Meals that only need boiling water

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OneStrike255@reddit

Huel. They have hot and savory options.

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How about no water...we put very hot stew in or short fat thermos and just eat from them it all day long on day hunts in Alaska. You make up stew any time before and freeze, then super heat before putting into thermos. That goes into our wool sitting pad to add insulation. You would only use on 1 day hunt... and carry a freeze dried snacks. Russian stew is best as no water is used in making! Very rich... great hot or warm and even cold.

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pumpkinbeerman@reddit

Hey! This is exactly how I prepare my meals when camping/hiking. Boil the appropriate water, put it in my thermos, seal up, pop it in the backpack. Then I can eat one meal and get the second one heating up.

I love the backpacking chef for recipes, freeze dried is better quality/nutrition, but we have a little $120 dehydrator that has paid for itself jn just camping meals from this website.

https://www.backpackingchef.com/

Best of luck, every recipe Ive had from this site has been an absolute banger. Big props to his dehydrated chili and his dehydrated breakfast sausage recipe. The pasta dishes are killer as well!

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Ill-Village-699@reddit

i've noticed there's an almost complete overlap between hiking and prepping meals

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NorthernPrepz@reddit

This is a great site, thank you for aharing!

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OptimisticDoomCat@reddit

Look into dehydrated vegetables, soup stock cubes, and Asian rice noodles (especially thin Vietnamese ones that cooks when you pour hot water on it.

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ShidOnABrick@reddit

Basically crock pot recipes lol

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Thoughtful_giant13@reddit

Could you prep some meals that will then work well with hot water added - like cous cous, quinoa, noodles or thick minestrone soup - you can fill the flask with and then top up with boiling water to ‘wake it up’?

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biznessmen@reddit (OP)

Yes, need to explore that. Like soup/stew concentrate

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Upset_Assumption9610@reddit

Ramen, Instant potatoes, tea, microwave pasta, freeze dried anything if that's an economically and palette viable option...

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NoHuckleberry2543@reddit

Instant oatmeal can be nice too. Along with hot coco, and powdered drinks like hot apple.

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shikkonin@reddit

microwave pasta

Or regular pasta, rice..

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enolaholmes23@reddit

I love this kind of dried tofu. It rehydrates in about 20 minutes of boiling. The texture is way better than fresh tofu, imo. More like chicken skin. Best if you cook it with some spices or bouillon. Goes well with ramen.

https://www.sayweee.com/en/product/Dried-Soy-Bean-Curd/93953?trace_id=b6e564b3-1a41-4593-889f-6a92029d37ce

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suzaii@reddit

TVP is also delicious. Boil, soak, drain, season and add to soup or chili. Dried forms of tofu are super light weight as well.

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sparky-molly@reddit

Start w a Bubba thermos, the only brand I've found to really keep things hot or cold. Not affiliated, just a user of them

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GrandDaddyNegan@reddit

Oatmeal

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Danielbbq@reddit

After living in China I'd have to say, Big Mac with boiled water, KFC with boiled water, Pizza with boiled water, fried rice with boiled water, sweet and sour chicken with boiled water.

When I was there there was no ice water, only boiled water.

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estimated_otherone@reddit

Overnight osts?

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Cute-Consequence-184@reddit

Google meals in jars and watch the YouTube channel Wicked Prepper. Jara, the Wicked Prepper, has many recipes on her page and runs a Facebook group

Meals in jars is just what you described. You put water into the jar and either heat op up or pour the contents into a pot and fill with boiling water. Usually cooks in less than 10 minutes. Basically allowing everything to rehydrate and blend flavors.

While many use freeze-dried foods they buy or make, many just dehydrate their own items. The recipes are usually interchangeable.

They also have small, desk-sized, slow cookers. They are meant for office use and are generally a low draw device. Usually 1-1.5 quart. You fill them at home with hot food and plug them in when you get to work. Then keep everything at safe temperatures all day.

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churnopol@reddit

Freeze dried is an option, but pricey. I think you’ll like thermal cookers. You can start a recipe in the thermal cooker, and in a few hours your meal will be cooked. No electricity.

