times something like 25 years back. They may have changed = improved. For more info, why not check here: mre, Sporting Goods, Collectibles. Great deals on eBay!

Hope this helps :smartass:

Haven't tried the just add water ones but use the boil-in-the-bag ones regularly.
Most of the food is OK and some of it is very nice. The packs come with lots of bits and bobs like tea, coffee, tissue, sweets, etc.
I think the last time I bought some they were six quid which for all the food and drink you need for 24 hours without having to think too much is OK value.
They have a use-by date of about 300 years

I've used them lots, again it's the Boil-in-the-bag versions. The older type have a really long shelf life, but the newer recipies are only a few years (only! jesaus, if you buy a banana from Tesco you'd be luck for it to last till you got home!).

I've tried the MRE's and wasn't keen. I think that's down to the taste differences between us Brits and the US, so I guess you have to try to find out! The flameless heaters are good if you put the right amount of water in (I didn't and it was rubbish).

The British rations are geting stupidly expensive these days and it's better to buy in bulk. You can often get 10 days for around £80, but each day is 5000 calories, so stretching a pack to last 2 days is possible.

Oh, and you can live all day on a pack of 'red' biscuits!! they even taste OK :scooter:

modren usa are great. Then again why burn throught your cash?? survial places on the net are where you can find out more about them.

Not so sure myself
 

I'm ex forces, so the concept of someone eating these out of their own free will scares me!

It does depend upon where you are going and for how long and if you have plenty of space or not. They are edible, but if you are eating them for more than a week than i would suggest getting some sweet chilli sauce and some other condiments to 'jazz' them up a bit. The arctic rations / dehydrated ones are a lot lighter and more compact but obviously you need a great deal more water for them. Also, the Halah and other special ones were always nicer because they came in curries, chillies and that sort of thing otherewise you need to like lancashire hotpot and beans.

I always thought they were generally ok, they are suprisingly heavy and bulky. Once you get 4 days worth in a bag they take up a lot of room.

If it was me, then i wouldn't. But i have been put off by them a little.

If in doubt, buy a set, sit in your garden, cook it up and see what you think. Then try imagining eating them for a number of days straight.

PS. take lots of toilet roll, they always did 'funny' things to my guts.

ration packs.
 

I bought a couple of british ration boxes last year just to try them out.
The boil in the bag meals x3 inside are wayfarer meals without the extra packaging, as the wayfarers cost around £4 per meal you can save a bit of cash by buying the packs, plus you get all the other things as well.
I would not like to eat only these packs on a trip, but they are good to carry and use when nothing else is available.
Cheers Ade:mchappy:

Hi

Im ex forces too, I kind a like the 24hr rat packs. They have massive calorific values though !

Full of handy things too.... tin opener.. toilet paper etc.

However cooking on a hexmine stove is a right pain in the butt

Try some before you go... Im thinking of blagging a couple of boxes of my mate (Cadet leader) just to have a couple of emergency meals on the bike

Cheers
Geordie

In my experience they're only really worth it on very short trips, away from any infrastructure. You're hardly going to carry 200 ration packs all the way to Oz :eek3: Ok, you might take one as a just in case emergency thing, but it's the sum of all the small just-in-case things that transforms your luggage from a 25kg total into a 65kg total.

So, on a long bike trip I think they're useless for my intends and purposes. Go hiking for 3 days or so with limited water supply, possibly in cold conditions, and the boil in the bag type meals come in very handy. Save water, save fuel, enough calories, no mess to clean up, etc.

Variety. :innocent:

SPAM® HICKORY SMOKED
SPAM® BACON
SPAM® LITE SINGLE
SPAM® CLASSIC
SPAM® OVEN ROASTED TURKEY
SPAM® LITE
SPAM® LOW SODIUM
SPAM® SPREAD
SPAM® WITH BLACK PEPPER
SPAM® SINGLE SERVING
SPAM® HOT & SPICY
SPAM® CHEESE

spam spam spam spam,
spam spam spam spam,
spam spam spam spam,
lovely spam, the loverly spaaaaaam!! la la! as the song goes

i quite like the british 24hr rat pack meals but the problem for me (apart from the price) is theres 5000cals in a small package the whole of which isnt even a decent portion for someone like me!
great if i had to carry my own food on my own back for days but i dont. i prefer "normal" calorie food in big dollops and the bike can carry it for me.

