Ah, the MRE. That portable, “tasty” meal eaten by US troops in the field, or when one’s unit doesn’t have anything else with which to feed people. As someone who has been in the military, I’ve eaten my share of them. They seem really cool at first, but that coolness factor wears off after about your second or third MRE. That’s when they start tasting the same.

A few years ago, my Air National Guard unit went to South Dakota for a two-week training exercise with the Army. During that time we had three meals a day: one hot meal and two MREs. Because we were in the Air Force and not the Army, we weren’t too keen on playing Army games and pretending we were at war. So we would leave our compound and go to McDonald’s or something similar for one of those meals. This resulted in a large collection of MREs for myself. After sitting in my basement at room temperature for the last three years, a good friend of mine really wanted to try one. So, I decided to document his experience for you all to see.

Here is the tasty meal we picked out: Beef with Mushrooms. There are about 24 different MREs out there right now. The military tends to phase out the most unpopular ones after a few years. I checked the latest MRE menu and the last time Beef with Mushrooms MREs were made was back in 2002. That makes this MRE at least five years old.

Here are the contents of the MRE. There are a few things that are common to all MREs and a few things that are different in each one. All come with matches, salt, sugar, a napkin, a moist towelette, coffee, creamer, a spoon, gum, Tabasco Sauce, and a flameless heater. The items that are unique to this MRE are the main course items, oatmeal cookies, crackers, cocoa mix, and strawberry jam. Other MREs might have jalapeño cheese spread instead of strawberry jam or Skittles instead of oatmeal cookies.

The first thing we tried was the crackers. We decided to put a little of the strawberry jam on them for taste. One thing MRE food lacks is flavor so anything you can enhance the taste is always a plus. The jam wasn’t too bad but the crackers were a little dry so we put those off to the side to fix our main course.

One cool thing about the MRE is that you don’t have to eat your food cold. Each one comes with a flameless heater. Just add water. Once the chemical reaction starts you can put in your meal pouches. The heater is surprisingly effective and will get so hot that it can burn you if you aren’t careful. The water will actually start boiling and steaming after about a minute. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to warm up the entire meal. Most of the heat is distributed unevenly throughout the food.

Once the rice pouch was heated my friend dug in. According to him it wasn’t too bad. I guess it’s pretty hard to screw up rice.

This is the main course. The actual beef and mushrooms. Yes, the food actually looks this disgusting in real life. It had the consistency of dog food. There’s also something unsettling about eating this stuff with a spoon, as if to add insult injury. One would think that the manufacturer could have at least supplied a spork.

This is why every MRE comes with Tabasco Sauce. At least that’s my opinion on the matter. People typically use it to hide the horrible taste or to bring out the “flavor” in the bland food. As you can see from the picture, the bottle is quite small so one must decide beforehand which food is the most disgusting and use it on that.

These oatmeal cookies are the “dessert”. Sometimes MREs will come with surprisingly good deserts. The mint pound cake is surprisingly tasty and is especially prized. These cookies, however, were not tasty in the least. They were bland (surprise) and fell apart when I took a bite out of one.

In conclusion, I hope you have enjoyed this little MRE play-by-play. Most MREs don’t taste too bad, but they don’t taste too good either. Also keep in mind that this particular MRE has been discontinued. You can actually buy MREs in some camping stores and on eBay, but they are a little pricey. I think they usually go for about $7.25 each, which is a little pricey for a crappy meal.