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I've been trying to figure out the bewildering array of Russian military rations and I think I've got it nailed down?  This is the IRP, the basic 21st century field ration. It comes in at least two variants, with a 1 or 2 written in marker on the front.  Pretty sure this is the IRP-2, or maybe a similar one in a slightly different camo pattern is the IRP-2? Info is conflicting. I tried to buy one and it got "lost in the mail".  This one is made for the FSB, the internal security bureau of Russia that replaced the KGB. It's basically a combination of the CIA, the FBI, SWAT, and the government's private army. I think these are also given to high-ranking military officers according to soviet-power.com. This is the one I actually bought and ate.  This is a mountain ration mainly given to the Spetsnaz.  This is a variant of the IRP for EMERCOM, kind of a civil defense agency in Russia. The fascinating part? All of them appear to have the same or nearly the same contents! Despite the widely varying packaging, pictures and lists of the contents show very little difference between them. They may have different proportions of items or some extra sundries like chocolate or condensed milk, but overall they're all minor variations on a theme. It would be like the United States having 5 different rations that are all just MREs in unique packaging for different branches or minor changes.
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Jun 7, 2016 22:14
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 03:24 |
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I see what looks like tinned fish and a tin of what I'm guessing is tourist's breakfast 
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Jun 7, 2016 22:24
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chitoryu12 posted:The fascinating part? All of them appear to have the same or nearly the same contents! Despite the widely varying packaging, pictures and lists of the contents show very little difference between them. They may have different proportions of items or some extra sundries like chocolate or condensed milk, but overall they're all minor variations on a theme. It would be like the United States having 5 different rations that are all just MREs in unique packaging for different branches or minor changes. Don't let the Marines hear about this.
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Jun 7, 2016 22:30
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I wonder what's in that blue tube. Maybe, uhhh, roe spread?
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Jun 7, 2016 22:38
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Siivola posted:I wonder what's in that blue tube. Maybe, uhhh, roe spread?
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Jun 7, 2016 22:49
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xthetenth posted:Don't let the Marines hear about this. They'd just make an MRE in a MARPAT bag and call it the Overwatch Offensive Ration - Advanced Health (OOR-AH) and shame women for trying to eat them.
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Jun 7, 2016 23:12
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chitoryu12 posted:Overwatch Offensive Ration This isn't the thread for gamer grub
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Jun 7, 2016 23:17
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chitoryu12 posted:They'd just make an MRE in a MARPAT bag and call it the Overwatch Offensive Ration - Advanced Health (OOR-AH) and shame women for trying to eat them. I chuckled
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Jun 7, 2016 23:24
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Nebakenezzer posted:I see what looks like tinned fish and a tin of what I'm guessing is tourist's breakfast I avoided getting any sprats or sardines in my ration, but cans of fish and tourist's breakfast are apparently super common in them (and the Ukrainian ones, which Wikipedia says are based on old Russian/Soviet ones). I guess tourist's breakfast is one of those things you just have to grow up liking? It tastes awful to my refined capitalist palette.
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Jun 7, 2016 23:27
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chitoryu12 posted:They'd just make an MRE in a MARPAT bag and call it the Overwatch Offensive Ration - Advanced Health (OOR-AH) and shame women for trying to eat them. 
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Jun 7, 2016 23:29
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Jaguars! posted:Hey, if anyone wants to do a review, I have an complete NZDF ratpack that was issued in March and has been sitting in my Pack since then. Seems like NZPost will be OK shipping it as it will last more than 6 months and I'd be happy to send to NA or Europe for just the cost of shipping (Probably around $40, or $20 to Aussie). Main meal is beef stew, IIRC. received this today, looks great! I'll eat it over the next week or so and post a review
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Jun 8, 2016 11:08
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Jun 11, 2016 16:40
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So I found an old Japanese page detailing the capture of a North Korean spy vessel. Apparently their rations aboard the ship were Japanese canned goods. Might be a potential source for North Korean rations.
