mountain house - long term storage!

[#crabman#]

Hi
I have recently been looking at Mountain House Tinned food
Thanks.

Personally I like MH Freeze dried tins and have some walled up as long term "Iron Rations" storage. I consider it insurance and do not count it among my preps. It is just there and if, in 25 years, I have not used it I will still consider the money well spent. The up front cost is large, true, but amortized over 25 years, MH freeze dried food seems to me to be an extremely cost effective form of hunger insurance.

Just out of interest, where were you planning to purchase the Mountain House tins from?

Hi, Iam planning on purchasing from www.b-prep.co.uk, or if you know of a.cheeper source, please could you let me know.

[hobo]

Hi, Iam planning on purchasing from http://www.b-prep.co.uk, or if you know of a.cheeper source, please could you let me know.

Haven't come across them before. Anyone vouch for them? I've used conserva.de - they are very fast and reasonably cheap.

Hobo

[ORAC1]

Hi,
I have stocked up on about 9 months of MH for very long term storage. I get my MH from www.emergencyfoodstorage.co.uk who do a very good 3 month bundle.

I have also purchased the sampler pack for £59 which contains a dozen different meals in individual sachets. They are better than you think and I would have no problem living on MH in an emergency situation. Try the sampler pack before you make a big purchase.

[itsybitsy]

Has anyone actually tried any of the Mountain House products? I would like to lay a few in, but not if it tastes like cardboard!

[C4tch]

Has anyone actually tried any of the Mountain House products? I would like to lay a few in, but not if it tastes like cardboard!

Yeah I use it from time to time. I much prefer the curry over the others. The breakfasts are pretty good. In an emergency/hunger situation they would be luxury for sure. Well worth stocking a few. The problem is cost. Stocking for a family of four for 12 months is something like £12k.

C

Edit: by the way, you can get the £5ish hiking portions and try those. They are the same as the larger ones. It's a good way to figure out what you like. That's what I did before I took the stuff up the mountains...

[Sam Fisher]

Mountain House offers free post on over £25 orders and sells single cans, when I was looking at them I think buying direct was one of the cheaper options!

[dibley]

personally we have three months of meals for a family of four but thats just an evening meal . We have used them for camping and the kids eat it so thats a recommendation.

It is a no brainer and insurance to feed the family. we buy it in large cans so easy to store and hide. we use the pouches for the car and camping.

We buy from European freeze dry as they consistently the cheapest and have free delivery over 24 pounds
http://www.mountainhouse.eu/

I know its not everybody's favorite but it is part of our preps.

[smileyt]

I've been looking at the prices. Eeek!

However, I have a question.
I have a food dehydrator. Could I, for instance, cook some rice and then dehydrate it in my food dehydrator, pack it in mylar, and then rehydrate it at a later date? Does anyone know if this has been done? I know the mountain house stuff is freeze dried, vacuum packed, flushed with nitrogen or whatever much fancier methods they use. But would a food dehydrator be able to dehydrate rice and possibly stuff like home-made curry?

[Squirrel hunter]

Could I, for instance, cook some rice and then dehydrate it in my food dehydrator, pack it in mylar, and then rehydrate it at a later date?

Just wondering why you might want to? rice is already dry, so why cook it then dry it again to re-hydrate later, just pack it away and boil it when you need it.

Have to be really careful with rice being cooked and re-cooked as something pretty nasty happens when you do.

I'll need to go look for it, but I read it somewhere in the last year or two.

Had a quick look, but it doesn't say anything about cooking rice, drying it and then recooking it, just about cooking, cooling and then reheating.

http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/riceind.pdf

[Moony]

I was wondering why you might want to dehydrate rice too, but when you look at how long it takes to cook some types of rice (and the fuel used) it makes sense if you can pre-cook it, dehydrate it and then just pour on boiling water later to re-hydrate it. Availability of fuel is a problem for people who dont have wood-burners or near woods, so cutting down on cooking times when fuel might be scarce in a SHTF scenario is always a plus.
Apparently this can be done, you need to make sure you rinse out the starch well first and make sure you seperate up any 'clumps' of rice after cooking before putting it into storage, then it should re-hydrate ok. Stuff like curries can also be dehydrated easily to add to your rice