Molecular Gastronomy in a bag. MRE review: Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Let's get a few things out the way, shall we? MRE's (Meal Ready to Eat) are not meant to be gourmet. They are a fast and dirty way of getting lots of fat, calories, and nutrition into those who burn enormous numbers of calories per day in the line of duty. So why am I writing about them? What can I say: they're my guilty pleasure. There's something about breaking into a plastic bag and carb-loading while getting a major over-dose of salt. That didn't sound too enticing did it? Then let me explain my love for MRE's in two words: TABASCO SAUCE. That's right... the mini-bottle of love that reminds you that there's an America worth protecting. You can splash Tabasco on damn near anything and turn it into righteous, bad guy fightin' fuel for the belly.

For the first MRE review I chose my favorite: Spaghetti with Meat Sauce (Menu 20). Also included in the meal: Cherry Blueberry Cobbler, Baked Snack Crackers, Cheese Spread, Lemonade Mix, Chipotle Snack Bread, and of course, my mini-bottle of Tabasco...WAIT! What's this?! Green Tabasco? Man things have really taken a turn for the worse since my days in the Army. If we really want to turn things around in Afghanistan, we need to start packing MRE's with more of the original, red Tabasco, and less of this green colored nonsense.

The thing about the cheese spread and snack bread is that with enough water you've got half your meal consumed already. The bread isn't chipotle so much as it's just slightly spicy and dry enough to last years. The cheese is no worse than the 'squeeze cheese' from the supermarket and together they satisfy the appetite long enough to let the spaghetti heat up in the meal's self-contained chemical heater.

Have you ever had Chef Boyardee? Then you've basically tasted this meal's spaghettti main course. It's not winning any hearts and minds, but it's food. Ok, it's barely food, but it's spicy nutrition and calories. At least it FEELS like you're being fed actual food.

The baked snack cracker is almost exactly like Nabisco's Cheese Nibs. I'd even bet that's who makes them.

The cobbler? Well imagine taking generic pie filling, then mixing into it a really low-grade pie crust. Again, not too enticing, but after the salt overload from above, the syrupy sweetness of this dish is a welcome alternative.

Overall, this is 1 of several MRE's that I would eat (and have eaten) on a regular basis. It fills you up, it's fast, and there are no dishes to clean! One of the things that entertains me the most about MRE's is the reactions you get from people that have NEVER EATEN THEM! Ugh, bleh, yuk, OMG you eat those!?!? Well guess what, champ... They're basically re-packaged versions of meals you'd find at any supermarket in the country. I offered my brother an M&M one time, he ate it, then I told him it came out of the MRE. It's true! Branded M&M's! (sadly not peanut) Combos, Animal Cookies, Chips Ahoy, pretzel stix, pop tarts, Dinty Moore and others are all foods that I'd be willing to bet are repackaged for MRE's.

On a final note, in the kitchen recently I've been experimenting with Molecular Gastronomy. That's the name of the movement pioneered by Ferran Adria of El Bulli in Spain. It includes cooking methods such as sous-vide and the use of powders such as Locust Bean Gum, Guar Gum, Lecithin, Xantham Gum, Textured Soy Protein, Citric Acid, and many MANY others. The $600 TOME of a cookbook called "Modernist Cuisine" employs the use of these chemicals and the whole shebang is part of this major culinary movement. Guess what: those ingredients listed above are all inside the MRE as well. So let's define 'irony' shall we? Modern cuisine in the fine dining world now regularly employing the use of ingredients that have been shunned for their use in processed foods for decades. Something to think about, no?