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Jun 12, 2016 04:50
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chitoryu12 posted:They'd just make an MRE in a MARPAT bag and call it the Overwatch Offensive Ration - Advanced Health (OOR-AH) and shame women for trying to eat them. As a military historian I laughed too hard at this
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Jun 12, 2016 13:58
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Insane Totoro posted:As a military historian I laughed too hard at this As a Marine I cried a little bit
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Jun 12, 2016 16:24
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Polish 24-Hour Ration I'm putting it out here right at the start: this is the best 24-hour ration I've eaten so far. In terms of balancing quality with quantity, this succeeds above the British, Danish, and definitely the Ukrainian and Russian rations. Everything is packed neatly and made to a high quality that any soldier would appreciate.   The ration comes in what resembles a giant green MRE bag with a sticker on the front listing the contents in both Polish and English (much of the ration is labeled bilingually, presumably to aid in NATO distribution). It's very heavy when you pick it up, similar to the Ukrainian and Russian rations. This is an early warning that you've got bags of cans in here.  The three meals (breakfast, dinner, and supper) are packed tightly into plastic bags inside the main bag and labeled, along with some sundry items and an accessory pack that are loose by themselves.  The A meal, breakfast, is likely the largest in the pack.  Every meal comes with one of these water packets, meant to be put in the included flameless ration heater as a hand warmer. The water includes bleach, making it non-potable.  Immediately apparent is that the entree can is probably twice the size of a Russian ration can. The Poles definitely love to eat big, and they don't skimp on calories.  The can is so overstuffed with goulash that it began pouring out as soon as I peeled off a corner of the lid.   It's legitimately good beef goulash. It's "good for canned food", yes, but still in the top 10 for international for ration quality. And there's a fuckton of it.   I think I've mentioned in a past review that I don't really like cranberries. However, I was addicted to this drat bar. They heavily sweetened it, allowing the flavor of the berries to come through without any of the tartness and bitterness that many other cranberry food and drink products have. The bar itself is quite soft but includes a rice paper-like coating on both sides, giving it some firmness to hold together in the wrapper. It's hard to describe the soft-yet-firm texture, but it was much better than the cereal bars I normally find. I seriously want to find out if these are sold commercially and if I can buy a pack.    I'm one of those weirdos that actually likes meat pate and liverwurst, so I cleaned out this can fast.    The fruit jelly was bizarre, stuck together in a can-shaped lump, but it still tasted nice. There were still seeds in it, suggesting that it was fresher than meets the eye.     The flameless ration heater from Canland (maker of Hot Pack brand self-heating meals in the UK) is an enigma. The heater itself claims to be made in China, but the paper instructions list South Korea. And both are bilingual in French, presumably Canland's biggest customer on the continent.  In yet another example of the Polish generosity toward its soldiers, the utensil pack included in the breakfast bag has a fork, big spoon, and tiny spoon so you can eat everything with individual utensils.     One or two of these lemon drink packets were included in each meal. They may look like gerbil food and the drink produced may look like tea, but it's a mild lemon beverage.    This is a packet of rye crispbread, a crunchy and pleasant-tasting cracker with an airy consistency that makes it seem like paper-thin sheets of rye cracker pressed together. They served as an excellent snack.  Dinner time! Poland follows an older standard for meals, with the main meal being taken at mid-day or in the afternoon and the evening having a light supper.    This meal's can was chicken stew with rice and vegetables. If it had been in a pie crust, it would be indistinguishable from a typical Midwest chicken pot pie.  Dinner and supper both had a pack of these crackers. While military bread products are often mocked for being supposedly inedible or jokingly called "hardtack", these are the only ones I've encountered so far that are legitimately hardtack. They're almost painful to try and bite into.    A big bar of dark chocolate, which seems to be slightly heat-resistant: it melted during the transit to Florida, but maintained its shape and some of its texture where a Hershey bar would have been a gloopy mess. I took a token bite to say that I had tried it before giving it to my girlfriend, who loves dark chocolate way more than I do.    A tube of sweetened condensed milk. If you haven't had it before, the stuff is literally the sweetest thing ever. I almost couldn't finish it because it was so sweet that it was threatening to make me swear off sugar for the rest of my life. It's much better squeezed into a glass of tea or coffee.  As I said before, supper is a light meal. It's best supplemented with the separate sundries included in the bag to make for a more full course.   This terrifying-looking stuff is listed as "Preserved Tyrolean". I had to do some digging, but apparently it's Tyrolean speck, an Austrian form of fatty bacon. While it may look like the hideous Ukrainian or Russian canned meats, it actually had a very mild flavor, like someone had wafted a bacon once near the can. It was perfectly edible down to the bottom as long as you dodged the fat ringing the sides.   