Tramping Food: Nongshim Udon Soup

 ...prepacked Udon for tramping meals...

Here is another potential meal idea for when you are out on a outdoor adventure. These are the Nongshim brand prepackaged Udon Noodle Soup meals. 

Nongshim Udon Noodle Soup

There are a multitude of pre packaged meal options available in Asian food stores and this is a good example. It contains everything you need to make a decent noodle meal with the simple addition of boiling hot water. 

A look at the Udon pack:

The Nongshim Udon soup is a self contained meal wrapped into one package. Inside the package you will find :

Udon noodle pack

Liquid soup mix

Dried flakes pack

A plastic serving dish

Udon noodles are pre-cooked so they just need a short boil (2 minutes is sufficient) or a longer soak (5-10 depending on brand) in boiling water to be ready to eat.  Adding the soup mix and dried ingredients package brings the flavor. 

Front of the Nongshim Udon Soup packet

Nongshim sounds Japanese but it is actually a Korean company and this pack is produced in Korea. Korean people eat a number of dishes that are similar to Japanese food due to their interactions over centuries past. They make some good food including snacks, Ramen, Udon and packaged all in one meals. 

Nongshim include a liquid soup mix and dried flavor pack

Most people know what Udon are but if you are new to them they are thick wheat noodles about the size of a pencil around. They are soft and often come as part of a thin soup (like a consume) with vegetables added to it for flavor. Common vegetables used are onions, mushrooms, carrot and radish.

...best cooked and eaten from the pot...

These Udon packs are perfect as they are but if you wanted to make them a bit tastier and more nutritious you can add items to them. Off the top of my head I would think about adding cooked meat or fish, cheese, fresh and dried vegetables and condiments like garlic, ginger, soya sauce, vinegar, pepper and chilli sauce. A small packet/spoon of Miso paste will also make for tastier noodles. 

Udon Soup pack and cooked soup

I always added a small measure of Soya Sauce when I am eating these Udon and a small shake of S&B brand chilli powder. One of those small soya sauce fish you get with a sushi meal is enough for a single bowl of Udon. Add soya to taste but just remember soya sauce is very salty so I would taste it as I went. 

...a small fish of soya sauce is a good additive...

Anyone who is a fan of Ramen or Udon will know what S&B powder is...it is an essential addition to both these noodle dishes. S&B is a Japanese brand of powder specially manufactured for soups. It has a mix of ground chilli, garlic, seaweed and other herbs and spices meant to improve the flavor of your soup. A good Ramen shop will have S&B powder readily to hand for their customers. 

S&B brand chilli powder for noodle dishes

You can buy your own S&B at most Asian food stores have a look in the section for Japanese food or the sauces section. I brought mine from the Japan Mart in Riccarton Mall. Decant it into a small bag as the bottles are glass and quite heavy. 

Dont add too much as it is a bit spicy...just a pinch on top is good!

...just a dash of S&B enhances the flavor...

Nongshim include a plastic tray for mixing your Udon in but I would tend to leave this at home. It is just extra rubbish to haul around for the rest of your tramp.  I just put all the packets into a sandwich sized Ziploc bag and cook it in my cook pot. Udon is much better eaten from a bowl or pot. 

Try the Nongshim Udon Soup out for yourself!

You are going to need either a fork or chopsticks to eat the noodles. 

Where can I find these?

You can find these noodles at good Asia supermarkets and shops selling Asian and Japanese food items. I brought some from the Japan Mart at Hornby Mall but I have also seen them at Kosco Shirley, Ken's Mart on Colombo Street and at V-Mart in the Bush Inn Centre. 

Kosco Asian Supermarket in Shirley, Christchurch 

I love noodles and this pack is a pretty good riff on a bowl of Udon. With a few ingredients added they make an excellent lunch or dinner meal and they are tasty and filling. Keep an eye out for them the next time you are in a good Asian Supermarket. 

You Tube: Nongshim Udon Soup

The great dehy crisis of '23...