Grab some boxes of different Japanese curry and stew roux and you’ll have a lot of recipe choices. I especially liked chicken, baby carrots, and potatoes with white stew.

All you do is cook the food in the inner stainless pot for ten minutes and then put it in the thermal cooker. It’ll finish cooking in like 3 hours and be piping hot when you’re ready for lunch break.

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Girafferage@reddit

Hit up REI. Backpacking meals are almost all dehydrated. Peak refuel is the goat for highest calories to water requirement. You can get 1080 or something calories with like half a cup of water in some meals. Good deal.

If you don't plan to use boiling water, it will still work, you just need to "cold soak". Backpackers do this too in order to save weight. Essentially you put the water in there 3-4 hours before you plan to eat it. Honestly you should probably do it right after you finish your current meal so it's at least close to ready when you want it.

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NopeRope13@reddit

Beans and rice

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Canukshmuk@reddit

I like this $1 meal recipe from City Prepper. I actually quite like it but add dehydrated vegetable pieces as well as a seasoning mix called magic sarap … which has a good bit of msg in it. Half a pack to a pint jar of the mix. Recipe link below.

I like this enough I use it as a side quite often. Base is rice and lentils.

https://cityprepping.com/blog/cooking/the-1-survival-meal-that-could-keep-you-alive/

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MaowMaowChow@reddit

Do you have reliable electricity? If you’re in an office you should get a mini crockpot. I have used this every day for the past two years and it is amazing for lunch!

https://a.co/d/0OfY27b

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susanrez@reddit

Look up Appalachian trail hikers or PCT hikers subs for great recipes that you can dehydrate in advance and then rehydrate in a thermos of hot water. This is exactly what they do when hiking.

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Foodforrealpeople@reddit

an easy one is make your own beef/bison only Pemmican and it creates a very nutrient rich broth. You can add a few dehydrated veggies and rice if you feel the need for fiber and sugar based calories

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ruerue66@reddit

Moutain house meals only require boiling water and they are really good

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Drawsblanket@reddit

I thought this was a dumb idea but apparently it’s a thing. Basically just rehydrate dehydrated foods

https://www.backpackingchef.com/

And

R/dehydrating

And look up meals in a jar

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PrisonerV@reddit

better to meal prep a stew or soup. Portion it out into containers and freeze. When you want to use it, heat it up in a pot and then add the (just below boiling) soup or stew to the thermos. It'll keep until it's time for lunch. Also much healthier will drive your coworkers crazy with the smell.

Cheap/poor man's lunch - Add a package of hot dogs and boiling water to the thermos. Now you got a sodium/fat packed lunch with almost zero effort. Bonus points for drinking the hotdog water. Coworkers will want to vomit.

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squidwardTalks@reddit

I would just get MREs when they're on sale. They have a heater in the kit. Lately you can get a case for around 45 dollars.

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EnvironmentalKey3858@reddit

Oh snap- where to buy?

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squidwardTalks@reddit

Epidemicproof.com also has great deals. "Ammo Can man" on Amazon is also a great seller. Just be aware buying off Amazon because some of the sellers are a little sketchy. You can learn a lot from /r/mres

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Azzarc@reddit

https://kingsurplus.com/u-s-military/11-25-mre-case-free-ship-a-b-combo-24-pack-2-cases-u-s-military-genuine-ready-to-eat-meals-case-a-and-b-30726

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EnvironmentalKey3858@reddit

Nice! Thanks fam

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fuzzytoenails@reddit

I went down this rabbit hole. Cooking in a thermos is a small scale version of thermal cooking. It's been used throughout history when cooking fuels are scarce. Try searching for the following: Thermal cooking Haybox cooking Wonder oven Thermos cooking There are a few book out there on the topic. But the gist of it is to bring whatever you're cooking to a boil and then put it into the insulated container and let it finish cooking with the trapped heat. Some of the marketing product videos from the Asian branch of Thermos have some excellent tutorials. They're not in English but it's easy to follow along to learn the techniques.

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OneQt314@reddit

Camping food but that's expensive.