The honey initially looked like it had started to congeal or crystallize like the Lithuanian honey, but it was just that thick. It was somewhat gritty, but it had a very mild and pleasant taste. It greatly improved the bone-hard crackers.   The packet of dried fruit (the first of the individual items) was the only total misfire in the whole ration. Only the apple slices that you see in the picture were edible, actually tasting like apples despite feeling like leather strips. There were also what vaguely resembled mushrooms (so leathery tough that they were almost impossible to bite through) and something that resembled large black prunes with woody pits in the center that were totally inedible.   The instant tomato soup came with no instructions, so I took a guess: the only mixing vessel a Polish soldier would likely have is a mug, so I dumped it into a mug of water. I turned out to be exactly correct! It's instant tomato soup, so everyone should probably be able to guess how it tastes. I wouldn't order it in a restaurant, but it was very warming and would probably be a godsend on cold nights.  Three of these napkins were included. They were even softer and larger than the American ones. The Poles really go all out with their stuff.  Several big packets of sugar.  A little matchbook.    6 candies were included. Three of them were very hard coffee candies, meant to be sucked on for probably a good hour or so. They had a strong black coffee flavor, not unlike coffee-flavored chocolate minus the chocolate. The colored candies (flavored orange, cherry, and green apple) were much softer and listed on the bag as "vitamin C candies", so I'm guessing they're fortified.  A little tea bag. I haven't made the tea yet, but it smells strongly of mint.  A thin plastic bag, presumably for leftovers or trash but reminding me way too much of the bags dog owners use to pick up their poop.  Stylish little packets of salt and pepper.  Three wet wipes, as are standard.  And finally, three sticks of mint chewing gum. That's all for Poland! I currently have the Kazakh ration ready to crack open (as well as a can of condensed milk that the seller appears to have thrown into the box for free), and the Spanish ration is somewhere in transit.
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Jun 13, 2016 05:09
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So, it was mentioned many pages ago, I think, that you could get MREs or MRE-alikes at US military bases, I think? I think someone mentioned a civilian version that was the same except for being in clear packaging instead of the brown. Well, I'm going to be going to Ft. Belvoir in northern Virginia in the next few days, and I would like to grab a few, if I can. Where might one find those? The commissary? The PX?
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Jun 13, 2016 08:44
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I'm genuinely interested in acquiring a Polish military ration. I think it'd be cool especially with the strong eastern European legacy in our region. Do I just.... Trawl eBay?
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Jun 13, 2016 12:20
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chitoryu12 posted:A tube of sweetened condensed milk. If you haven't had it before, the stuff is literally the sweetest thing ever. I almost couldn't finish it because it was so sweet that it was threatening to make me swear off sugar for the rest of my life. It's much better squeezed into a glass of tea or coffee.  All in all, as someone with Polish heritage who loves the food, I'm happy about this ration. 
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Jun 13, 2016 13:58
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That's the idea, but from what I can remember I would just eat that stuff with a spoon more often than not. There's also a boiled variant that's even more delicious, but you'd be unlikely to find that in a military ration.
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Jun 13, 2016 14:29
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The condensed milk tube would be good trading stock if you run into Americans or Mexicans dying for a cafe du leche. That stuff is great in lovely instant coffee.
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Jun 13, 2016 15:45
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I honestly wonder where I can get shelf-stable condensed milk tubes for when I forget to bring fresh half-and-half to the office.
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Jun 13, 2016 16:08
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Halloween Jack posted:I honestly wonder where I can get shelf-stable condensed milk tubes for when I forget to bring fresh half-and-half to the office. I'd be curious how long they last after the seal is broken. That tube looked like too much for one coffee, unless you're craving candy that day.
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Jun 13, 2016 16:17
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I'm guessing the tube is double-condensed milk, like cans of "Eagle Brand" double condensed milk you can find in North America (or maybe just Canada.) I'm intrigued by the coffee candy, too. Does it have caffeine? Does it actually replace the caffeine you'd get from a cup of coffee?
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Jun 13, 2016 16:31
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Halloween Jack posted:I honestly wonder where I can get shelf-stable condensed milk tubes for when I forget to bring fresh half-and-half to the office. Nestle makes a squeeze jar of La Lechera brand that I've seen at Wal Mart before.
