The Best Emergency Food Kits

New York Times

02-04-2025

I'm an editor at Wirecutter covering emergency preparedness, and I strive to lead our readers toward what they need to survive a disaster scenario and away from what they don't. I approached these kits with heavy skepticism, and I found that they fill a distinct niche that boxed mac-and-cheese and dried ramen cannot.
For this guide: We taste-tested food from five leading emergency-food brands. Our testing panel consisted of five Wirecutter journalists. I was on the panel, along with two kitchen-gear and food experts, and two staffers with regular backpacking and camping experience who've relied on freeze-dried food in an outdoor-adventure context.
I spoke to several leading food-safety experts to understand how freeze-drying works and why freeze-dried food has such a long shelf life.
We consulted manufacturers at Mountain House to learn how they approached developing their meals.
I scouted my local Costco and several outdoor-adventure stores to see which emergency-food brands were available in my suburban community.
Like all Wirecutter journalists, I review and test products with complete editorial independence. I'm never made aware of any business implications of my editorial recommendations. Read more about our editorial standards.
In accordance with Wirecutter's standards and to avoid any conflict of interest, I don't own stock or have any other financial interest in a company or industry that I cover or am likely to cover.
If your region is prone to frequent natural disasters or storms that may cut off your access to a grocery store, or if you have to drive long distances to access your regular food supply, you may want to consider having an emergency-food kit on hand.
FEMA suggests having a food and water supply that's large enough to get your household through three days of uncertainty. One common strategy for building that small stockpile consists of simply keeping extras of the items you already like to eat and commonly use. This is a great idea (especially when it comes to having flavorful food that brings you comfort), but it's ideal only if you remember to use that food before it expires and replace it with fresh stock. And this technique also assumes you have access to your regular kitchen setup—and the power to run it.
Most everyday pantry standards, like Kraft Mac & Cheese and Hamburger Helper, won't have a shelf life nearly as long as that of freeze-dried meals. And even though experts say you can push the expiration dates a bit, these items often are not packaged for longevity. Cardboard boxes are vulnerable to moisture, plastic can leach chemicals into food over time, and cans can rust. Expired Zatarain's mixes aren't going to do you much good when things go sideways.
Retsef Levi, the faculty leader of the Food Supply Chain Analytics and Sensing Initiative at MIT, explained how the complexities of our food-supply chain can create commodity shortages—and how emergency food kits can help mitigate the effects of those shortages.
Upstream disruptions occur at or close to the source of food production—a farm experiencing a drought, for example—whereas last-mile disruptions represent local events that disrupt the food's arrival at your grocery store. In both cases, emergency food kits can prove to be essential.

Emergency food companies tend to cater to one of two versions of emergency preparedness: events where people are expected to shelter in place in their homes and those where people are expected to evacuate (and so will have limited access to resources).
The shelter-in-place food kits contain meals that come in bulk pouches with multiple servings. The instructions say to either cook the entire pouch at once or portion it out using a measuring cup. Preparation often requires mixing the dried food with water and simmering it on the stovetop for 10 to 20 minutes. These kits assume that you have access to basic cooking utensils, such as spoons, whisks, measuring cups, pots and pans, and a steady heat source, like a stove or campfire. And if the instructions say to cook the entire pouch at once, you'll need refrigeration to store the leftovers, especially if you've invested in a kit designed to last several days.
The distinct advantage of these types of kits, though, is the cost. Some come out to less than a dollar per serving, and they become even more economical if you buy a larger kit. They're far cheaper than the freeze-dried, backpacker-style pouches that fall into our second category.
Though freeze-dried pouches are more expensive, they offer some distinct advantages over the stovetop kits. Freeze-dried pouch meals rehydrate directly in the bag in about 10 minutes, using hot water only (or, in a pinch, any water really). So you're not tied to a stove, and you don't need to manage a kit of cooking utensils. A single fork or spoon will suffice. The pouches are lightweight and single-serve, so they don't take up much room. They're easy to stick in a go bag. And you don't have to worry about storing leftovers or open pouches of food mix.
We gave both kit styles a fair shake, especially because emergency preparedness looks different depending on the type of emergency you're preparing for. Once we settled on testing both styles, our testing came down to finding the contenders in each space.
