There used to be a gun/outdoor store in this town that did a ”sidewalk sale’ every year. They would set up tents in the parking lot, put tons of merchandise out there, and have a sale. Problem was, when the store closed at night you couldnt just leave all that stuff out in the parking lot unprotected. Thats where I came in. I would sit out there all night in a lawn chair keeping an eye on the stuff in exchange for store credit. I then took that store credit and cleaned them out of some of their leftover Y2K Mountain House inventory. Mind you, this was all around 2000-2001.
So, I have a bunch of MH in #10 cans that I have been sitting on for about 25 years. In the time I’ve added to my MH stash quite considerably, so it’s not a hardship to pull out one of those cans, crack it open, and see how it fared.
I am not the first guy to do that. Friend Of The Blog(tm) [And friend of Gun Jesus] Joel, over at his blog, cracked open some old MH and had mixed-but-generally-good experiences.
I’ve no doubt that this stuff is going to be just fine but I have a chance here to do a little empirical data-gathering so why not? Lets go!
The sales tag on it indicates that it was put out for sale sometime in 1999, which makes sense since it was part of that stores attempt to cash in on the Y2K thing. The date stamping on the bottom of the can confirms that, yes, this stuff is a quarter century old.
Grabbing a can opener and removing the lid shows….ghostly white pasta. The pasta, being larger than the other components of this meal, sit on the top of the can and the smaller components have migrated to the bottom.
So, lets dump the whole can into a bowl and stir it up.
The contents of the can appeared just fine and smelled unremarkable. The powdered cheese and tomatoe mix had caked a bit at the bottom of the can but it broke up easily.
The instructions call for 3/4 cup of boiling water to one cup of food, and then letting it sit for 5 to 10 minutes. Okay, lets do that.
The final result, after five minutes, was this. I really should have let it sit for ten minutes but I figured I’d follow the instructions at their minimum.
The big question: how was it? It was fine. It wasn’t as spicy as the modern spaghett-with-meat-sauce that MH has out these days. It had a very faint ‘tinny’ aftertaste but I think thats actually the normal flavor. Was it edible? Yeah, as best I can tell. I mean, I guess I’ll have to report back in 12 hours. The taste was about what I expected… pretty much on par with your average Chef Boyardee product. After a long day of hanging looters, manning the roadblocks, and digging out of the rubble, this would be a fine meal.
So, yeah, it seemed to hold up just fine. The can had sat on a shelf in my basement since Y2K. The temperature down there was fairly consistent…never getting below freezing in the winter, and never getting over 70 in the summer. It was, pretty much, kept in the classic “cool dark place”.
The tag on the can indicates that it was about $32 for this can back in ’99. I’m an MH dealer, so I can see that todays dealer price for this same product is currently $29.50 per can. Amazon shows it for about $53, which is pretty close the 100% markup on MSRP for Mountain House cans. If you want to amortize it, it comes out to about $1.28 per year to have it sit there all this time.
What was i expecting? Actually, pretty much this. I’ve read reports from people opening even older cans of MH and finding it just fine. It really does appear that the 30-year shelf life on these products is pretty much spot on.
I’ve added more recent production MH into my supplies over the last few years so I have no probem ‘wasting’ this, one of my oldest cans of food. Its quite worth it to me to confirm what I’ve believed all along about the longevity of the MH products.
So, there you go, guys. Buy the cans and you can be pretty certain of at least 25 years of life…although I have no doubt that it’d be just fine for at least another five or ten years on top of that.
For the rest of that batch:
Mix it with current Chef Boyardee, or homemade, at any ratio between 1 in 4 and 50:50, throw in some extra sprinkles of fresh romano and parmesan, and you’ll never know the difference between fresh and long-term canned.
Alternatively, add a can or two of chili with beans to the contents, and it makes chili mac just fine.
We broke out some 10-15 year old white flour that we had vacuum packed with oxygen absorbers, just to see how it was holding up. I couldn’t find any difference between it and the flour in our normal rotation. Our working supply is 50-75 pounds kept in three 5-gallon gamma sealed buckets. It’s amazing how long some of that will keep if kept in the right conditions.
Somewhere around 1992 I picked up an old MH lasagna pouch.
I carried and stored it until about 2012. I opened and ate it then – the only problem was the noodles had crumbled so it lost its texture.
It had stored in different environments over the years, including several years of a hot attic.
In contrast, last year I tried an MRE that was less than 5 years old but which had been stored in a warm to hot area – it was inedible.
I prefer the taste of MH over MREs even when they are still edible.
Jonathan
Meals Rejected by Everyone, the hot sauce is included for a reason
I listened to an interview where some executive at Mountain House or a friend of one was saying that they have a package of food sealed in the 70s and they test it every year. No change from that so if your packaging is not damaged it will store for 50 years for sure. Asked “why 30 years” the answer was “this was the longest we have measured at the time”. Don’t forget bottled water expires in 12 months…
Funny you should mention…I also came across a case of bottled water from ’02.
The dates not for the water but the plastic leaching chemicals into the water. It’s a recommendation from the manufacturer, not a requirement from the FDA.
How’d it taste?
You do know you cannot just post about sitting guard all night without posting some more details, like what toys you had with you.
Absolutely Right
He was in Zoo Town, so all he had on him was a water pistol…
Caught 2 possums today. Found a recipe for possum and sweet potatoes. Looking like something we might have to try.
I wonder how many of us still have Y2K foods in our basements? And what will happen to it when we die? I sure don’t see my kids hanging on to it, but they will probably eat the banana chips and apple rings.
It was done with a ruger p95, of course. Thermos of coffee, some wrapped sandwiches make for an easy security post gig. Low intensity labor trade for store credit opportunities is a shrewed prepper strategy. Also do check in on your stored treasures. Touch them, sing to them, show appreciation for the life saving qualities, they do get lonely awaiting activation in those bunker storage sarcophagus places. Stay stocked up and frosty out there.
Ruger P Series – Yes if only in the truck.
9 mm Glocks – Take your pick.
AR times two – Yes one with him, one in the truck.
Rem 870 – Yes with Orange stock loaded with Beanbags.
Coffee – No he does not drink.
Cans of Coke-cola – 12 pack.
Sandwiches – Do you think this is a man who could not come up with something a little better.
A very good idea. I know someone who did a yearly check and found bleach had leaked and corroded other stuff… Fortunately he was able to replace it.