Review of Dried Camping Food - TravelLunch Bacon, Potato and Onion Breakfast

We tried out the dried camping food TravelLunch Bacon, Potato and Onion Breakfast.  Here are photographs of the packet and the contents and then the final cooked product !

One advantage of this dried camping food mix is that it only weighs 100g so if you are carrying all your camping gear this could be an advantage. However actually cooking it all proved slightly problematic as you had to measure out 300 ml of boiling water but this could mean you need to take your measuring jug ! It would be helpful if they had said, for example, use two mugfuls of water. Also the meal was supplied with a sachet of hydrogenated vegetable fat which is not the healthiest thing so I coooked it instead with olive oil which I had handy in the tent. The instructions indicated that you had to cook it until crispy but this was not esay as the potatoes stayed moist or else burned to the pot ! It would have been much easier cooking for example a casserole or else just actually frying some bacon and boiling potatoes !

I asked five people to comlete a taste test and the average score for taste ended up at 3 out of 10. 2 said they would "Maybe" use this meal again when camping but 3 said they would not. Everyone agreed it was not good enough to eat at home !

 We felt the portion size was on the small side. One packet, costing £4 at Cotswolds was not quite enough for an adult to eat although it would have been very monotonous to eat this without adding for example beans. The test group were then asked to describe the meal in one word and they described it as "Smoky", "Baconless", "Tasteless", "More Meat..." and "OK" !

So to sum up, this is only good if the weight is absolutely crucial and you can only manage to carry 100 g. After a long day's walk this meal should taste good !!

We also tried the new Ainsley Harriet dried foods which are available at Tesco - the Risotto with tomato and cheese flavour weighed only 120g in the packet and was very tasty but probably best taken with something. If there are two of you you could buy two different flavours and carry a packet each ! 

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