Applying FEMA's three-day rule, I started searching for pre-built three-day meal kits. (Kits are often more economical than individual meals.) I stuck to just-add-water preparations and eliminated options that extended the prep beyond dump-and-stir. (Apologies to all of the emergency pancake mixes we didn't test.)
The next consideration was shelf life—the longer the better. Mountain House sets the standard here with its 30-year guarantee, but other kits boast 5-, 10-, and 25-year shelf lives. Since emergency food is often approached with a rainy-day mindset, I didn't consider anything with a shelf life of fewer than five years, to minimize turnover and food waste.
We started with brands that were easy to find in stores like Costco or in outdoor-supply stores, such as Cabela's or REI. These brands tended to be the big players in the market, and they are therefore widely available and competitively priced.
Given that these kits could be your only food source for several days, their nutritional breakdown is important. We looked at calories per day and protein content as our primary considerations. Per the FDA, adults need an estimated 1,600 to 3,000 calories per day, depending on factors like age, sex, and activity level. While many of these kits, including those designed for outdoor adventure, fall a bit short of those requirements, you can expect them to be substantial enough for temporary use. The kits we tested provided a range of 1,200 to 2,600 calories per day, with our picks landing in the middle to high end of that range.
We also took protein content into account, since protein helps you feel satiated and fuller for longer. While Mountain House falls slightly short on its total calorie count, it makes up for it in offering the best ratio of calories from protein, for an average of 75 grams of protein per day.
Astronomically long expiration dates may sound implausible, but they make sense when you think about food designed for, well, astronauts. Xulei Wu, Space Food Systems manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center, walked me through the basics of freeze-drying and explained why NASA relies on it to feed the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Freeze-drying uses less heat than canning or dehydrating, Wu said, and it's better at locking in heat-sensitive nutrients; this is important when everything an astronaut eats for months is freeze-dried.
She also explained how the method yields such a long shelf life. It has everything to do with water removal. 'We don't need to kill all the bacteria in the food. By just removing that water out of it, the bacteria cannot multiply,' she explained. 'Water activity for freeze-dried food is normally at 0.3 or below, and the water activity for bacteria to grow is 0.6. We have a very big gap there, so food safety is not a concern as long as the freeze-dried food is well-protected by the packaging. If the packaging is compromised, then humidity in the air can migrate into the food, raising water activity, allowing bacteria to grow,' Wu said.
Still, the packaging is not perfect. So I spoke with Leanne Blommaert, manager of research and development, Food Research at NSF, and an expert in food packaging and sensory evaluation, about how third-party labs tested commercially available emergency foods to establish their shelf lives. If a company wants to stamp a 30-year shelf life on its product, that shelf life has to be tested and proved, but it would be impractical to stretch the test over an actual 30-year period. The food is instead subjected to high temperatures in order to accelerate the bacterial growth. Under these conditions, tests can be done 7.5 times as quickly, so it would take four years in the lab to confirm a 30-year real-world shelf life.
Those shelf lives, Blommaert said, are calculated based on ideal storage conditions. And if you keep a bucket of meal pouches in your garage for 30 years, you can probably assume they will be subjected to less-than-ideal temperatures at least a handful of times throughout the years. So you should use your common sense when consuming the food, whether it's beyond its expiration date or not. If you see mold or smell something that's off, stop. ''When in doubt, throw it out,' is really a statement for a reason and it's to protect yourself,' Blommaert said. That's true in the lab, too, because scientists are not just looking for bacterial growth to assess the shelf life—they're also looking for high-quality flavor and texture. 'The end of shelf life is at whatever point you either get unacceptable flavor/texture or the microbial growth is high, whichever comes first,' she said. 'Food safety always needs to come first when we're talking about shelf life. But the product quality and the deterioration of that product quality is really important for the consumer as well.'

Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter
With the help of our kitchen team, I set up a tasting panel of five Wirecutter staffers. The panel included two kitchen editors (who tasted from a culinary point of view) and two journalists with backpacking and outdoor experience (who had a basic understanding and expectation of freeze-dried food from a hiker's perspective). I was also on the panel, and I approached this from an emergency-preparedness mindset. Jen Gushue/NYT Wirecutter
These kits tend to have similar meal options, so I sorted them into a few categories to taste similar meals side by side—stroganoffs, chicken rices, potato soups, biscuits and gravy, and the like. Ultimately, I settled on a mix of 17 meals across five brands that I thought were representative of both the individual kits and the brands as a whole. Jen Gushue/NYT Wirecutter Jen Gushue/NYT Wirecutter Jen Gushue/NYT Wirecutter Jen Gushue/NYT Wirecutter
Senior kitchen editor Marilyn Ong undertook the task of preparing all of the samples, so the rest of us could have a brand-concealed tasting experience. However, she did occasionally shout her cooking observations to us as we waited for samples on the other side of the wall. ('Who has a whisk in an emergency!?' 'Is this really what it's supposed to look like?') Marilyn followed the cooking instructions to the letter, to test their clarity. And at times she ignored her instincts to tweak the method in a way that may have yielded a better final product. Jen Gushue/NYT Wirecutter Jen Gushue/NYT Wirecutter Jen Gushue/NYT Wirecutter
While we tasted, every tester filled out an extensive survey on each meal, highlighting tasting notes, perceived heartiness, and whether they'd want to eat the meal by choice. As expected, the samples were not particularly gourmet, and most weren't ranked highly for flavor or texture. Yet we discovered a few surprising standouts that we'd reach for first—and we also found a few nausea-inducing options that we might turn to only in desperation. Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter
The next step in our testing is long-term storage. This testing is ongoing—and we'll be conducting it for a long, long time. Though we may never be able to assess the full 30-year shelf life of some of these meals, I plan to keep them in my basement for as long as possible and taste-test them as they age. I hope I have the luxury of reporting back with an update in 2055, and I'll surely update this story if I face an emergency in which I have to turn to these meals.
Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter
These meals are lightweight, portable, and easy to store and prepare. The brand's 30-year guarantee leads the category, and these meals compared well in our taste tests.
The meals in the Mountain House Just in Case 3 Day Meal Kit have an ultra-long shelf, and they're convenient, versatile, and have good-enough flavor. So this kit is the best option for most people. Though the meals had middling results in our taste test, the pouches are lightweight and take up very little storage space, so they're great for stashing in a go bag or on a shelf at home. This brand's meals have some of the longest shelf lives on the market, and they take less than 10 minutes to prepare with just water. Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter
Mountain House makes some bold claims, but it has a legacy. In 1974, The New York Times reported on the new freeze-dried foods that were piquing the interest of hikers and campers for their convenience and hardiness on trails. One of the brands covered in that story was Mountain House, which was spun off of its parent company's efforts to develop military rations for US soldiers during the Vietnam War. In his review of the food, the writer lamented the taste of Mountain House's shrimp cocktail, but he was impressed by the beef stroganoff. Fifty years later, Mountain House has discontinued its shrimp cocktail, yet the beef stroganoff is still going strong (with a recipe that's evolved over the years). We tasted it in our testing, and I have to agree with the newspaper's original assessment: 'excellent gravy and uniformly reconstituted noodles.'
Independent testing backs up an impressive guarantee. Drew Huebsch, director of research and development for Mountain House, suspected that those exact pouches assessed in 1974 might still be edible today. 'I ate beef stew that was 47 years old earlier this week,' he said in a video interview. Mountain House stands by its products with a 30-year taste guarantee, and it says that it has lab-tested the shelf life. 'We've used outside universities to run sensory tests on our product,' he said. 'The feedback that we get is that the quality level at the end of a 30-year shelf life is acceptable and where we want it to be.' But he said he's seen examples of the food lasting much longer if it's stored in the right environment—a cool, dry place free from major temperature fluctuations. Compare this guarantee with that of Peak Refuel, its direct competitor in the outdoor-adventure meal space (which has a five-year advertised shelf life), and you've got a clear winner. Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter
These meals are palatable, but they're not the best we tried. We haven't had the luxury of time to age-test the samples we received. But the freshly manufactured Mountain House meals performed admirably, drawing favorable comparisons from our testers to Hamburger Helper and Knorr Sides. The three-day kit comes with nine pouches of the brand's most popular meals, including chicken fried rice, beef stroganoff, and biscuits and gravy. Mountain House recently introduced a build-your-own kit tool, but choosing meals yourself will eliminate the small discount you get when buying in bulk. We advise going with the premade kit to save yourself some money (unless not having freeze-dried chicken tikka masala in your emergency kit is a real dealbreaker for you).
