As Paranoid Prepper recently pointed out, camping foods can be great choices for emergency kits, particularly portable ones. Some of the easiest to carry, cook, and actually eat are freeze-dried backpacker meals. Here we review one of these by Wise, the Teriyaki Chicken and Rice meal.
Easy carry teriyaki
6 oz in a waterproof, stuffable, durable container that makes two reasonable servings or one big one. That’s worth carrying. Many of the backpacker meals fit the same mold, be they from Wise or other companies. (Here’s a review of some good ones, they claim. We have no financial stake in any of them.)
Then you cook the teriyaki
Boil two cups of water. (Backpackers often carry a graduated cup for this. A Kelly Kettle wouldn’t hurt, either.) Hey look, now the water’s purified, too! Meanwhile, shake up the food envelope. If you don’t, the powder that’s to make the sauce of these meals tends to clump at the bottom. Pour the water directly into the envelope, stir, seal, let sit 15 min, and you’re ready.
Doesn’t it make your mouth water? No? Yeah, we get that.
Then you eat the teriyaki
…and that’s when the plan falls apart. Folks, I’ve eaten other versions of backpacker food (search food review to find a few). They’ve ranged from ok to actually good. Then there was teriyaki chicken and rice.
The serving size was respectable, even after Salty and I split it as the envelope is supposed to serve two. Plated, it looked … well, better than dog food. Not a lot better perhaps, but given this is a meal that may have walked hundreds of miles, we can cut it some slack on looks. Still, I’d like my vegetable shreds to resemble some vegetable of my acquaintance.
The cooking was complete. That hasn’t been a given with every backpacker meal ever. The texture was a little too runny (also a common problem) and rather mushy. Eh.
Taste was just poor. There was some nice ginger in there, but it was otherwise very bland. It was weirdly sweet, and one could taste some chicken, and yes, teriyaki…but those are listed in order of obviousness. Salty ended up putting some salt on his to get Some taste; I went with some herbs and a shake of hot pepper flakes. Better but still subpar.
We ate the teriyaki anyway. How was the nutrition?
Not bad – about par for the course for a hiker meal from a decent company. Respectable protein, some vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Not too much fat. Too much sodium.
We should have heard the teriyaki warning…
We bought these Wise meals thinking they were vegetarian, since ‘vegetable protein’ shows up prominently in the description on the front of the package. Didn’t see the ‘with Real Meat!’ badge until later. I’ve nothing against vegetable protein, obviously; but putting it in a product that you’re bragging about having Real Meat! clearly makes it a cheaper extender. I think we’ll be getting our backpacker meals elsewhere in the future. Well, that’s why we experiment.
Wise Teriyaki Chicken and Rice
Pros
- Portable
- Easy To Make
- Lightweight
- Acceptable Nutrition
Cons
- Taste - Not Good
- Texture - Poor
- Expensive
- Small Portion Sizes
I had a similar experience with Wise Foods. I bought a 72 meal bucket or something like that. I’ve tried two of the meals (one was lasagna, can’t remember the other), and they were inedible. I tried to imagine if I was starving, could I eat it? Maybe, if there was no road kill available in the ditch. I had to throw it out, and I am NOT a picky eater. After all, I eat my cooking.
I still have the remaining meals. If the Golden Horde shows up, I will give them the Wise meals…. that should keep them from coming back.
Did the same with Wise with one of their specials, bought two due to it. Gave the other one away because the food (if you can call it that) was just subpar. I think a better option would getting some of those Korr Rice or noodle packets, instant oatmeal and those Bear Creek soup packets seal into a mylar bag and should have a pretty good shelf life. I’ve already eaten the old Lipton (now Korr) rice packets that were a good 5 years past their best by date and didn’t get sick.