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Jun 13, 2016 16:44
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Insane Totoro posted:I'm genuinely interested in acquiring a Polish military ration. I think it'd be cool especially with the strong eastern European legacy in our region. That's about it, yeah. I just occasionally search eBay for "military ration" or similar search terms, sometimes with more specifics if there's a kind I'm looking for. American, Russian, and Ukrainian are the most common and there's a consistent seller for Lithuanian. Polish, Kazakhstani, Spanish, and French all show up on occasion but it's the luck of the draw. You just have to keep searching every so often and see if anyone's put one up. I got my Polish ration from this guy. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Jun 13, 2016 |
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Jun 13, 2016 17:27
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Thanks for the tips!
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Jun 13, 2016 20:19
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Also, I just picked up my Spanish ration from the post office. Even though I bought the cheaper one that didn't come with army crackers, the seller still threw in the pack of crackers as a gift. It's a hell of a lot smaller than it appeared. I thought it was going to be like the Ukrainian tray-like ration, but it's even smaller than an MRE. Still says it has all three meals on the front though.
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Jun 13, 2016 20:27
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Looking forward to the Spanish army managing to gently caress up ham somehow. 
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Jun 13, 2016 20:44
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Okay, the Spanish ration really is just a single meal, so I'm having it for dinner at the office and may be able to get the review up today or tomorrow. Still packed into a smaller space than one MRE, probably because there's no loving utensils in the ration.
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Jun 13, 2016 23:54
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kafziel posted:So, it was mentioned many pages ago, I think, that you could get MREs or MRE-alikes at US military bases, I think? I think someone mentioned a civilian version that was the same except for being in clear packaging instead of the brown. You can find them at the PX at the base. My brother said they're just piled up for you to grab and are much cheaper than the $10 per meal I have to pay online. They're almost identical to regular MREs, just with clear bags and some weight and space-saving measures (like using a cardboard sleeve instead of a full box to hold the heater). Picking up a few for like $4.25 each is a good way to try out MREs for cheap. Nebakenezzer posted:I'm intrigued by the coffee candy, too. Does it have caffeine? Does it actually replace the caffeine you'd get from a cup of coffee? I looked it up and the Kofik candies are produced by ROKSANA and distributed worldwide by Agros Trading Confectionery. Here's the ingredients list from their website: quote:sugar, glucose syrup, sweetened condensed milk (sugar, milk powder, water), butter, natural coffee 1,4%, color: E 150c, salt, coffee flavour. May contain traces of gluten.
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Jun 14, 2016 00:07
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Halloween Jack posted:I honestly wonder where I can get shelf-stable condensed milk tubes for when I forget to bring fresh half-and-half to the office. They do sell them just at normal stores, but the ones I've seen are fairly large, not single-use. You need to refrigerate them after opening. They're a lot less of a pain in the rear end than cans though.
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Jun 14, 2016 02:11
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Spanish Ration Do you like chorizo? You won't after this review. The Spanish ration I got is listed as A, No. 4 (I'm guessing they do Case A and Case B like MREs?) lunch menu. I'm not sure if Spanish rations are called breakfast, lunch, or dinner based on their contents or if this is the lunch portion of A, No. 4.  The Spanish Army issues their bread separately. Normally I'd have to pay extra for the biscuit bread here, but the seller threw it in for free so I get to review a full meal.  The ration is very small for a meal, much smaller than an MRE, but still bigger than one of the individual meal bags in the Polish ration.  The plastic outer wrapper for the ration is a much thinner kind than any other ration I've eaten, kinda like the outer packaging of a bag of crackers or Chips Ahoy cookies or something. It's very easy to tear open with your hands, so I can see these wrappers tearing easily in a soldier's pack. Inside is a cardboard box.  The full contents. Get used to seeing Spain's coat of arms.    A multilingual instruction and contents paper is included with several languages. Nice to know that Spain doesn't trust its soldiers to not eat matches, much less heating tablets.      The entree for lunch here is chorizo with beans. The can is a pull-tab, with the label printed on the underside. I was a little worried when I saw that chorizo was only 6% of the contents, but they weren't lying: that little sad lump of sausage is all you get. It's also barely even chorizo, being incredibly soft (like those retort pouched sausages in the British ration or the Poundland full breakfast can that Stuart Ashen reviewed, you can slice it in half with a fork) and fatty. It tasted little like proper chorizo, mostly of fat and faint "sausage" generic flavor. Despite the bright red color of the oil/sauce the entree was packed in, the beans were totally unseasoned. I'm not entirely sure what the other items were, only that they tasted exactly like the beans. It was a very disappointing entree.    