Mountain House Breakfast Skillet

Bottom line up front: This type of food is a great choice for an emergency food supply, especially for sheltering in place or evacuating by vehicle. The #10 cans have a 25-year shelf life, so you can buy them and not worry about rotating your stock for a couple of decades. The biggest downside is that once opened, they need to be used up right away.SHELF LIFE - The #10 cans have a 25-year shelf life (unopened). The biggest downside to #10 cans versus individual pouches is that the 25-year shelf life turns into a 1-week shelf life once they've been opened. Since each can has enough for 10 servings, you'll be eating the same thing for several meals unless you're cooking for a group.TASTE - In my experience, Mountain House food is really tasty. Let me caveat this review by saying that although I've eaten other Mountain House freeze-dried food, I haven't had occasion to open the ones in the #10 cans (see my review of the "Mountain House 72-Hour Emergency Meal Kit"). That having been said, the Mountain House food I have tried has been very, very good tasting -- not just good compared to other survival foods, but good period. I have no reason to expect that these would be any different.WEIGHT/CONVENIENCE - As steel cans, they're reasonably durable and reasonably lightweight (not backpacking light, but you don't have to be a weightlifter to move a large box of them). They do take up a bit of volume, but since the overwhelming majority of long-term emergency scenarios involve sheltering in place or evacuating by vehicle, I wouldn't let that be a deal breaker (personnally, I have a stock of individual pouches just in case I have to leave on foot, but most of my food is in these cans).CALORIES - The problem with most freeze-dried emergency food is that a so-called "serving" has too few calories to meet an adult's energy requirements (2500 a day for men; 2000 a day for women -- more with heavy exertion), so you end up consuming more than you planned. These are no different. So even though a typical can ostensibly contains 10 1-cup servings, you really need to eat two servings per meal to get enough calories to survive -- perhaps more. Plan your purchase accordingly.

I buy freeze-dried products for backpacking, so my concern is first, of calories per weight, then, how much space it takes up, and lastly, flavor. This is my favorite Mountain House meal (although I haven't tried the Mountain House breakfast hash yet). I especially like that it doesn't require draining the water after it's rehydrated, like their other egg breakfasts require (that's a big no-no in the backcountry due to bears).I bought the #10 can size of this meal to save money and packaging. I repackage it into lightweight quart-sized freezer bags, which are also more flexible than the mylar packaging that the single serve MH meals come in. These plastic bags fit much better in my bear canister. I can also portion out the exact calories I'll want, which is usually less than what the individually packaged MH meals contain, so no waste!The one downside to the large can is that small and large pieces tend to separate. So, if you aren't making the whole can at once, you'll need to mix up the can to make sure your home made servings contain the right mix of egg, hashbrown, seasonings and so forth.I also wanted to increase the protein-to-fat ratio of this meal, so I bought another MH breakfast of eggs and mixed the two together -- it worked great!I would also like to state that the product says "once open, product should be used immediately" and also that it's "acceptable" up to one week after opening. I opened my can on 5-10-18 and also on 7-18-18 and I just made a small serving and it tastes great.. I'm not saying you should ignore their recommendation, but I did want to share my experience with how long the product can be opened and still be safe to eat. Just because it worked for me, doesn't mean it will be safe for you; I am not liable for your experience.

I am not a full blown prepper by any means, but have I made some plans, and purchased a few things to have in case I need to survive for a short time during a disaster. I have a pantry to store my items and was buying canned foods and other items that did not have a very long shelf life. Which is fine if you are diligent and rotate your stock on a regular basis, but I was not, and ended up throwing a lot of food away recently.So I decided to look for some MREs to have on hand. I looked at some you can purchase by the case, but the shelf life for most was a bit short in my mind, plus they were pretty pricey and seemed more complicated to prepare. I came across this brand and purchased this one to try out. My son prepared it following the directions, which are pretty simple, and it came out perfect and actually tasted real good too. And the shelf life is over 30 years. That is a good long time. They will outlive me for sure.My plan now is to purchase one or two of these each time I place an order with Amazon, which is at least weekly, so I can build up a decent supply over time. Of course if an asteroid hits the earth tomorrow I could be in trouble, although I do have some stuff on hand.I can easily recommend these for a survival plan or for any reason you might want to have an easy to carry, easy to make and good tasting meal that can be stored for a very long length of time.

GREAT PRODUCT. VERY FAST SERVICE.

Great as expected