 Where have all the Backcountry meals gone?

If you are out tramping, biking, kayaking or doing some other outdoor pursuit you are probably eating Backcountry Cuisine dehydrated meals at least some of the time. You might have noticed that they seem to be a bit scarce in your local outdoor retail stores...there is a reason for this.

Classic Backcountry Cuisine meal...Cooked Breakfast

Back in November 2022 one of the large machines Backcountry Cuisine use to dehydrate ingredients went out of service. This has seriously slowed production rates. As a result there has been a shortage of backcountry meals in most of the local stores. I recently visited the Hunting and Fishing store at Tower Junction here in Christchurch and they had NO Backcountry meals at all. Like zero...not even the Vegan meals most people never buy. 

Dehydrator at Backcountry Cuisine in Invercargill

Hopefully the shortages do not last for too long because love them or hate them Backcountry Cuisine is the number one freeze dried meal brand here. Losing them from the market would be a huge problem for anyone who uses freeze dried meals. You might have to do what the old timers did and eat real foods like sausages, steak and bacon with mashed spud, rice or cous cous.

 My God how primitive!!! 

Is this your future without Backcountry meals?

Real Meals, Radix and boutique food companies are making inroads into the freeze dry meal market but they have neither the range of meals nor the production ability to totally replace Backcountry Cuisine. As yet we cannot get any of the big international brands like Mountain House here. 

Real Meals...not as large as Backcountry cuisine

If you live in Christchurch and need to buy some Backcountry meals you should go have a look at the  Hunting & Fishing store in Rangiora. I was there in the weekend and they had ample supplies of both the small and regular sized meals. They also have plenty of the bags of mixed vegetables, dried meat and mashed potato. 

Small sized BBC meals at Rangiora Hunting & Fishing

 Either they had a stash of meals or they just don't get the volume of traffic that the Christchurch store receives. BTW: the Rangiora Hunting & Fishing has a great range of items in store...it is just about as big as the flagship Tower Junction store. 

They also sell Real Meals, O-Meals and Outdoor gourmet meals

Anyway...hopefully Backcountry Cuisine will soon rectify the problem and be back up to full time production once again. 

A look at the Go Native 24 hour ration packs

Food options for backcountry adventures 

One of the items I received for Christmas this year was a 24 ration pack from the company Go Native. It is a complete one day ration with all of the items you would need to sustain you for a 24 hour period. 

Looking at the Go Native 24 hour ration

Go Native is based near Wellington and they produce a range of food items for the commercial market as well as contract work for government agencies like the Ministry of Defense, DOC, Emergency Services and SAR. Go Native produce the ration packs used by the NZ Defense Forces as well as manufacturing items contained in Australian/Singaporean and Malaysian military rations. 

Go Native 24 hour ration and side dish pack

Contents of the Chicken Italiano 24 hour ration

The packs have food items for breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as a couple of snacks, drink kits and salt/pepper. There are three versions of the ration pack available and the only item which changes is the entrée pack and accompanying side dish. Varieties include Chicken Italiano, Beef Casserole and Vegetarian Curry. 

Breakfast/lunch/dinner and snacks in the Go Native pack

Here is a breakdown of the contents of one of the rations:

• Breakfast: Natural Muesli with Milk Powder, Jed's Coffee, Creamer and Sugar
• Lunch: Tuna on Cream Crackers
• Dinner: Chicken Italiano Casserole served with Potato, Salt, Pepper, Tea, Creamer and Sugar
• Snacks: Jack Links Steak Bar, Go Native Fruit Bar

All of the items are inside a heavy duty plastic bag with a tear seal and Ziploc closure at the top. This makes the ration waterproof and able to be resealed to keep the contents in one place. Once empty the bag would make an excellent rubbish bag. 

Preparing to lay out the contents of the Go Native pack

There is a cardboard insert inside the main bag. If you take it out it has information on both the outside and inside about the ration. On the outside is a photo of the contents of the pack showing all of the items contain within the package. 