The pouches are quick to rehydrate. For most meals, you add boiling water, stir, and let them sit for 9 minutes, stirring halfway through. Our overall taste-test experience can best be summarized as '50 shades of beige.' However, Mountain House's fried rice stood out by having carrots that were actually orange and peas that were actually green, and the vegetables retained their flavors well. I was also very impressed by the texture of the chicken. I was expecting something spongy and processed, but I found substantial chunks that shredded like the fresh stuff.
The pouches are easy to store and transport. Paired with the freeze-dried contents, the pouches are flat and lightweight and therefore easy to pack in a go bag or store in the corner of a closet or pantry. Flaws but not dealbreakers
So, about that flavor. In our taste test, Mountain House sat firmly in the middle—not the best, but certainly not the worst. Some of the meals could have used a little more seasoning. And certain ingredients, like scrambled eggs and biscuit pieces, were challenging to rehydrate evenly alongside meat, rice, and vegetables.
The price isn't the best, either. We've seen the kit's price fluctuate significantly, depending on its sale status. It's currently available at Costco for $70, which breaks down to about $8 per meal. At its list price of $98, the cost jumps up to almost $11 per meal. If you're stocking up on one kit per family member, the upfront cost mounts quickly. But relative to competitors, Mountain House offers one of the more-affordable freeze-dried pouch options on the market. Mountain House's prices still can't beat those of budget options, including Augason Farms. But this brand does do better on pricing than the mother freeze-dried meals, like Peak Refuel, which will set you back almost $14 per meal.
The kit's packaging leaves something to be desired. Mountain House's three-day kit comes in a humble cardboard box, while other brands' meals are packed in heavy-duty plastic tubs. If it's exposed to any moisture, the cardboard could get soggy and eventually moldy. I plan to transfer my remaining pouches into a plastic bucket with a lid. But if you have any rodent intruders, you may even want to invest in a metal one. A persistent rat can chew through even the toughest plastic, and it will rip through a mylar pouch like it's nothing.
Meal flavors: biscuits and gravy, chicken fried rice, chicken and dumplings, beef stroganoff with noodles, granola with milk and blueberries
Average calories per day: 1,706
Average grams of protein per day: 75.33
Average cost per meal: $7.78

Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter
We understand if you're hesitant to plunk down a few hundred bucks to stock up on emergency food that you hope you'll never have to eat. Augason Farms 72-Hour 1-Person Emergency Food Supply Kit is less of an investment, and it impressed us in our taste test, but there's some trade-off in convenience. The meals are harder to prepare, and you'll need to store cooked leftovers or open pouches to stretch the kit over its intended three-day window. Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter
We genuinely enjoyed eating the meals. The Augason Farms kit was a surprise performer for me. I thought its selection of meals looked pretty boring—potato soup, chicken noodle soup, chicken-flavored rice, and oatmeal. Blah. What I hadn't taken into account was the comfort factor. This stuff tasted just like the canned soup of childhood, and it felt familiar, rich, and hearty. During an emergency situation, when you're staring down uncertainty, it might not be the best time to try out wild and wacky flavors that could disappoint, especially if you have young children in tow who may reject them. My co-tasters agreed. The Augason Farms kit won the top spot in our taste tests—despite also winning the award for being the most beige. While stovetop kits from ReadyWise Outdoor and Chef's Banquet were inconsistent in flavor and texture, the Augason Farms kit was reliably good, if a bit one-note in its focus on chicken-flavored bullion. Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter
Beyond flavor and comfort, the price is simply unbeatable. The 72-hour kit is currently available on Amazon for about $25. That's a run-don't-walk price. Even at its list price of $40, this was still the most affordable three-day kit we tested, providing a low barrier to entry into emergency food and a pretty solid 'why the hell not' purchase. This kit is designed to feed one person, so grab one per family member. Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter
It comes in a small, durable package. The heavy-duty plastic tub is about the size of a lunchbox, for easy, stackable storage. The company claims the tubs are watertight, but we haven't put that to the test. Flaws but not dealbreakers
You need a stove and basic cookware. A lot of Augason Farms' flaws are not unique to the brand but instead plague most stovetop meal kits. And the cooking method itself is one of its biggest drawbacks. Having access to a working stove is no guarantee in a disaster scenario. Power loss is a real possibility, so an electric stove will be out of commission right away. Natural gas supplies are often shut off in the aftermath of an earthquake or wildfires, so a gas stove is no guarantee either. To cook these meals, you will need a camp stove and a supply of fuel ready to go.