I bet someone has recipes on how to make these tasty camping foods. Okay, mostly tasty.

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lm-hmk@reddit

Find a food you like. Put it in a dehydrator. See what happens. Avoid fatty things, as that won’t dry out well and can spoil. Try already-cooked chilis, pasta or rice dishes, hearty soups or stews. You control the nutrition, sodium, carbs, etc. Get a dehydrator from Marketplace or a thrift store for like twenty bucks (probably even way less). The only real expense after that (besides the food) is time, and some nickels on your energy bill. Store fully dried foods in vacuum-sealed bags (or suck all the air out of a ziploc with a straw).

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No_Character_5315@reddit

I know your answering op questions but they are also saying it's a back to office scenario really at that point just put heated left overs in a thermos lol

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lm-hmk@reddit

I’m answering this thread’s OP’s question; OOP question is rather silly, I agree. Every office I’ve worked in has had a fridge and a microwave.

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marinuss@reddit

Dehydrators don’t work well for this because they kind of “cook” stuff in a sense. Like you make beef jerky in a dehydrator you can’t just toss some water on some beef jerky and turn it back into a steak. You need a freeze dryer to make meals that come back to life adding water. Freeze dryers are not cheap and use a shit ton of electricity, unless you’re making a ton of stuff it’s probably cheaper just to buy like mountain house packets or similar and make those.

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lm-hmk@reddit

I’m talking about dehydrating already cooked food. It’s not the same as freeze drying. Freeze drying is prohibitively expensive. Dehydrating something that is already cooked is an effective way to preserve it so you can take your meal on your camping trip and not need refrigeration. I know it’s not the same, but I get a meal that tastes pretty okay, won’t spoil, isn’t super expensive, is lightweight, and doesn’t contain like 45% of my DV in salt. Obviously, YMMV.

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Hopeful_Ad_7719@reddit

Knorr meal packets. I hope you like salt. Lots of salt.

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WhereDidAllTheSnowGo@reddit

Google

DIY Backpacking freezer bag meals , otherwise known as FBC

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Dry_Barracuda2850@reddit

How are you going to store the food before hand? It sounds like this is just a meal prep issue for daily work so I'm not sure why you would want to do the extra work of dehydrating if the only goal is to have a hot meal you can take with you to work everyday.

Any soup or casserole or pasta leftover could be microwaved to very hot and added to a prewarmed thermos (using boiling water) and it should be warm still at lunch.

Any other leftover (that takes well to reheating) would probably work well too but might depend on how good the thermos is and how hot you can get it.

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Xsiah@reddit

Nothing is going to "stew" in warm water - it will soak.

You're kind of just describing cup noodles?

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Sleddoggamer@reddit

I remember quite a few types of grain that can cook that way i even know theres a speciality Asian dishes that can cook that way

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SantaCruzSoul@reddit

There are noodles in Asian cooking that have shorter cooking time vs Italian pasta. I use Soba (buckwheat) and I think it cooks in 4 minutes. I also believe rice noodles are quick cooking. I don’t think those are high protein and I don’t think they will cook as quickly as ramen. I have 0 experience with rice noodles but it’s on my list to try. Soba is normally a cold pasta dish. But I cook it and add a spoonful of Trader Joe’s Hosin sauce, green onions, chili oil and a few shrimp, if you were looking for suggestions.

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Drawsblanket@reddit

Thanks for keeping it a secret from op

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Sleddoggamer@reddit

They aren't anything special or anything that needs specific names for. Miso soup, cabbage soup, and I'm sure there's a good few egg and bullion-based recipes you can pull from

I believe you can also cook egg-based meals in a thermos, as well as meat based meals if you keep precooked meat handy. Thermos cooking used to be a worldwide trend and I just wanted to highlight there's a good chance the poster probably seen it in action at restaurants they've visited over the years, hence why they were thinking about it

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Sleddoggamer@reddit

I don't remember what they were. I was looking at recipes before my power went out

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scout_wild@reddit

Does your office have a microwave? You can cook up whatever the night before and bring it to work in a glass container.