The sardines were packed in vegetable oil of unknown type, which began gushing over the lid as soon as I tried to peel it off. They tasted good for sardines, but I've never been a sardine lover (not a fan of my fish having skin and bones to deal with).     The crackers were actually some of the best ration crackers I've had. The Spanish name translates to "biscuit bread", and they were soft enough to bite into without difficulty and had a very slightly sweet taste.   A tasty, very thick apricot jam. Virtually impossible to eat without a spoon to pull out chunks.     4 packets of drink powder seemed excessive for one meal...until I poured it into the cup and didn't even get enough to coat the bottom. Reading the back, I found that the Spanish actually treat these vitamin C drinks as nutritional supplements rather than just a way to make better-tasting water. Four packets count as a single "dose", with two doses to be drank per day. I don't know why they divide them into four packets instead of one big enough for a drink, but there you go. Honestly, I couldn't stand this thing. It had a very muted taste similar to a cross between a grapefruit and a lemon, but it had a strange thickness to it despite the lack of strong flavor.   A large chiclet of very strong mint chewing gum.       The packet of chicken noodle soup couldn't hold a candle to the tomato soup from Poland. The broth tasted almost identical to Campbell's chicken noodle soup, but there was a strange and disgusting gelatin floating at the top. The noodles had all sunk to the bottom of the mug and had an extremely salty taste that the broth didn't have.   A trio of multilingual heating tablets and a folding metal stove.   The quintessential matchbook. Unfortunately, it was an incredibly lovely matchbook and I couldn't even get a match to light.  Three napkins.  A very royal-looking wet wipe.   Fluoride toothpaste, a first for any ration. The Danish came closest before by including a little disposable toothbrush.  And finally, some extremely tiny sodium dichloroisocyanurate water purification tablets. You may notice that at no point did I show off a fork or spoon or tactical spork at any point. And you're absolutely right: there's not a single utensil in the entire ration. I hope to God that the soldiers get issued utensils as part of their kit or they get distributed during ration handout, because otherwise you're gonna have some very hot fingers trying to eat anything off that portable stove. Overall, this ration was kinda crappy? It didn't have a whole lot in the way of food items and many of them were bland or outright gross. The only parts that were really nice were the apricot jam and the crackers, maybe the sardines if you're a sardine lover. Not to joke about Spain's financial state, but I can kinda see more money going into the fancy packaging covered in the coat of arms than the actual food quality. You would at least expect a country known for such bold flavors and use of herbs and spices to have tasty food, but they don't even provide packets of seasoning.
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Jun 14, 2016 06:35
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I am going to have to report this to the mods. How am I supposed to get a proper second-hand experience if you don't taste test the matches? Such shoddy craftsmanship. Yes, I know it said not to eat the matches, but it's not like you're a Spanish soldier, are you? It would have been fine. Also, I am sure they would have a bold flavor too.
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Jun 14, 2016 08:48
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NZ ration pack is coming along. I'm eating it piecemeal, so it is taking a while
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Jun 14, 2016 08:55
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chitoryu12 posted:You may notice that at no point did I show off a fork or spoon or tactical spork at any point. And you're absolutely right: there's not a single utensil in the entire ration. I hope to God that the soldiers get issued utensils as part of their kit or they get distributed during ration handout, because otherwise you're gonna have some very hot fingers trying to eat anything off that portable stove.
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Jun 14, 2016 12:04
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Samizdata posted:I am going to have to report this to the mods. How am I supposed to get a proper second-hand experience if you don't taste test the matches? Such shoddy craftsmanship. 
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Jun 14, 2016 12:18
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It's a pity the chorizo and beans did not taste good, because it certainly looked nice. Or maybe I'm just hungry. You don't really need a TON of good chorizo to flavor something, so a bite of sausage In your side of beans would be appropriate. Now I want to make some beans.
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Jun 14, 2016 14:52
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Hirayuki posted:But consider the risks he took in eating food out of two dented and/or otherwise potentially compromised tins! He didn't report it to a superior or anything. I just hope he wasn't alone when he ate them. I figure he would have been alright, as there'd been no post if he wasn't.
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Jun 14, 2016 19:04
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So there's a website called The Black Vault, which is mostly your bog standard conspiracy theory website. However, they also have a giant collection of declassified government documents scanned as PDFs. While perusing, I found that they had a collection of complaint cards and emails from the CIA headquarters cafeteria. The second card on the list has an agent requesting that they leave out mini boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios and Corn Pops, as they always run out and they're left with Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms.
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Jun 21, 2016 03:32
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