Herbed Mushroom Risotto

A bit of Intro into Dried Foods

Dried meals are hard. At least I assume so given how many absolutely disgusting dried meals I've eaten at the end of a long hike. On my last long hike, every one of us grabbed a bunch of prepackaged, add boiling water, meals to eat at the end of our long day. The overall trip was forty miles and each day was a little under ten. After ten miles of hiking and tick battling, I thought anything would be delicious. I was wrong.

Five people and five days, making up about twenty five prepackaged meals... only one meal was pleasant to eat and only about four were fine. The rest ranged from "Oh god do I have to take another bite" to "just swallow and get it over with". To my omnivorous companions' surprise, the one edible meal was vegan. I did not luck out though, because it was my husband who'd picked it out.

Well with another forty mile hike incoming. I've decided to buy some of these meals myself, and take them to work with me prior to the hike.

The Risotto

So for my first meal: "Herbed Mushroom Risotto" by Good To-Go. I didn't have high hopes until I read the back:

You probably can't read it, but the ingredients

are:

Arborio Rice, Cremini Mushrooms, Onions, White Wine, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Nutritional Yeast, Garlic, Sweet Rice Flour, Walnuts, Basil, Kosher Salt, Thyme and Black Pepper.

Nutritional Yeast.

The magic of vegan foods. 

If it included nutritional yeast... I mean, I can't imagine a better dried food to flavor something. Except salt I suppose. I was a bit worried how low salt was on the package. Why dried meals don't salt their food is a mystery I'll never understand. We've been hiking for miles and sweating out buckets of salt and you still think it's bad? 

Anyways. I added almost boiling water and let it sit. I didn't follow the directions perfectly. It clearly says "Think about how big the universe is" and instead I went back to work. Which meant that when I first opened the package to try it, it was still very crunchy. This may also have had to do with my forgetting to look at when I started, but I definitely didn't think about the universe so I'm going with that.

I stirred it up and re-closed it. This time I gave a cursory thought to the universe before going back to work. I think stirring it part way through may be necessary for this meal because it did seem to clump up and isolate the inside from water. When I opened it again, it was mostly not crunchy.

Now that may look pretty gross but

IT WAS DELICIOUS!

As delicious as add boiling water and wait twenty minutes can get anyways.

The mushrooms were mushrooms. It didn't taste like basil or nutritional yeast but it was sorta creamy, salty and mostly just very mushroom-y in a very good way. I'd eat it for dinner if I knew how to cook it. Especially if I could undo the last bit of crunch.

Final Verdict

Herbed Mushroom Risotto is actually Good To-Go. Probably a safe bet to take on a hike without trying. Unless you don't like mushrooms, in which case avoid this like the plague.