It's one (pretty good) flavor on repeat. The kit comes with three lunch/dinner meals, two of which are soups. And while we found this food to be the tastiest among all of our test samples, it didn't contain a lot of flavor or texture variety. So you can expect the same flavor on repeat for a few days, which may not be a big deal in a short-term survival scenario.
Portioning meals is a pain. The biggest challenge comes in the form of storing leftovers. You get one big pouch of each type of food, and the instructions say to cook the whole thing at once, which yields a very large batch. If you don't have refrigeration to store leftovers, you'll end up wasting food, and the kit won't last for the intended timeline. Even if you halve or quarter the recipe to cook a smaller portion, the pouches don't reseal, so storage is still an issue.
Meal flavors: creamy chicken-flavored rice, hearty vegetable chicken-flavored soup, creamy potato soup, maple brown sugar oatmeal, banana chips
Average calories per day: 2,667
Average grams of protein per day: 56
Average cost per meal: $2.48
Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter
Chef's Banquet makes a 30-day kit only, but we were intrigued by its availability at Costco. And buying a bigger supply is undoubtedly more economical—still, a 30-day kit is probably overkill. The kit will run you $190; which averages out to $6.33 a day, which is the cheapest price among our contenders. But it comes with some challenges, not the least of which is flavor. The meals we tasted performed rather poorly in our taste test and were memorable for the wrong reasons. What was supposed to be a buttery herb pasta was dry, bitter, and oddly sweet, and the campfire stew had enough sugar in it to almost read as a dessert. While the pouches are resealable, and the instructions explain how to prepare individual portions, the bags contain multiple servings. So if you're not carefully rationing, the kit may not last the intended 30 days.
ReadyWise Outdoor makes an affordable stovetop kit that we've seen pop up in big-box stores, but it performed the worst overall in our taste test. While this kit wasn't for us, the brand also has a line of just-add-water, freeze-dried pouch options—similar to Mountain House's meals—called the Pro Meal Signature Series. We haven't tested them yet, but we're curious to see how they stack up.
Peak Refuel makes freeze-dried pouched meals marketed toward outdoor recreational use. This food is similar in style to Mountain House's, but Peak Refuel's meals are more expensive. The 12-pouch kit we tested will run you $166, yet it has just a five-year shelf life. And in our taste test, it was all over the map. Peak Refuel earned top marks for its chicken Alfredo, which we actually ranked as the best meal of the 17 we tasted. But one of its other meals was so bad that a tester gave it a 0 on a scale of 1 to 10. That inconsistency, paired with the top-dollar prices and the shortest shelf life of the test group, knocked Peak Refuel out of contention.
This article was edited by Harry Sawyers and Jason Chen.
Sharon M. Vessels, president and CEO, RL Labs Food Testing Laboratory, video interview, January 17, 2025
Xulei Wu, Space Food Systems manager, NASA, video interview, January 30, 2025
Bruce Bechtel, director of marketing, Mountain House, video interview, January 31, 2025
Drew Huebsch, director of research and development, Mountain House, video interview, January 31, 2025
Omar Oyarzabal, senior consultant for Food Services, EAS, phone interview, February 5, 2025
Leanne Blommaert,, manager, research and development, Food Retail, NSF, video interview, February 6, 2025
Retsef Levi, faculty leader for Food Chain Supply Analytics and Sensing Initiative at MIT, video interview, February 20, 2025