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suckinonmytitties@reddit

Yes look up cold soak hiking meals- there’s lots of YouTube videos of ideas too

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Revolutionary-Half-3@reddit

There's quite a lot of dry foods that can do what you want, although palatability can suffer. Hikers cold soak a lot of different meals, although it takes much longer than if you used boiling water.

A thermos helps a lot, although even a perfect one will see the temperature drop from what it's doing to the food. Most dry foods that need to be simmered can be rehydrated this way.

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mediocre_remnants@reddit

You can put any hot food in an Thermos-style insulated bottle and it'll still be warm after 4-5 hours. It doesn't have to be dehydrated/freeze-dried food.

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OtherCartographer502@reddit

Get a dehydrator and dehydrate almost anything

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DEADFLY6@reddit

I will add a vacuum sealer for when you're done dehydrating. Yesterday, I ate 5 year old bananas. And 3 year old vegetable soup with smoked sausage. I bought the sausage a week ago though.

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ThrowingAbundance@reddit

I've used the thermos method to make oatmeal using whole oats, dried fruit, and nuts.

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boringxadult@reddit

Ramen with eggs

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Sleddoggamer@reddit

You can make some pastas, stews, chili's, congee, and naturally oatmeals in a thermos. Pretty sure you can also boil corn in one

Pretty sure grandma used to have a recipe book full of recipes exclusively for canteen and thermos cooking. I wish the books were still commonplace so I can list off the optimum way to do it and the best full meals instead of listing off ideas for you to google

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Fair_Refrigerator_98@reddit

Huel savoury

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le-quack@reddit

Search for "cold soaking" in ultralight and thru hiking sites and subs. While cold soaking is mostly around using cold water most of the recipes work/can be adapted to use hot water

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FishScrumptious@reddit

We do this all the time backpacking.

Often called "freezer bag cooking". Keep the thing insulated, and it takes about half an hour.

If you choose foods that don't need hot water, it's called cold soaking, and takes a couple hours.

You can do it will all kinds of things. I tend to dehydrate some of the meals I make at home and they work quite well.

Do some searches on backpacking subs, particularly in the ultralight areas. There's a learning curve about what works well and what doesn't.

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Easy_Olive1942@reddit

Ramen, miso soup

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dev1n@reddit

Cous cous

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funnysasquatch@reddit

Skip all of the dehydrated camping meals. They're too expensive for every day use. They are optimized for backpacking. And many backpackers avoid them because of their expense.

Meanwhile there are plenty of options in the supermarket and dollar stores and online.

Knorr sides, ramen noodles, instant soup, bullion cubes all meet your needs. There are many options with instant ramen. If you just want to go with the cheapest ramen, ditch the flavor packets. Get bullion cubes and add your own seasonings. There is a company Ramen Bae who makes toppings that you can add into your ramen. I really like them. I frequently make ramen for lunch.

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DuchessOfCelery@reddit

So all the office has is a hot water tap? No fridge, microwave, toaster oven, coffeemaker?

You don't have an insulated bag? Or can't buy a little electric lunch heater ($20-30 USD)?

Sorry, I know the questions sound blunt, just a little more info on your situation could give a lot more targeted ideas for you.

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maimauw867@reddit

In the office a basic water cooker will much better, easier, faster, unlimited water supply, why not use these?

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AlphaDisconnect@reddit

IRIS LIVING rice cooker. Rice. Okiyu. Have fun with it. Plus now you got an induction hot plate. For cold days. Or home. Probably comes with a cook book.

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stonerbbyyyy@reddit

look up “thermos meal ideas” aside from what’s already been mentioned i can’t really think of anything. but you might find some out of the box ideas.

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ec6412@reddit

You could just buy the 30day emergency food buckets. You see them on sale for about $100. Maybe 60 actual meals worth of calories. Variety of foods. Most won’t have meat at that price, but throw in precooked chicken or sausage or tuna with the hot water and you are good to go. Works out to maybe $2-3 a meal.

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mossconfig@reddit

There are electric lunch boxes? Perhaps experiment with rice and noodle stews. If you want "just add water" I think you'll be disappointed, but add water and cook might work better.