i dont want to give the impression im a big fat b*****d although i am, theres a program on the food channel at the moment called MAN vs FOOD, im not up to americanese portion standards (yet)

I have had them for a week at a time, there a bit $ for what you get I think. There made for younger people than me, running around that well do not want to stop and poo. Or so I have been told, some thing in US MREs used to plug you up so you do not make your self a target. It is not something that stops you from going but slows it down. A ramen noodle soup with a few added bits will do gust as well I think and for $1.00 vs the $6.00for the MRE I go for the soup. In the long run you will end up eating what ever there selling in shops on your way. But a can of food or dry food pack is with me most of the time. Stopping a fixing some food on pass or on the beach some place with a view that you will look back on for all time is worth the space in the pack.

Some place on the HUBB there is a post about one pot meals.

Hi I served 22 years as a serviceman, I hate the Rat packs I have even swopped English Rat packs with the Yanks for there 'Grot Box'

what I will say is the amount of feed you get is calorie controled for a lot of exercise, also they take up a lot of space & more importantly the amount of water you need to.
Also they are made to stop you going to the loo for a period of time,
we had finished a 2 week exercise and after 4 days of Rat packs we would getr fresh food after comingback to the barracks, we would have guys who would not go for up to 5 days! you should see the length of them!!

Generlly i would say they cost too much & have a limeited usage.
use as much fresh feed & frut as possable unless going wher not feasable then yes use rat packs but take 4 times as much water or water filter straw.

well there you go then. i did hear that the "biscuits-browning" in the little green packet were to bung you up. (in the old style rat packs with really dodgy food in them, like tins of catfood) didnt they used to put bromide in the food too to stop you getting randy, or is that just an urban myth?

i had a few post falklands leftovers from my dad in the 80s to take fishing and they were utterly horrible, the box they were in wouldve tasted better, no wonder blokes on the go just poured it all into a poly bag and had a mouthful every now and then.
then about 5 years ago they revamped the meals and style to be more theatre specific (cadburys bars in iraq, great idea) and i went to a trial in london to try them out. i was quite impressed with most of the food and more impressed someone had though about it for once. the arctic ration was about 15k calories or something.

they are a fashion accessory for civvies now, thats why they are so expensive although a lot of thought and development goes into them i suppose. your right, you wont go wrong with fresh raw fruit and veg, washed then cooked yourself.

Try the NATO 24HR RATION PACK although at £17.99 a pop you wont exactly want to buy 3 months worth.

Maybe circumstance makes a difference. A few years ago I worked on a wildlife reserve, which meant 2 week periods staying a field base in the jungle. Food consisted of what you could carry so therefore was mainly pasta and rice.

Some gap years types did a project nearby and we joined them for dinner a few times. In comparison to what we had been eating the ration packs they had tasted like mana from heaven.

So maybe things are just relative, when you are stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere a half decent meal will taste great, sat at home watching celebrity chef ratpacks might not seem so appetising.

For some context during this period fried spam was a treat as there wasnt any other meat available. Used to love the way it got crunchy.

Ah happy days!

I dream of compo ration tinned sausages, they were the best. God only knows what was in them but I'm sure they had just a little bit of heroin in there, I was addicted to them, ha ha.

You and me both, not ex RAFMR are you? Ride safe.

+ 1
they where lovley

Compo sausages :-)

I found some very like them at Home Bargains last year. Tried a tin and then went back and bought another 10 ! Use them when Im away with a group... share them out.... Im down to my last tin now... keep checking to see if theres any more in stock ... I live in hope lol

Cheers
Geordie

PS I was astounded at the price of rat packs... I would never pay that for them

what are these compo sausage things? before my time i think, are they those boiled bangers you used to be able to get, not hotdogs?
a 24hr box is a tenner on ebay, plus postage. like i said, a fashion accessory these days, crazy. they are fit for purpose, ie feeding a very busy guy that has to carry his food around with him for days, but if youve got access to a corner shop or petrol station you can do much better for a lot less, and i dont have to carry my poo around in a plastic bag so i dont need bunging up.