Tear tab and Ziplock at the top of the Go Native bag

The inside of the card has a bit of information about the company, a nutritional breakdown of the contents and cooking instructions. There is information about the Go Native Website where you can find additional information and an online store where items can be purchased. 

Information on the cardboard insert, Go Native ration

There are also a couple of Sudoku puzzles and a general knowledge quiz to give you something to do in camp. It is a useful and thoughtful use of what would otherwise be a blank space.

Quiz and Sudoku card in Go Native ration

Here I have broken down the ration into three meals...the mains are muesli with dried fruit for breakfast, crackers with tuna for lunch and a retort pouch of entrée food and a side dish as the main. 

Go Native 24 hour ration laid out

Dinner is a retort pouch of food and a side + tea with sugar/creamer

Breakfast is muesli with fruit, a Jed's coffee pack and sugar

You can heat the dinner meal in a number of ways...boil in the retort bag, bury in hot sand, using a FRH (or Flameless Ration Heater) or tipping into a pot and simmering. An FRH is a bag with a pouch of chemicals...when you add water it starts to react and heats the meal through thermo-chemical action. Personally I would boil these in the bag and just eat them straight from the bag. 

..my US pattern Cups Canteen I have owned for 37 years...

One method of heating the entrée in hot water

...or fold the entrée bag into your pot sideways...

Go Native sell most of the contents of these rations as individual items and you can buy the muesli, fruit bars, entrée packs and rice/mashed potato. They are readily available in outdoor stores across the country...I have seen a good selection of these in items in Hunting and Fishing, Bivouac Outdoors and Macpac. I have used the rice and potato before and both are good. 

Holding one of the Go Native side dishes

There are a range of other entrees available in store and online including the following:

Spaghetti Bolognese

Chicken Italiano

Beef Casserole

Beef Ragu

Chicken and Chickpea Curry

Chilli Con Carne

Butter Chicken

Vegetable Curry

You could easily vary the menus you carry by swopping out the entrée from an existing 24 ration. 

Go Native Spaghetti Bolognese entrée

Go Native instant potato pack

Calorie count for these rations is 2400-2600 which is the minimum to keep a person going for a full day. Of course you could supplement these packs with additional items if desired. I would be inclined to add a powdered drink sachet, chocolate, more sugar and a couple of extra snacks. This would take the ration up over 3000 calories. 

Al the contents of the Go Native 24 hour meal pack

You would want to be careful about how much you added as the pack already weighs 690 gms. A good weight to calorie count is important and you should be aiming for around 700 gms/ 2800+ calories  per day. 

Go Native meal packs are a great option

These rations would be excellent for an overnight trip as they are or as a part of a wider menu for a multiday trip. With only three different options food fatigue would soon set in and they are quite expensive at $35 per pack. My homemade rations come out at around $25-$30 so this is not an outrageous price. 

Worth a try in my opinion and I will be taking this one out sometime in the next couple of months so look for a review at that time. 

YouTube: Go Native 24 Hour Food Pack

Using a sold fuel stove...

Alternate outdoor cooking tools...solid fuel cubes! 

Over the Christmas holidays I tried an experiment cooking some tramping food over solid fuel tablets. Solid fuel tablets are wax coated cubes of petrochemicals called Hexamine which will burn for 3-5 minutes when lit. They have a long history and have been a mainstay of military ration cooking since the late 1890's. 

My YouTube vlog about using solid fuel tablets

The kit I was using for this experiment was a Coghlan's Emergency Stove and some square Esbit fuel tablets. I used the Esbit tablets as I had an open packet which needed to be used but I did utilise the metal stove that comes with the Coghlans kit. Esbit is a German company and perhaps the best known solid fuel producer in the world. 

Coghlan's Emergency Stove

The Emergency Stove is very similar to the hexamine cookers I used when I was in the New Zealand Army back in the 1980-1990's. I bought this item from Hunting and Fishing here in Christchurch and it was less than $20 NZ Dollars for the stove and an accompanying bag of 24 fuel tablets. 

