What Are the Best Freeze Dried Foods for Hiking, Camping, and Backpacking? (Part 1: Popular Brands)

Peak Refuel Breakfast Skillet

We didn’t expect this breakfast skillet from Peak Refuel to blow us away, but it did. This entree is arguably one of the most well-rounded meals on this list, and gets our pick as the best freeze dried food. 

The Peak Refuel Breakfast Skillet has eggs and sausage bits for protein, potatoes for carbs, and a generous portion of green bell peppers and onions for added nutrition and taste.

You get a good proportion of each component, so every spoonful is tasty, filling, and nutritious. It’s a bit bland, though, so pack some salt or hot sauce to give this skillet a spice boost.

This entree reconstitutes so well that you could pass it off for a home-cooked meal. The eggs are nice, fluffy, and safe for lactose-intolerant folks because they don’t contain milk. The potatoes were a bit smaller than we expected. Even so, they had great consistency and taste. The bell peppers had the right balance of crunch and juiciness, which we enjoyed.

The bag is full to the brim, so pack it down nicely before adding water so you can close the resealable zipper seal properly.

Peak Refuel’s energy content ain’t so bad, either. At 320 calories and 32 grams of protein per serving, this pouch is a tasty and filling energy source.

The only downside to the Peak Refuel Breakfast Skillet? Its price.

At around $12 per 2-serving pouch, this isn't the most budget-friendly freeze dried food out there. Still, its taste, proportion, and nutritional value make up for the hefty price tag. If you’ve got a few dollars to spare, we recommend packing a pouch or two of this delicious meal.

Mountain House Chili Mac With Beef

If you’ve been prepping, camping or hiking for some time now, you’d know that Mountain House has already made a name for itself in the freeze dried food sphere. We’d go so far as to say that its products have become synonymous with “camping comfort food.”

For this review, we tried and tested one of the company’s bestsellers—the crowd favorite Chili Mac With Beef.

The Mountain House Chili Mac's 2.5 serving pouch packs around 230 calories per serving. It’s not the most calorie- or protein-dense meal out there, but with pasta, ground beef, and beans, it should be able to fill your tummy after a long day on the trail.

The pouch itself only weighs around 4.8 ounces, so it’s pretty nice and lightweight. The meal also comes in a Pro-Pak, which is more compact and vacuum-sealed to prevent expansion in high altitudes.

Mountain House’s biggest edge is definitely its 30-year taste guarantee. You can buy a pack, leave it for 3 decades, and it will still taste good.

Opening the bag, you’ll be greeted by the smell of chili and seasonings—which is appetizing in itself. There are also ample amounts of macaroni pasta, kidney beans, and chunks of ground beef. Each ingredient is proportioned pretty well, so you get a nice filling bite for every spoonful.

The label suggests adding 2 cups of boiling water to reconstitute the meal, but we went for just a cup and a half to keep it from being too diluted or soupy. Waiting time is relatively short at 8-9 minutes (other brands need 15 minutes to reconstitute). We suggest opening the bag and mixing it thoroughly around the 4-minute mark to evenly rehydrate all the ingredients.

We love that all of the ingredients reconstitute well. The texture overall resembles a legit meal. It even has a nice spicy kick to it.

Some brands have pasta that feels off or crumbly—Mountain House’s pasta remained al dente even if we left it cooking for a minute or two more than the recommended time.

We’re also glad that Mountain House didn’t scrimp on the sauce and seasoning. We can see why this variant is a bestseller—the sauce itself is rich and flavorful. 1 and a half cups of water is pretty much sufficient to achieve the right sauce consistency.

The big chunks of ground meat and the beans make this meal quite satisfying. Beware if you’ve got a delicate stomach, though. Many folks report a bit of gassiness after eating this entree.

Aside from its relatively high price point and low energy yield, another downside to the Mountain House is its high sodium content. It’s not great for everyday consumption, but it does allow you to replenish electrolytes lost after a day of hiking.

Overall, the Mountain House Chili Mac may not pack the most calories, but at the end of the day, it is delicious and filling comfort food that’s perfect for camping or hiking.

Wise Foods Creamy Pasta And Vegetable Rotini With Chicken

Wise Foods may not hold the record for Tastiest Freeze Dried Food Brand out there, but their Creamy Pasta And Vegetable Rotini With Chicken variety sure was tasty.

Read more about it below!

While this meal was good, the serving size was lesser than we would have liked. Its 2-serving pouch is too small for two people to share. We did appreciate the huge chunks of chicken breast added into the mix.

As with Mountain House, we put slightly less water than recommended in this entree to keep it from being too diluted. It’s quite powdery, so stir it as you pour in water to avoid clumps forming at the bottom of the bag.

