A good meal after a hard day in the field can make everything a little bit better. MREs aren’t that meal, but they try to be. Everyone has their favorite MRE, even if they have to doctor it up a bit by mixing parts from different packages or with discarded bits from the ratf*ck box.
Also Read: 9 Recipes to make your MREs actually taste delicious
No matter how U.S. military rations change, there is always one meal in the box, which makes you wonder who thought it would be a good idea. This is a list of those meals that made us yearn for the days of lettuce and powdered eggs from a field mess.
1. Vegetable Omelette
It’s understandable that the military would want to come up with vegetarian options. Why anyone decided eggs would be a good option is what’s hard to understand. Cheese tortellini wasn’t bad. Why fix what’s not broken?
Instead, we have this monstrosity, also known as the “vomelet,” which has all the flavor of cold scrambled eggs and all the texture of dried papier maché. It’s every bit what we imagine eating SpongeBob SquarePants must be like.
2. Ham and Lima Beans
This is a throwback meal to the days of Vietnam War-era C-Rations. Lima Beans and Ham (also known as “Ham and Motherf**kers”) was so bad, it was the Voldemort of field grade lunches, as troops wouldn’t even dare to say this meal’s name.
When GIs gave rations to hungry civilians in Korea, the Koreans would throw this particular meal back at them. Troops added cans of cheese sauce and/or cracker crumbs to try to make this war crime palatable, but it just didn’t work. Many would rather have chewed on C-4 instead.
3. Jamaican Pork Chop
Come on and have a little slice of this leather with some pepper on it. Seriously, this is Uncle Sam saving money by feeding you garbage rejected by hog farmers.
If we’re talking about jerk cuisine, it’s the clowns who wanted to give us some of our favorite international foods and then decided on Jamaican but offered none of the richness of what’s cooked in Montego Bay. The result is like eating the sole of your boot with noodles. To be fair, the guys over at MRE Info love this one.
4. Country Captain Chicken
Country Captain Chicken will give you Current Traumatic Stress Disorder. Imagine someone squished together a handful of Chicken McNuggets, flattened it out, then dried it in the sun for ten days. Then imagine they soaked the newly formed patty in a bath of tomato sauce and citrus juice, and what the hell, let’s throw a couple of almonds in there.
Chunks of tomato and black beans round out the most awful thing anyone ever tried to pass off as food.
5. Buffalo Chicken
Buffalo Chicken might be the signature flavor of America, and while the MRE version of Buffalo Chicken may not be all that bad, the effect on your stomach is like having forty tailgating Bills fans making a mess of your insides.
Dig the latrine before you crack this bad boy open.
6. Beef Frankfurters
You know a meal has to be good when its nickname is “Fingers of Death,” right? Right.
Beef Frankfurters deserved every single insult ever lobbed at them. While I can understand the urge to give troops in the field a taste of home through a good ol’ American hot dog, if you’ve ever tried this ration, the only home it makes you think of is Hannibal Lecter’s.
For the record, the military does try to taste-test these things on service members. When they created a new menu in 2007, they received some interesting responses. The Smoking Gunfound the comments for some of the tested meals, in case you’ve ever wondered just how some of these meals ever made it to production.
Do they still serve Chicken Tetrazzini?
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