...$20 for a aluminium stove and fuel tablets...

The stove can be used from either side depending on the size of your cooking pot. With the spikes up it can accomodate a large cooking pot...spikes down is for smaller vessels. You just rest your cooking pot across the top and the fuel tabs heat it from below. 

You don't really need the stove...in the military we often just found two relatively flat stones/sticks and set the burning tablets in between them. Then you rest your pot on top...basic but it works! 

Coghlan's Emergency Stove and fuel tablets

I was using a US pattern Cups Canteen I used in the Army to cook in...this is one of the few items I still have from those days. It is probably 40+ years old now and the fact it still works is testament to the soundness of the original design. 

US pattern Cups Canteen...1 liter size

The Emergency Stove can fold down into a flat square with space inside to hold the fuel tablets which come with the kit. I would be inclined to carry this in the original box it comes in with a Ziploc plastic bag on the outside to keep it dry. The cubes will light when wet BUT it will be much more difficult. 

Coghlan's Stove folded up for travel

Im super hungry...so let's have a look at the stove in action!!!

Cooking using solid fuel:

When I was in the Army our main ration pack meals were tinned...either Corned Beef, Meat and Vegetable Stew or Spaghetti/Beans. We had cans of Spaghetti + Sausages and tins of Beans + Meatballs for breakfast. I thought I would cook one of these as I loved the smell of cooking food and hexamine cubes on a cold morning. It is one of my strongest memories from back in those days...

My meal...can of Spaghetti and Sausages

NZ Army Ration pack circa 1989

You have to clear away any leaf and forest clutter before lighting up your fuel cube. I cleared a patch of ground, securely grounded my stove and lit a fuel tablet. Light the tablets with match or lighter and I generally find leaning a burning match across the top corner works well. 

Fold out the stove and place on cleared ground

Cooker positioned and ready to go

Each cube will burn for approximately 5-7 minutes and this is generally sufficient to heat precooked foods. It takes about 5 minutes to boil a cups canteen of water. Obviously using more tablets will assist but these cubes are not the most efficient way to boil/cook. 

Cooked Spaghetti and still some fuel left

They are prone to blowing out in the wind and very heavy rain will also put them out. You need to try to find a protected spot or form some kind of barrier around the cooker for best results. If the cube burns out before you are finished just chuck another cube on the stove and continue. 

Time to tuck into them vittles....!!!

Using solid fuel has a number of pros and cons. 

While they are cheap, basically foolproof and relatively light they are also inefficient and give off highly noxious fumes. Not ideal inside a hut or tent. They will also put soot on the outside of your cooking pots which may be a problem. 

...Hexamine residue on my cups canteen...

One thing to consider is that there may eventually be a ban on Propane/Butane canisters which will make these a more environmentally friendly option. Solid fuel and Trangia style alcohol burners may once again become the main cooking method for outdoor enthusiasts. Just like they were back in the 1930-40's. 

...Gas canisters may one day be banned...

If you have never tried solid fuel before you should buy a stove and pack of tablets and give them a go. 

You Tube: Using a solid Fuel stove

My oldest tramping kit item: Kovea Backpacker stove

...a faithful friend over many years... 

Last weekend was Canterbury Anniversary and I spent three days in Nelson Lakes National Park on a base camp trip. I stayed at the motel and went for day walks about the park. I had planned something a bit grander but I am having problems with my ankle so this seemed like the better option. 

Making a coffee with my Kovea Backpacking stove

While I was visiting the Mt Robert carpark I utilised my oldest piece of tramping kit to boil water for a coffee. It was my Kovea Backpacker stove which I have now owned for 32 years!!!

In the shelter at the Mt Robert Carpark, Nelson Lakes NP

I thought we could have a look at this awesome bit of kit. 

In use for 32 years...

