Peak Refuel Dehydrated Meals First Impressions

TL;DR - Very few of these rehydrated properly, even with boiling water and extra time. Next time, we'll probably try something different.

Crunchy, but not in a good way.

Since we tried some of these before we went on the hike, I want to include the impressions we had at home, again. I'm doing this mostly because we didn't get the same results when we were in Grand Gulch.

We ended up with Peak Refuel meals after reading around online about various brands and deciding that the combination of pack-to-pack consistency, taste, and calorie count per pack were optimized with Peak. Then, we ordered several meals we thought we'd like and give them a try at home (having an always-hungry 14-year-old who is burning an infinite number of calories at sports practices every day helps in a situation like this).

To try at home, we ordered Chicken Pesto Pasta, Beef Stroganoff, Sweet Pork & Rice, and the Backcountry Bison Bowl. In the end, we ranked them:

Sweet Pork & Rice - Pro: good flavor, nice rehydrated consistency, low(er) saturated fat content, reasonable quantity. Con: high added sugar content.

Chicken Pesto Pasta - Pro: great flavor (best), nice rehydrated consistency. Con: low quantity, might have upset our stomachs afterwards.

Backcountry Bison Bowl - Pro: best quantity, felt "good" afterward eating. Con: poor rehydrated consistency (biscuits never rehydrated), somewhat bland flavor (but not offensive).

Beef Stroganoff - Pro: good quantity. Con: poor rehydrated consistency (too soupy), high(er) saturated fat content, might have upset our stomachs afterwards.

With those rankings, we ended up purchasing two 6-packs of Sweet Pork & Rice (pack) and Chicken Pesto Pasta (pack). That would mean eating each for two nights, but we saved a bit of money purchasing them in packs.

We also "went blind" into the hike with one pack each of three additional flavors to cover our fifth night on the trail: Beef Pasta Marinara, Butternut Dal Bhat, and Venison Country Casserole.

Food: Peak Refuel Dehydrated Meals

So, initial impressions in the rearview, we figured we knew what we were in for as far as dinners went on the trip. Nope! The biggest issue on the trip was that none of the meals seemed to rehydrate correctly, even those that worked well at home. This was a little strange, because we used the same boiling water, and even let the meals "cook" for longer; still, each one had crunchy bits. No bueno.

Crunchy, but not in a good way.

Pros

We didn't starve; all of the meals were filling.
The meals didn't weigh much to pack. Not unique to Peak Though, so this is a reach.

Cons

Didn't rehydrate correctly when allowed to "cook" for 20 minutes with vigorously boiling water.
Expensive. $15/ea on average.

Rather than best-to-worst, I'll rank worst-to-best this time:

Beef Pasta Marinara - The meat in this one didn't rehydrate quite right, but more than that, the flavor was not very good. Add to that the sky-high fat content, and this one was a flop.
Sweet Pork & Rice - None of the black beans rehydrated correctly. Or, maybe 95% did not. Eating this meal was like eating through a field of land mines. Or little rocks that could break your teeth. A bummer, since it was our favorite at home.
Venison Country Casserole - This mostly rehydrated OK, but it didn't have much flavor. It was filling though, so not a complete failure.
Chicken Pesto Pasta - This was the best "we all ate it" meal on the trip. The chicken didn't rehydrate 100% correctly, but overall, it was the closest to "right," of the bunch; with one exception.
Butternut Dal Bhat - This was the best meal, but only if you like Indian food. @mrs.turbodb does, and she was the only one that ate this meal. She reported that it had great flavor and completely rehydrated.

That was entirely different than the experience we expected, and I have to say that I'm quite disappointed with the Peak Refuel meal situation. We'll be trying something else, next time.