Review: FIREPOT Meals by Outdoorfood.com

My last experience of dehydrated food was about 15 years ago during my brief foray into the world of the Duke of Edinburgh award. I wasn’t impressed. In fact, I haven’t eaten any since. Then recently, in our quest to cut down on camping equipment and maybe try some backpacking in the near future, I have briefly considered buying a dehydrater. While debating the merits of making our own trail food, I was contacted by Outdoorfood.com to see if I wanted to try some of their meals.

We were sent a sample of four FIREPOT meals, orzo pasta bolognese, dal and rice with spinach, chilli con carne with rice and porcini mushroom risotto. We tried them all with the pasta bolognese being a particular hit after we took it out with us on a little adventure.

It makes a real difference to eat dehydrated food that actually tastes good. Unlike many other producers that only mix the ingredients once they have been separately freeze dried; FIREPOT meals are cooked like you would at home, before being dried as a whole meal. This approach obviously pays off as we were impressed with how tasty all the meals were. (Even our notoriously contrary toddler loved them) I imagine that after a tough day of hiking they would taste absolutely amazing!

They are also incredibly easy to prepare. We went for the sachet method, although you can also make them in a pan. We boiled a kettle and filled up to the relevant level (as determined in the instructions) and left for 15 minutes.

I love the packaging of the FIREPOT meals, obviously as a massive map geek, the OS map design is brilliant, but I also like the fact that the pouches are resealable. Makes it all very easy and tidy, especially with a toddler around.

So these meals look and taste great, but just how nutritious are they? Firstly, they are free from artificial flavourings and preservatives and made with locally sourced produce. This attention to detail really sets the FIREPOT meals apart. There are no hidden nasties, just the same ingredients that you would use at home.

But also, they are made with active outdoor loving consumers in mind. These meals are satisfying and contain enough fuel to sustain even the toughest adventurers. The meals contain between 540-700 calories, although larger portion sizes (1000+ calories) are available on request.

With a RRP of £6.50, they’re not cheap, but I think that they are good value and we will certainly be taking some on our next adventure.

Have you ever tried dehydrated meals? Have these tempted you?

Disclosure: I was given four sample packs for the purposes of this review, all opinions expressed are my own.