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David_C5@reddit

So.... what is the prepping part here? Like if you are out of power for a day or something? Then you heat water with a portable propane stove or something?

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ac7ss@reddit

They just though the people in this group would have ideas.

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David_C5@reddit

Yes, I have to know what he wants before I can give advice. If you have say a proper off grid system, or some stock, then it won't be a worry. It sounds like he's expecting 2-3 day power outages.

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lm-hmk@reddit

I make my own camping meals by dehydrating chili, homemade pad Thai, minestrone, and making a “thanksgiving dinner” by combining dehydrated turkey and vegetables, powdered potatoes, stuffing mix, and some turkey gravy powder.

Just add hot water and let stand until it seems right.

Dehydration changes the flavor of some of the meals, but not bad in a bad way, just different. This is especially true with the chili and less so with the pad Thai. Pad Thai has been my favorite, the flavors really came through. These are the only things I’ve tried so far.

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Eziekel13@reddit

If you have a dehydrator, you could try making Bachelor Chow from Futurama…

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Secret_Enthusiasm_21@reddit

240g lentils, 50g sesame, 2g salt, 50g carrots, 30g sunflower oil, 50g bell peppers, two chicken eggs, 100g spinach, 200g milk.

Enough to meet all amino acid, fatty acid, water- and fat-soluable vitamin, and mineral requirements of a 70kg adult male.

Tastes really good as normal soup (add 480g water), but you can also make flour out of the lentils and sesame, run everything through a blender, and bake it in an oven until its dry. Tastes kind of like dry carrot cake. Not bad, actually. And keeps at least a month in vacuumated bags in the fridge.

Now, the challenge would be to do adapt that to thermos-cooking. I would try just making the soup, and put it in the thermos as-is.

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Sleddoggamer@reddit

https://theboatgalley.com/split-pea-soup-in-a-thermos/

You thinking of stuff like this?

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Peyote-Rick@reddit

https://i.redd.it/otor5yhpveuf1.gif

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milikin-@reddit

Backpacking recipes like Andrew Skurkas might fit the bill? Not sure about protein levels, he is mostly concerned with just calories per oz. https://andrewskurka.com/section/food-nutrition/

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NefariousnessLast281@reddit

There’s a bunch of YouTube videos about this. Look up “just add water meals in a jar”.

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smsff2@reddit

I tried making soup in an insulated bottle a few times. Frankly, I switched to bowls of Pho soup from the dollar store—it’s much easier. Now, I just bring hot water in the insulated bottle along with some instant ramen. The best part is, you don’t have to wash the Thermos every single time.

Before switching to Pho soup, I used to make broccoli and leek soup from Knorr packets.

Before that, I tried making soup from scratch using tiny pieces of bologna and small pasta. The taste was fine, but real ingredients cool down the water too quickly. By the time I was ready to eat, it was already too cold.

Pho soup eventually became my main meal on the go. I used it for many years.

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TacTurtle@reddit

A pre-heated good quality 1qt thermos should do fine for cooking very thing pasta like clear rice noodles and shredded carrot / onion / cabbage

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TacTurtle@reddit

Haybox or thermos cooking is what you are thinking of.

Soups, stews, rice, porridge, or instant mashed potatoes and box stuffing.

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The_Malt_Monkey@reddit

Couscous, spices, raisins, dried soy protein (can pass as 'mince'), freeze dried vegetables or dehydrated veggies (i make thinly sliced dried summer squash).

Instant noodles, freeze dried veggies, dried soy protein.

Maybe instant polenta/grits?

Oats, dried fruit, cinnamon.

Instant mash potatoes with freeze dried veggies. Add condiments and have with crackers, or tinned foods/meat.

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6gunsammy@reddit

This sounds like cold soaking, although you can start with hot water. Look to the through hiker youtube videos. If you have a dehydrator, there are many recipes.

https://backcountryfoodie.com/cold-soaking-guide-for-stoveless-backpackers/

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7uckyranda77@reddit

Instant mashed potatoes+stove top stuffing+can of turkey flakes=hobo xmas