Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

The Great OMEALS Taste Test

By

OMEALS
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Backpacking food. You’ve probably been using freeze dried, just-add-water meals for years. After all, unless you want to put in the time to make your own dehydrated recipes or eat military rations, there isn’t much by way of options out there. That is, until now. We discovered OMEALS at the Outdoor Retailer Show earlier this summer. After a quick taste test of a few of their meals, we eagerly took a sampler pack out for a weekend backpacking trip. With everything included and pre-cooked, ditching the stove and our typical dehydrated food became a real option. After returning from a weekend of eating nothing but OMEALS, we decided to test them against a few of our favorite meals from popular brands to see if they really can replace our usual load.
OMEALS

Related: Pack It In: Basecamp Cooking | Coleman National Parks Centennial Series

Recommended Videos

For our test we chose to evaluate each meal according to a few different criteria:
1. Taste: Just because you’re eating food prepared long before you hit the trail doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice enjoying your meal.
2. Calories: How long will this meal sustain you? Out on the trail you often need more calories than on a typical day.
3. Shelf Life: Freshness is a little subjective, but being able to stock up for a couple seasons (especially when your local REI is having a sale) is a nice option.
4. Cooking Speed: How long it takes to prepare you food.
OMEALS

Related

Each category was evaluated on a scale of one to five and final scores were tallied up with input from our crack team of ultralight backpacking connoisseurs. Read on Below for our picks.

OMEALS Brown Rice, Quinoa & Lentils

OMEALS
Taste: 5 Right out of the pouch this vegetarian entree looked a little bland. However, the taste was subtle and filling. When we added a little extra olive oil, this meal is hard to match.
Calories: 3 At 280 calories, OMEALS comes in a little less than typical dehydrated food. On the trail we supplemented this with some extra olive oil and the occasional tiger trout that we caught. For fast packers this might be a little bit light though.
Shelf Life: 2 OMEALS guarantees each entree for two years. In our experience with similar pre-cooked military MREs, that is a little longer, but this is the shortest shelf life of any backpacking brand.
Cooking Speed: 5 OMEALS entrees are precooked and sealed. By simply adding water to the included heating pad and putting the food pouch in the outer wrapper, you’ll have a full meal in less than five minutes.
Total: 15

Backpacker’s Pantry Kung Pao Chicken

Backpacker's Pantry
Taste: 3 We originally made this without the included spice package and it was fairly bland. After we added in the red pepper flavor pack, it was almost a little too spicy for any of our testers.
Calories: 5 370 calories per serving make the Kung Pao chicken the heavyweight here.
Shelf Life: 4 This meal comes with a seven year guarantee of freshness.
Cooking Speed: 2 When you add water boiling time and the recommended fifteen minutes of waiting for you food to rehydrate, this meal was the slowest to cook.
Total: 14

Alpine Aire Honey Lime Chicken

Alpine Aire
Taste: 2 When prepared with the recommended two cups of water, this meal was very soupy and watered down. After our initial test we tried it again with one and half cups and it significantly improved the taste.
Calories: 4 300 calories is respectable for weekend trips, but for a log haul you’ll need to supplement it like we did with OMEALS.
Shelf Life: 4 Seven year best by dates put this in the same realm as the Kung Pao.
Cooking Speed: 2 This meal took the second to longest to cook.
Total: 12

Mountain House Chicken and Dumplings

Mountain House
Taste: 5 This one is a hard backpacking meal to beat. It has been our go-to meal all year long as we explored backpacking routes in Utah’s Uinta Mountains. We usually combine it with some fire-cooked flat bread or biscuits for a backpacking chicken pot pie.
Calories: 4 310 calories per serving is a good option for weekend backpacking trips.
Shelf Life: 5 Mountain House is taste and fresh guaranteed for thirty years.
Cooking Speed: 3 This was the fastest dehydrated meal to cook, but still almost three times as long as OMEALS.
Total: 17

