If the constellation of your interests includes stars for both food and camping, you can probably visualize what it should look like to cook outdoors: a roaring wood fire and slabs of meat on an iron grill, vegetables resting on hot coals, smoke and soot and big-ass tongs on a Francis Mallmann-type beast. But the reality of wilderness eating doesn’t always live up to that dramatic impression; instead, it often devolves into cold beans from a can, or a dry lunchmeat sandwich paired with handfuls of raisins and peanuts and half-melted M&Ms in an oversized zip-top bag. Or, if you’re really prepared, perhaps you have turned to ready-to-eat backpacking meals.
Fortunately, there has been some innovation in the just-add-water trail dinner category in recent years. No longer do you have to crunch your way through chalky chili or pasty pasta, with only the desiccated comfort of an astronaut ice cream for dessert. Instead, freeze-dried meals have grown into a diverse category with options to suit just about any dietary preference or need. You can still get classics like chili and mac and cheese, but now there is also dal bhat, mushroom risotto, biscuits and gravy, and more. You’ll also notice some distinctly modern marketing — almost all hit you with the same braggadocious claims about nutrition and ingredient quality: Protein! Fiber! Whole vegetables! And all you need to do to reanimate those macronutrients is unzip a package, dump in some hot water, give a little stir, and wait.
But the best — and perhaps most surprising — thing about this new class of freeze-dried meals is that they actually taste pretty good. Here are some of the best freeze-dried backpacking meals on the market right now.
Mountain House granola with milk and blueberries
For a simple, trail-friendly breakfast it’s hard to beat granola — so much so that it feels a little silly to buy a prepared pack of it. But Mountain House has done a standout job incorporating powdered milk and freeze-dried blueberries in reasonable proportions. Once you rehydrate the meal, it’s appropriately creamy, stained a cool blue-purple shade, and only a little bit too sweet. It’s an indulgence, but one you’ve probably earned after sleeping on a slowly deflating Therm-a-Rest all night.
Mountain House Granola
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Backpacker’s Pantry three cheese mac and cheese
Pasta seems like a safe choice, but it’s actually surprisingly high risk: overcooked or undercooked noodles are the easiest way to ruin a meal, especially when you don’t have a backup option. If you’re paying attention to the clock, though, this mac and cheese will turn out pretty well. The flavor is appropriately sharp thanks to Parmesan and Romano cheeses, the sauce mixes to a reasonable consistency, and there’s a gentle little curl of turmeric flavor — it’s probably there for the off-yellow color, but it’s perceptible if you’re thinking about it. The kids who helped me taste test a few meals were particularly enamored; they did not notice the turmeric.
Backpacker’s Pantry Mac and Cheese
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Farm to Summit green chile mac and cheese
Farm to Summit’s packaging copy is more egregiously outdoorsy than most, hyping up produce and even going so far as to add an all-caps parenthetical “(WE KEEP IT CLEAN)” next to the ingredient list. Despite my immediate aversion to the aesthetic, this mac and cheese is actually quite good — the noodles cooked to something resembling al dente, and the green chiles were plentiful and had some heat. When following the instructions the sauce stayed a little grittier than ideal, but if you retain a little more water than suggested, it works out better.
Farm to Summit Mac and Cheese
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Peak Refuel butternut dal bhat
Out of all the meals in this taste test, this one was the best. The aroma jumped out of the package; I was excited to dig in even before it was done cooking. Big flavors lived up to the loud nose, and the jumble of lentils, squash, and rice created a pleasant texture. The chickpeas ended up on the crunchy side, but I think that was user error — I forgot to remove the oxygen-absorbing pouch before adding the water. (The internet assured me that it was still safe to eat, and I haven’t suffered any ill effects yet.) Highly recommended.
Peak Refuel Butternut Dal Bhat
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Heather’s Choice spinach curry with chicken and rice
Philosophically, I wanted to stay away from meat as much as possible in choosing these meals — generally, I’ve found that the range of outcomes for rehydrated animal flesh has a middling ceiling but a very low floor. This saag-style curry with chicken shows exactly that: The spinach curry itself is well-spiced, and the rice fluffs up to a decent consistency, but the chicken is much less successful, just shredded bits of weird mushy texture with little flavor. It’s not enough to submarine the entire experience, and hikers do need the protein hit, but a vegetarian version would be a definite upgrade.
Heather’s Choice Spinach Curry
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Mountain House chicken and dumplings
This Mountain House meal, on the other hand, presents a counterargument to my point above: In this case, the chicken actually works, with larger chunks of fowl cooking to tender, satisfying bites. Unfortunately, it’s the dumplings that prove a little finicky, sometimes staying chalky in the middle. Even if the dumplings don’t all work, though, they end up like crunchy croutons, something of a happy accident that gives welcome variety to the meal. The flavor is pretty outstanding, too, with a hearty, rich and herbaceous thyme and sage-forward gravy.
Mountain House Chicken and Dumplings
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