Firepot is a British company of backpacking meals. REI is where we sourced ours, to give them a review. Firepot will ship to the US, and they have the directions on this page (scroll to the bottom).
REI carries 7 of the meals. Firepot meals are dehydrated, rather than freeze-dried, and are cooked in large batches, then dehydrated, rather than use freeze-dried components. An interesting concept, and you notice it when you open the bag up. It looks similar to how home dehydrated food does.
We picked up the Orzo Pasta Bolognese to review.
The bags that REI carries are the extra large (2-person) servings. On Firepot’s website they also sell a smaller bag for 1 person. As well, they carry compostable bags, REI carries the traditional mylar lined bags, for long term storage. The meals cost $13.50 on REI, which are about 55 cents more than direct, but you don’t pay shipping from REI – nor do you have to import it.
The directions are simple, and the same as most freeze-dried meals are: Rip open, find desiccant packet and toss, add in boiling water, stir, seal and let sit for 15 minutes. Now then, as I said above, these meals are dehydrated, not freeze-dried. The end dish of food feels like real food. And it tastes like it as well. The pouch is marked on the side with numbers. It tells you on the back which number to fold the pouch over, to crease, if you don’t have a measuring cup. Nice feature.
The sodium is so reasonable you can eat the whole bag (it’s 420 mg per serving), and is 470 calories per serving (which is higher than many freeze-dried meals). The seasoning is good – Star Anise is neat touch. It’s not bland American food.
Based on this meal, I will be picking up more of the meals to try out in the future. I would definitely eat this meal again, even at home.
~Sarah