CONCLUSIONS

After a long weekend of eating OMEALS on the trail, and then comparing them to our favorite standby backpacking meals, we are excited to get OMEALS into our regular rotation. Taste is on par with any dehydrated food, and the ability to ditch the stove and fuel is a great trade off for the slightly heavier weight per meal. The speed of cooking is also a major plus, as is the built in heater. Whether you’re looking to head out for a weekend of backpacking or looking for an option for food for an emergency kit, OMEALS is one of the best options out there.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Austin Parker
Austin Parker
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Austin Parker is a former contributor at The Manual Parker is a powder skier and sport climber and is no stranger hauling…
Can you make great coffee in a single serve? Klatch Coffee’s answer
Is there a better option than K-Cups?
Crazy Goat coffee

While K-Cups can be appealing to coffee drinkers who value convenience at home or in the office, they're not the right choice for everyone. Although it's a fast and easy way to prepare a single cup of coffee, there are a few downsides to the system — namely that K-cup pods can be difficult to recycle (and while refillable pods exist, that depends on the user choosing that option, which isn't always a given considering quick and convenient are two of the main appeals of the system). We interviewed Klatch Coffee's expert roaster, Heather Perry, to learn more about the specialty roaster's approach to single-serve coffee.
Klatch Coffee's single-serve coffee alternatives

Klatch Coffee's single-serving Bruvi pods make it easy to enjoy high-quality, specialty coffee wherever you are. The brand has partnered with a few select providers who share their vision, one of which is Bruvi.
"Bruvi is an improved pod coffee system with a couple of unique features," Perry said. "First is taste and quality; the proprietary brewing system brews to the same high standards as specialty coffee roasters like Klatch Coffee, including adjusting the brewing parameters to match our brewing recipe. That’s why premium coffee from roasters like Klatch is offered on the Bruvi platform. Second, Bruvi’s B-Pods are enzyme-infused and designed to be tossed in the trash, making them guilt-free. B-Pods degrade faster in the landfill without leaving microplastics behind."
It’s also worth noting that for coffee drinkers who only want a single cup at a time, single-serve brewing can be more efficient on resources like water, coffee, and energy. Pre-portioned coffee doesn’t spill, and machines only heat the water needed for a single cup. There’s no waste from discarding leftover coffee from a large pot.

Read more
These cocktails from Tequila Cazadores look as good as they taste
This striking drinks add a touch of glamor to your holiday celebrations
tequila cazadores colorful cocktails f21 holiday hottoddy vertical 1

Part of the fun of the holiday is putting together elaborate spreads, including drinks which aren't only tasty, but look good too. These cocktails from Tequila Cazadores are here to fit that bill. They have tasty holiday flavors like chai, blood orange, blueberry, and nutmeg, but they don't just taste good -- they look gorgeous as well. These Instagram-worthy drinks are ready to wow your guests with their flavors and their fancy looks.
Hot Chai Spice

Ingredients:

Read more
This pizza oven is a great holiday gift, and it’s on sale for only $95
Cooking pizza on the Piezano Pizza Oven.

What's the best gift you can get for a pizza lover? How about the ability to cook restaurant-quality pizza at home in just a few minutes? That's possible with the Piezano Pizza Oven, which is currently on sale from Walmart with a $41 discount. From its original price of $136, it's down to a much more affordable $95, but we're not sure for how much longer. If you're thinking about getting this kitchen gadget as a gift for the holidays -- even if it's for yourself -- you better hurry with your purchase if you want to get it for a lower price than usual.

Why you should buy the Piezano Pizza Oven
For pizza lovers who want to try their hand at making pizza at home, you're going to need a dependable cooking companion so you won't be disappointed by your efforts. The Piezano Pizza Oven is the right tool for the job with its 12-inch ceramic stone that creates crispy and golden crusts, and dual temperature control that allows for precise cooking from top to bottom. With temperatures reaching up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit, you can make popular pizza styles within six minutes, so there's not much of a wait before you can start eating.

Read more