[UGH]

I'm doing a 14-day backpacking hike and am looking for good boil-water-and-eat meals. So far Backpacker's Pantry looks good, but I've never used them before. What are your favorite dehydrated, boil-and-eat meals?

[the1mitch]

My rule of thumb is to try and avoid more than 50% dehydrated backpack food and bite the weight bullet in order to eat real food. I go for soups with bagels or rice cakes, instant potatoes fried in oil with peanuts butter, Phad Thai, dirty rice, jambalaya, couscous and soup mix, instant hummus with crackers, etc. a good trick is to carry two water bottles, one for water and the other for cold water rehydrating of your next meal. For bfasts I like grits with jam or syrup, or fake eggs and instant hash browns with cheese grated over the top.

[Tom]

Backpacker's pantry wouldn't rank high on my list. Not awful, but not very good either IMO. I'd opt for Mountain House over Backpacker's pantry but if you are sensitive to MSG be sure to check the ingredients on Mountain House meals. I've heard good things about packit gourmet but never tried them.

[Chief Joseph]

I like Packit gourmet because you can order individual ingredients to say build your own burrito, such as ground beef, chicken, black beans, rice, peppers, etc., then buy some well aged cheese, such as Tillamook extra sharp aged cheddar, it keeps pretty well at room temp, (I even have a mini cheese grater), some tortilla shells, and salsa and you are good to go. On dayhikes I like jerky-cheese-crackers-summer sausage...and my new must have, a Jumbo Payday bar, protein AND instant energy.

[Malachai Constant]

Packit makes great components I have hate explosive reactions to MH on a couple occasions. BP is ok but some of the meals have too much fat for us. Mostly we make our own boil in bag meals from components available at TJs and PCC for long hikes including Mission loaded with preservatives gorillas and Minute Rice. Taco chips allow you to make Mexican meals and are good fire starters. Shorter hikes we take fresh.

[UGH]

I'm going with Packit Goumet. The Texas chili and Tuscan beef stew look especially good. Thanks for the suggestion.

[sarbar]

For commercial meals, little is as good as Packit is. Mostly because the meals taste and look like real food. To explain that phrasing: I have tried and reviewed so many commercial meals over the past 18 or so years. There was a multi year point where I could not stomach any of them - they all looked the same, smelled the same and never tasted as I had hoped. Pasta was the worst - it was always a weird mushy texture. And every meal was gloppy and had SO much sauce. It was like soup with chunks. Not good eating. On a trip long ago I was making a bag of MH something faux Asian and it smelled like cleaning solution. It was a couple years till I bought another one (most likely it was the heavy vinegar smell that got to me). Then Packit started their business. I was one of their first customers (they had popped onto the Backpacker forums so long ago to say hi and I ordered that day). And their meals were not only edible, but they were GOOD. Needless to say I highly recommend them, and the owners are nice people!

[sarbar]

https://trailcooking.com/tag/packit-gourmet/ The most recent reviews of Packit meals on our site. We rebuilt our site, so not all the reviews came over

[Alpine Pedestrian]

While you're on Sarbar's trailcooking.com site, check out the recipes she has created for backpacking meals. It's a world of great eating you can fine-tune to your own tastes at a much lower cost than the prefab ones. Plus, it's fun to make them! I would always test-drive the recipes by making them and eating them for lunch at work.

[Schroder]

[Backpacker Joe]

I just ordered some Packit. Ive never had it before, and it looked like something Id like to try. Its more expensive that MH, but Id still like to try it.

[RumiDude]

[Tomlike]

Another vote for Packit. However, I recently tried Heater's Choice (https://www.heatherschoice.com/collections/entrees), also very good!

[RumiDude]

If you do a lot of backpacking, then purchasing your own FD ingredients is way more cost effective and offers you the choice of customizing your meals. It does require a bit of experimentation at home to dial it all in but the results are satisfying. I have found the serving size of most prepackaged backpacking meals to not suit my needs. They either are too much or too little, mostly being the latter. Also, FD ingredients seem to rehydrate better with better texture, taste, and color than do dehydrated meals. YMMV Rumi

[DigitalJanitor]

We once crushed Cheez Its in some cheap dried broccoli cheddar rice-a-roni type mix on the side of a mountain, and the effect was so transcendent in the moment we were shoveling it in that we swore up and down we'd have to do it again at home. This feeling lasted until we walked in the door and thought about it a second time, lol. Or as we taught our daughter years later: "ALL CAMPING FOOD IS GOOD." Yeah, it's great to have 'good' food while you're out there, but I'll shove robot food down if that's what most optimally fuels the adventure. I'm there for the experience not the cuisine. Having said that... we often save the Backpacker's Pantry Pad Thai for later in a multi day trip because we know we'll be all over it. We've also been known to carry a little bottle of curry powder for the Mountain House Rice & Chicken. And once when we were pinned down in a horrific storm up at the head of Conrad Cr, I pulled out a carefully horded collection of cheese and crackers in the tent as a surprise for husband that warmed us up enough to get some sleep through the night.