I don't have a lot of my old camping gear from back in the 1990's but one item I do still own is a Kovea Backpacker stove I brought way back in 1990. I have used this small stove on and off for the last 32 years and it has been on many adventures with me both in New Zealand and overseas.  

Kovea stove in use, Lakehead Hut in 2016

I originally brought this stove for use in the field when I was a Signaler in the New Zealand Army. Back in those days we were issued Hexamine cubes for heating our meals...Hexamine or 'hexie' is a cube of petrochemical based solid fuel.  Hexamine is a slow and inefficient cooking material and also very smoky which is less than tactical. 

Esbit cubes are a form of Hexamine

Most of us eventually brought a small butane gas stove to take out on field exercises. This meant you could cook faster and with less visible smoke and a medium sized gas canister would easily last you 4-5 days.

Just a side note...I still have vivid memories of the smell of Spaghetti and meatballs cooking over a hexamine cube...it smelt wonderful. It is one of the most powerful memories of that time in my life. 

Kovea Backpacker Stove

 I brought this stove from a outdoor equipment store that is long since closed. I cannot for the life of me remember its name but it was located opposite Ballentine's on Cashel Street. This was WAY before Macpac, Kathmandu, Torpedo Seven and their ilk. If anyone can remember the store drop a comment below...

Various medium sized gas canister brands

Post army I used it for camping and tramping trips intermittently for many years. When I got back into tramping properly in the early 2010's this was the stove I hauled out and used for every trip. I only relegated it to secondary use after I brought a new Titanium stove in 2016. 

Kovea Backpacker Stove: a quick look...

Here are some features and specifications of the Kovea Backpacker stove:

The stove comes in a small nylon bag and it can be folded into a flat shape to fit the bag. The pot support arms are articulated and fold back to rest above the gas regulator knob. Before use the arms must be opened and a gas canister screwed onto the bottom of the stove. 

The arms on the Kovea Backpacker stove fold

Brew time at the Mt Robert carpark

You must ensure the pot support arms are fixed in their grooves before balancing a pot on the stove...this is to stop them moving and spilling your contents. There are small notches the pot arms fit into and when engaged the stove is as stable as any stove of this type. 

Lunch at the Mt Robert carpark shelter

I was using my Toak's 1.3 liter cook pot with the stove...this pot is titanium so it is very light and robust. I can easily fit a 350 gm gas canister inside as well as the Kovea stove with my cup and ancillary gear on the top. All of this is carried inside a small blue nylon stuff sack. 

I was using my Toaks titanium cook pot

I was also using my Sea to Summit Delta mug on this occasion...I could just have made the coffee in my cook pot but you tend to burn your lips. Titanium conducts heat really well so it is always better to use a separate cup preferably made of plastic. 

Sea to Summit Delta mug in use

The stove folds down into a small nylon bag and if you fold it correctly you should have no problems fitting it back into the bag. You could leave the bag at home but it protects the stove and stops soot getting all through your other gear in your pack.. 

Kovea stove folded to be packed

Here are some additional photos of the stove in use over the years...

In the Blue-Grey River bed, Victoria Forest Park (2015)

On a day trip to Packhorse Hut, Banks Peninsula (2014)

Lunchtime at Anchorage Hut, Abel Tasman NP (2017)

Post dinner drinks at Packhorse Hut, Banks Peninsula (2016)

 Nina Hut, Lewis Pass National Reserve in 2015

Mid Robinson Hut, Victoria Forest Park (2015)

Up at East Hawdon Bivy in 2013

This is one of two Kovea stoves I currently own the other is a Kovea Moonwalker which is a remote canister stove. That is another lovely camping stove but I will leave discussion of that for some future post...

Look for future trips featuring the Backpacker stove

I really like my Kovea Backpacker stove and still pull it out of my gear storage and take it on trips from time to time. Its latest multiday outing was to the Abel Tasman Coastal Walk with my sister earlier this year. It doesn't get as much use as it once did as I currently own seven other backpacking stoves but I would never sell it or give it away...

You Tube: Kovea Backpacker Stove