New MRE entrees coming soon

  • Published
  • By Donna Miles
  • American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON (AFPN) --  Servicemembers in the field about to grab a Meal, Ready to Eat combat ration might want to choose the Jamaican pork chop, the pasta with alfredo sauce or the beef with mushrooms.

These entrees will soon be gone from the MRE inventory, and replaced by new dishes that food technologists at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center at Natick, Mass., said will be a bigger hit with servicemembers.

New this year to the MRE menu board are pot roast with vegetables, barbecue pork ribs and vegetable manicotti. New side dishes are hearty New England clam chowder and a carbohydrate-fortified applesauce.

Servicemembers with a sweet tooth will soon be able to bite into two new cookies: a vanilla waffle sandwich and a chocolate mint. They can also enjoy peanut butter and crispy versions of M&M candies, and almond poppy seed and pumpkin pound cakes.

The changes are designed to maintain variety while keeping pace with warfighters' taste preferences, said Janice Rosado, a food technologist for the Department of Defense combat feeding program at the center.

"People like what's new, and we get a lot of requests for more ethnic foods and for vegetarian meals," she said.

In recent years, new MRE entrees have reflected those preferences, with several Italian, Mexican and Oriental selections offered. New in 2004 will be an entrée Rosado said she is convinced will be a big hit: Cajun rice with sausage. In addition, four of the 24 MRE entrees are meatless, she said.

That does not mean that some of the perennial favorites, like spaghetti and beef stew, are going to go by the wayside, Rosado said. Both have remained on the MRE menu list since the pouched combat rations were first widely introduced in the early 1980s.

"We try to keep a combination of items that remain popular along with new items that keep the selection interesting," she said.

MREs undergo intensive shelf-life testing. Test items that do not survive several weeks of storage at 125 degrees are automatically pulled from consideration, Rosado said. Besides scorching heat and frigid cold, center testers expose potential MREs to impact tests to ensure they do not break open when airdropped and nutrition tests to make sure they meet prescribed requirements.

But no matter how well MRE items perform in these tests, Rosado said they never enter the military inventory until they survive one of the toughest tests of all: the troop taste test. Food scientists take all potential new MRE selections to the field, where warfighters conducting military exercises get the final say in whether they will make the cut.

Based on successful field tests, Rosado said center officials plan to introduce three new entrees next year: Cajun rice with sausage, a veggie griller in barbecue sauce, and a jalapeño-laced Mexican macaroni and cheese.

Also new in 2004 will be a Kreamsicle cookie that tastes just like the ice cream bar, carrot cake (without the cream-cheese icing) and red-hot candies.

And because MREs generally take about two-and-a-half years to develop, test and get approved, Rosado said she already knows what is on the radar screen as far out as 2005.

In 2005, she said to look for chicken fajitas with tortillas, a cheese omelet with vegetables, penne with spicy tomato sauce, and sloppy joes. Also to be introduced are hash browns with bacon and a blueberry-cherry cobbler that is full of fruit.

"It's a never-ending process here to develop and field the very best combat rations possible," Rosado said. "We listen closely to what the warfighters tell us they want, and we do our best to give it to them."