How to Use Mountain House Freeze Dried Meal Pouches

Stocking up on freeze dried meal pouches is a great way to get your 72 hour kits and hiking packs going without all the weight and fuss. Learn how …

Nearly every hiker and camper knows the importance of being able to provide food for yourself without weighing down your pack with canned and boxed goods. That’s why freeze-dried foods are such a bonus for them. But did you know that they are a bonus for your PREPared pantry as well?

Using freeze-dried foods allows you to build up an emergency supply of food, fairly quickly, with a small investment. I’ve loved being able to stock up on meat, cheese, butter and milk plus some complete meals plus snacks and fruit, and know that no matter what, I have food put away to feed my family. Those #10 cans hold a ton of food, they aren’t heavy, and store easily on the top shelf of my pantry and under my bed.  I just make sure to mark the purchase date prominently on the bottom to ensure that I can rotate correctly.

But #10 cans are hard to fit in a 72 hour emergency kit or in the bin of our camping food box or even in our emergency car kit. This is where the pouches come in handy! Recently, Mountain House sent me a few of the pouches we hadn’t tried yet, and I grabbed one while shopping that we’d been wanting to try, and we made dinner last night, and I thought I’d share our reviews on each of the pouches, and do a quick how-to on how to use those pouches.

How to Use Mountain House Freeze-Dried Food Meal Pouches

1. Get some water boiling and prepare the mountain house freeze dried food meal pouch.

2. Read the directions. It’s important to read the directions on each pouch you’re using because the directions may be different for each kind of food. Some will take more water than others, some may need to be drained before serving, and some may have suggestions on how much water to add to suit your taste, so you want to know that up front.

3. Open Pouch. We’ve found scissors work best, and have added a utility pair to our camping box and bug out bags for such occasions.

4. Remove the oxygen absorber. You really, really don’t want to soak that with your food. Trust me.

5. Fill pouch with indicated amount of boiling water.

6. Stir.  Your particular pouch may not have this step indicated, but we’ve found, over time, that it is very important. Sometimes, the contents are dense and the water can’t penetrate through the entire pouch, so stirring helps integrate all of the product so that everything is rehydrated correclty.

7. Close and time. We’ve found, in almost all cases, a minute or two longer than the pouch recommendation works well for the pouches.

8. Open, stir and serve!

So, we have these packets….and how do they taste?

We formed a panel of 4 taste testers. 2 of which are VERY picky, and 1 of which is always open to new experiences as long as they don’t involve green bell peppers or most beans, and 1 who is a garbage disposal and eats everything. Here is a quick summary of each of the packets we tried and notes are below the picture.

Mountain House Biscuits and Gravy

Even the 2 picky eaters liked this. The husband went back for seconds and added more pepper and garlic powder and then gave a hearty thumbs-up, which is surprising because he isn’t a fan of biscuits and gravy, normally.

Mountain House Wraps Chicken Salad Filling

We did have to provide our own tortilla for this. This includes pumpkin seeds and cranberries which made me happy, but my husband picked them out. He definitely never eats chicken salad of any kind, but said that this wasn’t too bad at all (really, big compliment). The human garbage disposal went back for 3rds. The supreme picky child chose not to partake of this particular food.

Mountain House Apple Crisp

This was a really great sweet treat for dessert. And there was a lot of the granola topping so it added a great texture balance to the apples. Everyone loved this particular dish.

 Mountain House Fire Roasted Vegetable Blend

We wanted to love this pouch, but my oldest son felt it was way too sweet to be eaten alone. I had a hard time picking through to get away from the green peppers. The other 2 on our panel chose not to partake because it was…well…vegetables (actually, it was because the particular vegetable blend was almost all of the vegetables they dislike most). However, we improvised a bit and…

While I know the photo isn’t the greatest (the human garbage disposal was trying to snatch it away from me while I was prepping it), it turned out to be a perfect blending of the two pouches into a meal. This would make a quick and easy meal that felt filling without being heavy.

Do you have a favorite flavor from Mountain House?

Get Mountain House Freeze Dried Food for yourself!!