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Mountain House on Sale!How to Heat a MRE Entree – Part 3
MREs are great! The MRE flameless heaters are great. There is no denying that, but how do you heat up your MRE without one? One of the most common ways, besides the MRE flameless heater, is to boil some water and put your pouch in the boiling water.
What if you are without a pot, heat and water? For the answer I went to the best source I knew: a retired Lt. Col in the US Army. Here are just a few of the ideas he gave me.
Option 1. Your car is one of the best heat sources for your MREs. Just lay your MRE pouch on the intake manifold after driving around for a little bit. Lay the pouch flat and wait about 5-8 minutes, turn over for even heating.
Option 2. When the sun is out for long periods of time dashboards are wonderful for heating them up.
Option 3. In the winter you can put your MRE pouch on the defrost vents of your dashboard and crank up the heat. Added bonus is you stay warm all the while heating up your dinner.
Option 4. If you are in a desert area you can put the MRE pouches in about one inch deep of sand. You can simply leave the pouch out on a hot blacktop road, or any surface that is hot. The roof of your home gets pretty warm at times too!
Option 5. You can make a solar oven out of tin foil. Make a box inside another box and line it with foil. Put your MRE pouch inside the box and wait for the sun to reflect its heat inwards. If that is to much work for you, you can empty your MRE contents on a piece of foil and have the sun heat up your food that way. Think tinfoil dinners.
The Lieutenant mentioned that you can use the exhaust pipe of your car though I wouldn’t recommended it. You can easily burn yourself and sometimes the metal get too hot for the pouches and melt or blow up.
If all of this fails, you can simply just eat the MRE as is. You don’t have to heat up MREs but they sure taste better when you do!
Got a creative way to heat up your MREs?
Leave us comments and suggestions!
If you’re hiking for a ways, just take the MRE out of the cardboard sleeve and slide the pouch under your shirt against your belly. Your body heat will make it pretty close to 98.5 F.
June 20th, 2011 at 4:52 amNo water, use urine. No pot, use the bark from a tree. No matches, use a magnifying glass, flint & steel or rub two sticks together. You can make a magnifier from two pieces of glass or clear plastic, just place some liquid between them as you used to do with slides in a biology class. As long as you keep the level of the flame below the level of the liquid in the bark, the bark won’t burn as the liquid absorbs the heat. Once it reaches a boil or is decently hot to the touch, place the MRE in the liquid. This will absorb heat from the liquid further reducing the chance of the bark burning.
June 20th, 2011 at 7:12 amGreat blog. Lots of helpful info. Keep them coming.
June 20th, 2011 at 4:24 pmPlease fix the spelling errors!
When I see the spelling errors, I think there’s a general carelessness in the writing. That in turn makes me question the content of the writing.
1. Leave your dinner on the dashboard so when your hungry your food is already warm for you. // This should read when you’re hungry… you’re is short for “you are” so after correction this means when you are hungry…
2. If you are in a dessert type area you can bury your MRE pouches about one inch deep in the sand. // A dessert is the sweet treat after a meal. A desert is a place with little precipitation.
3. If that is to much work for you, you can empty your MRE contents on a piece of foil and have the sun heat up your food that way. // The sentence should start out “If that is too much work for you…”
June 20th, 2011 at 10:32 pmIf this were an english or spelling class, then spelling would be important. However, this is a survival/emergency preparedness site so who cares so much about spelling? Can’t stand people who have to be so critical of things that don’t really matter.
The content was helpful thank you!
June 20th, 2011 at 11:47 pmCAN MRE BE HEATED IN MICROWAVE AT HOME OR IN AN RV – GOOD TRAVELING FOOD…. ???
CAN MRE BE HEATED ON TOP OF A PROPANE BBQ WHILE GRILLING BURGERS OR HOT DOGS..A PASTA MRE WOULD COMPLIMENT THE BURGER, ETC..???
June 21st, 2011 at 12:02 am@Genny,
June 21st, 2011 at 5:01 amNot microwavable in the pouch. Transfer the contents to a microwavable container.
The thing with MRE’s you don’t need to heat them.You can eat a MRE right out of the pouch.So if you need to eat and you don’t have a fire to boil the water,just open the pouch and eat.
June 23rd, 2011 at 3:36 pmI have been in a situation where it is so wet and windy,making a fire was not going to happen.I was in my hunting blinde in a heavy rain,45 mph winds,and 5 miles away from my truck.Fun times
Good stuff on heating MREs. Yes, I would eat one cold out of the bag if necessary. Spelling drives me —- as well. People have become lazy/dependent on spell checkers, which are dumb. If the word printed is phonetically correct, it’s acceptable these days, eh?
July 3rd, 2011 at 1:30 amThe MRE was introduced to us in Viet Nam in 1968 or 1969. We quickly found that they really do need to be re-hydrated, but can be “heated” by placing it next to your skin. So, we would add water, roll the top down and tuck it inside of our t-shirt about 45 minutes before chow time. If we were in a secure area we would pour in hot water and have eats in 10 minutes.
July 27th, 2011 at 4:16 pmI haven’t tried the new generation yet.
My uncle used to tell of a 1930′s vintage touring car that had a metal container [under the hood] with an exhaust pipe extension running through it. The parts of dinner that needed heating were placed in the box [it had a lid] and the exhaust pipe valve was turned to supply heat to the box about an hour before dinner. His box was fitted to hold quart Mason jars. He cautioned that lids had to be slightly loosened to avoid explosions, as the food could easily exceed the boiling point.
July 27th, 2011 at 4:24 pmRick … Spelling DOES matter. So does grammar, punctuation and composition. If you don’t communicate clearly, readers can make mistakes that may be costly in unexpected ways. There’s no excuse for ANY American to abuse the English language. Hopefully, you’ve somehow learned that lesson in the past two years.
May 4th, 2013 at 4:47 pm