Not boiled but skinless monsters in heavy duty animal fat, you've never lived until you have suffered indigestion from ODing on these exotic delights, similar to a surfiet of Lamprays I would imagine but not as severe if you're not royalty. I could be passing the metro centre in a month or so Geordie is that store there? Ride safe.

mmmmmmmmm............. sounds foul you wont see me eating rubbish like that, my body's a temple


get a brand name so we know what to avoid

I understand, that's because they're designed to fuel WARRIORS!!

We ate that shit so you didn't have to, ha ha.

Maja, I was in one of these... :tank:

I once went on a 3 week military exercise and the QM had cocked up the disribution of the rat packs and each unit all had the same variety.

We had to eat pilchards for the whole time :(

Kinda puts you of any army food, if I see the famous brown boxes now I think of pilchards.

Maxander

you can forget them, but i was interested in the "zest-o-therm" ration heater system. £1.50 each didnt seem too bad if you didnt want to cart around a stove? dont look very big though

That brings back memories. When I was in the forces back in the early sixties I was stationed in Norway for a training exercise, we had boiled fish (whole) and boiled potatoes (whole) the entire six weeks we were there.

These days I usually carry a tin or two of meat such as one corned beef and casserole, even sardines :). They are a source of protein, calories and with bread which is usually easy to find (in Europe) together with drinks and fruit/veg to eat in the hand. It is important to eat well before sleeping else you wont sleep. then you start making errors of judgement. :)

Ha ha, it must be a standard trick for the QM's. When we were on a Nato exercise in Germany our QM gave A sqn A packs, B sqn B packs etc. I was C sqn and we had 3 weeks of chicken curry, which I loved! There was a lot of swapping of food each night amongst the lads. We even swapped with the Yanks, and they were the enemy!

Although ration packs do have a long shelf life there is a caveat.
Quarter masters departments get fairly regular instruction to recall for destruction a whole batch number where something is found to have gone off. Obviously if you have bought a box off a mate the queen is unlikely to inform you of the risk.

One of the principal reasons for the high cost to the army is that each 24hr box has to be packed by hand so there are high labour costs involved. Obviously the cost to the civi individual may be more connected to some chancer weighing up the risks to his pension.

38

memories............................be warned the sausages were removed from the packs in 1993 due them going rancide after 40 years.

chicken curry my fav. but had to take extra chilli sauce and curry powder to make it differant. the stewing steak was another good one..... give them a 40 year old rat pack now.... they will soon stop complaining.....

memories the fun of the Army.... pilchards went a long way when fired out of the fh 70 :-)

im sure an american mate told me once their rations come with a selection of sauces and condiments, and no self respecting grunt would be without his tabasco bottle.
maybe to hide some dodgy tasting rations?

Hence a lot of the 10ish year old ones having the great "Cheese Removed" stickers on :) (there's something about the phrase that makes me smile)



Davsato - Yep - MREs come with a small (5ml?) bottle of Tabasco sauce in each. The thing that people never realise about MREs is that each packet is "a meal" not "a day"

Although most brits tend to be able to make an MRE last a whole day!


I've variously lived off the last three generations of brit rat packs - from the tins (bacon grill is awesome) to the start of the boil in the bag, and now to the really brilliant stuff, including Tuna with lime juice and all sorts of great food.


But it is pretty bulky/heavy - so you'd not want to carry too many days worth on the bike if you're going any distance. Personally I'd look to carry some as emergency rations, as they do last well - but not for daily consumption. Even if I do love a lot of them.

As a young soldier the one compo ration items that stays with me was the "cheese processed" or was we used to call it "cheese possessed"!

Really! news to me still hay ho,

I'll stomach any of the above at a push except NATO coffee. Why the heck they thought mud, milk powder and twelve sugars per cup would help is anybodys guess. I'm going with the theory you weren't meant to drink it, it's emergency face or boot black really.

Visit your local supermarket, plenty of nice warm in two minute stews and curries in bags, usually about 99p a go.

Andy