Tastewise, the meal isn’t too bad. In the battle of creamy pasta sauces, this one won against Alpine Aire by a wide margin. Its sauce is slightly sweet, with a milky aftertaste.

The vegetables offered some much-needed texture and crunch, too. The pasta itself is passable, but isn’t as great as Mountain House's. We encountered some crunchy pasta bits despite mixing and cooking it thoroughly.

On the plus side, the chicken reconstitutes well and is surprisingly chunky. It’s not too dry, either. Even if the pasta doesn’t seem like much, the chicken breast chunks make up for your protein needs well.

While it might not be mind-blowing in terms of taste, quantity, or caloric content, this entree from Wise Foods is one of the cheapest on the list at around $7. There are definitely better options out there, but if you're sticking to a budget, this may be the best freeze dried food for you.

MRE Star Barbecue Chicken With Black Beans And Potatoes

MRE Star’s food packs aren't the lightest, cheapest, or most delicious meals out there, but they certainly meet your caloric needs. They also take little to no preparation time and have pretty much everything you need for a complete meal.

Check out our complete review down below.

People get unpleasant flashbacks at the mere mention of the word “MRE”, but that doesn’t seem to stop MRE Star from changing the reputation of ready-to-eat meals across the community.

As the name suggests, MRE Star’s food packages are ready to eat out of the box. No, they’re not technically freeze-dried, but they do last about 5 years, which isn’t too bad for something that doesn’t need reconstitution or cooking.

MRE Star’s sets come with pretty much everything you need for a well-rounded meal. They’re significantly heavier than freeze-dried food pouches, but they do pack a lot of stuff.

Each brown package contains an individually packaged entree, starch (usually flour tortillas or military crackers), snacks, desserts, powdered drinks like lemonade and coffee, condiments, small candies, and even plastic cutlery and moist towelettes.

As if that isn’t enough, it also has a flameless heater, which you can use to heat your meal with just a bit of water.

We like how each component helps meet your calorie needs. The entree alone clocks in at about 300 calories, while the other food products contribute about 800-900 calories altogether, making around 1100-1200 calories per meal.

Heating the food is easy enough. You just put a couple of ounces of water to activate the chemical heater, slip the food pack into the pocket and place them both inside the box for 15 minutes.

As for the actual taste of the products, let’s just say there’s a lot to be desired in that area. For this test, we got chicken in barbecue sauce with some black beans and potatoes. It came with a pack of flour tortillas, oatmeal cookies, corn nuts, and a fortified juice mix.

The entree doesn’t necessarily taste bad—it’s just that its texture tells you it’s been sitting in that package for quite some time. The sweetness of the barbecue sauce is overpowering, and the chicken has a flaky texture similar to that of canned tuna. There are also more beans and potatoes in the mix compared to the meat—which is saying something, because around 60% of the pack is just, well, sauce.

The flour tortillas are nice and soft, but they also have this strange texture and aftertaste we’re not quite fond of, either.

Thankfully, the oatmeal cookies were good. You get a pack of four slightly tough but good-tasting cookies. It’s a great way to incorporate a bit of fiber into your meal. The corn nuts were great to munch on, too.

Overall, we think that MRE Star shines best in emergency situations and disaster response. You can bring the packs when car camping or day hiking, but you might want to go with something more compact for longer trips.

Alpine Aire Spicy Sausage Pasta

On paper, Alpine Aire looks like a pretty good deal: it only weighs 5 ounces, is pretty compact, and already packs 300 calories in a single serving.

In reality? Well, it missed the mark.    

The Alpine Aire Spicy Sausage Pasta sounded promising: you’ve got your pasta, sausage crumbles, creamy sauce, plus a kick of spice from the cayenne pepper. In fact, we were pleasantly surprised to find it had more pasta than Wise Foods. It seemed like a good meal…until we actually tasted it.

To put it simply, we aren't keen on putting this pack on rotation.

The texture of the pasta really threw us off. While we get that freeze dried pasta won’t ever compare to something homemade, Alpine Aire’s pasta just didn’t cut it for us. It had a very loose, crumbly texture. It kind of disintegrates in your mouth during the first bite, and we don’t mean that in a good way.

The whole thing was too bland for our taste as well. The only distinct taste present in this dish is the spiciness from the cayenne, but even that wasn’t enough to salvage this entree. Its supposed creaminess didn’t pull through, either.

The proportion of meat to pasta was quite disappointing, too. There’s too much (subpar) pasta and not a lot of sausage bits to go around.

You can definitely try this Alpine Aire variant if you simply need to fuel up on the trail. 600 calories in one pack is pretty substantial—if you don’t mind the taste. If you ask us, however, we honestly won’t be stockpiling this anytime soon.