Army Rations

[Great Pebble]

I miss the old chicken curry and "instant" rice. Apart from that I've always found the retort packed stuff excellent. I even like biscuits, brown.
I note some people mentioned Wayfairer, Westlers, who have the B.A. contract make those too...

I also quite like some of the Yank stuff, but am a tad worried about exactly what they "fortify" some of the items with.

German stuff is crap, with the exception of the pork rolls in rice.

Irish stuff is good (they have a curry and a sweet & sour and little tins of fruit)

Belgian...Don't go there, except for the real Nestle chocolate.

I've had odd items from other nations, usually confined to "sundries" nothing else is particularly outstanding. The only other "prepackaged" thing I've had which was particularly worth of note was the old British Telecom ration. Yes, British Telecom. They were good they were.

 

[Adi]

AB Brown aint that bad but I would always precede it with copious amounts of water and an AB fruit.

Pilchards were a different matter I hate pilchards and had an exercise were every rat pack we had was pilchards. But, the thing that really got me on some exercises you would get your rat packs and there would be a sticker that said so-and-so was condemned do not eat but you would not get anything to replace it with.

The artic rat pack was great when you had enough water, we did a job in somewhere in Africa and were expected to use artic rat packs

 

[simonsays]

I also quite like some of the Yank stuff, but am a tad worried about exactly what they "fortify" some of the items with.

German stuff is crap, with the exception of the pork rolls in rice.

Irish stuff is good (they have a curry and a sweet & sour and little tins of fruit)

Belgian...Don't go there, except for the real Nestle chocolate.





Canadian rations are quite nice, the instructions are in French though.....

simon

 

[Gary]

Simon what rations do the irish get issued? I was on a course with a Irish soldier last year and he told me they didnt get issued rations. According to him they generally brought food from home as they didnt go 'that far' on peace keeping duties they used British.

Also have the Canadians got new rations? Last time I worked with them they all used US rations and again wanted to swap it for British stuff.

French rations are interesting as they are issued mini bottles of wine in some menus.

 

[arctic hobo]

I now stick to the wayfearer foods or fresh foods if i'm out and about, I don't care much for deserts or starters or dodgy coffee/tea/chocolate or biscuts and I get rid of 1 layer of bag before I take them outside.

I'd avoid the wayfarers if I were you... they have loads of fat, cost a blemmin' fortune and have nowhere near enough to sustain you. I was stupid enough to rely on them in the mountains and ended up eating a week's supply in a day and trekking to the nearest town to buy real food. Even at Norwegian prices it was cheaper

 

[Celtic Dragon]

****** me, a website to biscuit browns!!!! I used to have a backlog of unopened 1's as I was the only 1 in my deteachmet that would eat them! I loved the packs I got in the mid 90's. I wouldn't like to live off em for more than a couple of days, but they did contain coffee

But yes, every non british soldier does try to get their hands on our ratpacks, my mates got an atic stuffed full of gear he's swapped for good old ratpacks.

 

[simonsays]

Simon what rations do the irish get issued? I was on a course with a Irish soldier last year and he told me they didnt get issued rations. According to him they generally brought food from home as they didnt go 'that far' on peace keeping duties they used British.

Also have the Canadians got new rations? Last time I worked with them they all used US rations and again wanted to swap it for British stuff.

French rations are interesting as they are issued mini bottles of wine in some menus.

Hi Gary, the first part of my post was a quote from 'Great Pebbles' earlier post so I cant help you with the origin of the Irish rations. The Canadian ones are pretty tasty though. The variety is excellent see http://www.mreinfo.com/imps.html for a full range of menu choices (And lots of other MRE information)

The downside of the canadian packs is the calorific content, ISTR that it is about 1000cals down on the British packs. not really a problem unless you're *really* hungry. Thai chicken and garlic rice..... Lurverly. Not too badly priced either, got them from ebay at £50 for a ten pack including delivery from the States.

Cheers,
simon

 

[Gary]

Cool, cheers Simon, same MRE's just packed for the Canuks! Well almost, they do look a different, probably better!

 

[Kath]

Thanks for the biscuits brown/beef stock tip Gary. :super: (I'll give that try that next time I'm stuck out somewhere and the tin of pate smells a bit too suss.)

I've noticed that some of the food items in the British ration packs don't seem to work out doors very well. A lot of people find the treacle pudding unpalatable (or at least they do after a spoonful or two!). Cooking in a crusader over hexy just doesn't seem to do the trick ... so I tend to keep those until I'm at home - they're brilliant done in the microwave!! ):

Maybe I'm too fussy but I had the Lancashire hotpot and an instant white tea and they didn't do it for me.

Definately not as good as Kath's fresh baked bread

:biggthump

The secret was in kneading the dough on the bonnet of the Landy!

 

[Gary]

Your welcome Kath, I have spent many a long stag laying in a Bush munch AB's in such a manor.

One thing to remember with ration packs is that most squaddies i know usually discard half the contents as having to carry them all on your back certainly makes your a good judge of necessity!

 

[Great Pebble]

Irish stuff is handled/packed by "Irish Procurement" of Cork.
Meals are in foil trays rather than bags and there are tins of fruit


S'about it.

 

[Doc]

Interesting thread this. A visitor to the mess once won a raffle for 'A meal for two anywhere in Aberdeen' - his girlfriend was not impressed when he collected two ration packs.

I was also told that they were deliberately engineered to be low fibre, so you would only need to open the bowels once every three days. Don't know if this is true.

I remember one very dark night a pal of mine put his tinned chicken curry on the stove to heat, got hungry waiting and decided to eat his tinned fruit salad in the meantime. But when he opened the fruit salad, he found it was ....chicken curry. Hot fruit salad is surprisingly good, by the way.

But best of all, in our rat packs, we got....Spangles!

 

[Great Pebble]

One thing I would like to track down is the little bag of rice you used to get...
Like "boil in the bag" rice but about 2 minutes immersion in boiling water (which would also contain your tin of curry or *doh* chicken supreme) and it was done. Would be right handy but never seen anything like it anywhere else.

 

[johno]

British Compo has come on a massive amount in the past few years. Now that we all live in a PC inclusive society you can get:- Kosher. Halal, Veggie and about seven different menu's of normal scoff. My favorite has to be the chicken and pasta boil in the bag and corned beef hash.
Used to be funny as hell when one man pax had the little tins in them, and someone let them too hot and all and sundry was covered in boiling babies heads.

I must admit if you can get your hands on a 10 man pack its great, all sorts of fun things in tins.

Johno

 

[Great Pebble]

Question... Has anyone actually seen any of the "ethnic" menus?

it was pointed out to me that although the B.A. are absolutely inclusive these days the chances of finding a significant number of Toms requiring a particular diet in one unit are somewhat slim and as they come packaged in cases of ten......You get the picture.

 

[Gary]

GP I have read the list of whats available but never actually seen one in the flesh as it were.

Make you laugh though, I remember my days of 10 man ration packs were everything went in the BV, the section had a all in stew and if you didnt like it you didnt eat it! Choices were so much simplar then!

 

[Andy]

I've seen one veggi meal in shops. Is this just one meal or a range though? IIRC it was just a simple pasta dish

 

[Emma]

I've had a few 'meatless' rat packs, but they were beans with what I assume were mini veggi burgers. They were fine, but apparently not a patch on meaty meals.

So there is more than one meal!

 

[Andy]

how to make a veggi rat pack

take one tin of baked beans with veggi sosuage at a cost of 50p
remove can and place in cool state of the art foil packet
resell for £3.00

the world hates veggies

 

[tomtom]

i'v got a veggie tikia one..