Ration packs to become five star [Archive] - Marine Corps

thedrifter

10-31-08, 08:01 AM

Chicken madras with spicy sauce and a pack of wet wipes will get our boys in a fighting mood
By Alan Hamilton

RATIONS and a pair of boots are the most important things for a fighting man. What today’s British soldier demands is boots that fit, and curry.

Troops returning from active service in Afghanistan and Iraq have been bellyaching about their 24-hour ration packs — dull, stodgy and essentially unchanged for 30 years. What they really want is what they would eat after five pints of lager at home.

Defence catering chiefs yesterday unveiled new dishes for sustaining a man in the field, which will be tested on 20,000 service men in the coming months. Their views will determine whether the British fighting machine runs in future on ethnic fuel, with chicken balti and chicken madras high on the new menu list.

Britain’s national dish, chicken tikka, has been included in some ration packs since 1988 and has proved popular. Other older staples like beef and dumplings, pork casserole and lamb stew are finding less and less favour with their consumers, because they are bored with them and because they are unlikely to eat them on a night out with the lads.

“Most fighting men are aged between 18 and 24 and their palates have become much more sophisticated since I joined up 31 years ago,” Major Andy Main of the Defence Catering Group said. He is from a fish-and-chips generation that knew little of biriyani or boil-in-the-bag.

Military food experts say they want to make the ration packs healthier, but admit the scope for improvement is limited; there is no use giving a fighting man goat’s cheese.

“Each pack, which weighs two kilograms and must have a shelf life of three years, aims to get 4,000 calories into a man every day, twice the recommended amount for a sedentary civilian. The only way to do that in a compact pack is with plenty of sugar and fat. For them a hard day at the office means getting shot at; they burn it all off. If they didn’t, they’d get very fat very quickly,” Major Main said. Each day’s meal pack costs the MoD £6.

The one item which soldiers throw away more than any other is military treacle pudding, which even they find resembles an over-sweet house brick. Nor are they fond of the lemon crystals for making a flavoured drink. Other new items being tested are instant porridge, spotted dick, isotonic drinks of the Red Bull type, and Yorkie bars, the staple diet of truck drivers whose wrapping bears the macho slogan, “Not for girls”. The military version will say, “Not for civvies”. Research has shown that including a branded item familiar at home is a significant morale booster. Another supermarket regular, Princes tuna in mayonnaise, is also under consideration.

One advance in rations in recent years has been the virtual abandonment of tins in favour of sealed plastic pouches. You “boil in the bag” in your mess tin heated with paraffin tablets, and use the still-fresh cooking water for your brew-up. If a soldier fell, it was found, his tinned dinner stashed around his body could cause him significant injury.

What a serviceman eats while on active operations raises a delicate but vital question. The current ration pack is supposed to promote evacuation only once every three days, a vital consideration in hostile territory. What the effects of curry will be remains an uncharted area.

“We have tried to formulate the curries so that they have all the flavour without too much of the spice. We are including a sachet of tabasco-style pepper sauce for the guys who know they can handle a hot one,” Major Main said.

In their foxholes in a Suffolk wood near RAF Honington, members of the RAF Regiment were cooking up the new dishes and offering them to reporters. They seemed to win approval.

Senior Aircraftman Dave O’Brien is a curry fan, and gave the thumbs up to the chicken madras with spiced pilau rice. “It doesn’t look like a restaurant curry but it tastes pretty close. The pepper sauce added a bit of taste, unlike the old rations, which all tasted the same.” Sharing his foxhole was SAC Shaun Irwin, who was almost convinced. “I wouldn’t normally eat curries at home; I’m a burger-and- chips man. But I can see myself eating these.”

The pair apologised for the spotted dick with separately bagged custard. “Could have done with a bit more cooking — maybe another three minutes,” they agreed.

Military Catering provides kosher, Sikh, halal and vegetarian ration packs, but none was available yesterday.

In another foxhole Corporal Gareth Saunders said of the new food: “To get people to join up you’ve got to tempt them; it’s quite cushy out in Civvy Street these days.”

Each ration contains a small packet of paper tissues, but what the lads really wanted were wet wipes, to clean themselves up after dinner. Blimey, our boys aren’t going that cushy, are they?

HAMILTON’S FIVE-STAR TASTE TEST

3 stars: Chicken balti. Indian restaurant quality, with plenty of chicken chunks, spiced up with the hot pepper sauce and with a pleasant lemony tang, leaving only the faintest aftertaste of cardboard.

3 stars: Chicken madras. Good and mildly spicy with generous amounts of meat and an authentic tasting sauce. Accompanied by mildly spiced firm pilau rice, and with no unpleasant after taste.

2 stars: Improved bacon and beans. An old stalwart now made with better quality bacon which you can actually taste without overly fatty undertones. But the combination with beans makes it extremely salty.

1 star: Improved burger and beans. Not improved much. The alleged burger was an indeterminate minced lump, mushy and indistinguishable from cheap sausage meat. Definitely unappetising.

1 star: Spotted dick. A tricky one, as the chef admitted it should have been cooked longer. The block of fruit was dense but not overly sweet, while the custard was pale, thin and watery. Not the greatest-morale booster after a day being shot at.

Ellie