**Meal 22: Beef Goulash Review**

As I opened the package containing Meal 22's beef goulash, I couldn't help but notice the aroma that wafted out. It smelled like tomatoey goodness, reminiscent of processed foods such as jarred tomato sauce. The ingredients listed on the packaging included rice, carrots, and spinach, which piqued my interest. But what really caught my attention was the presence of smoked paprika, a flavor component often associated with European-style goulash.

Upon closer inspection, I found that the goulash contained tender pieces of beef, cooked to perfection. The beef's tenderness was surprising, given its packaged nature. As I took my first bite, I realized that this was not your typical canned beef stew. Instead, it was a creative and flavorful twist on the classic dish. The addition of smoked paprika added depth and complexity to the sauce, making it stand out from other similar products.

However, as I continued eating, I noticed that the goulash was quite salty. It would have benefited greatly from a complementary starch, such as bread or crackers, to balance out its savory flavors. Despite this, the vegetables were well-cooked and tender, with the carrots and spinach blending together seamlessly.

To add some excitement to my meal, I decided to sprinkle some Tabasco on top of the goulash. This choice proved to be a wise decision, as the spicy kick complemented the dish perfectly. The smokiness from the paprika was elevated by the heat, creating a delightful harmony of flavors.

Moving on to the next item in my meal package, I opened up a packet labeled "Raspberry Beverage." As I read through its description, I couldn't help but feel a sense of nostalgia. This beverage reminded me of Crystal Light drinks from my childhood, specifically those dainty Dixie cups filled with gallons of sweet, syrupy goodness.

Upon tasting the Raspberry Beverage, I was struck by its similarity to Crystal Light's signature flavor. The artificial sweetness and raspberry flavor were unmistakable, yet somehow still satisfying. It brought back memories of after-school daycare and preschool days, when these drinks would be served at gatherings or events. While it wasn't a bold or innovative drink, there was something comforting about it.

Next up was the Milk Chocolate Cocoa Beverage Powder. I decided to reconstitute this with hot water to see what it would taste like. As the powder dissolved, it thickened into a creamy liquid that resembled a Yoohoo drink. The aroma of hot chocolate wafted through the air, transporting me back to childhood days when my parents would make me these comforting drinks.

When I took a sip, I was greeted by a sweet, rich flavor reminiscent of dry non-fat milk powder mixed with cocoa. It wasn't overly complex or bold, but it hit all the right notes for someone craving a quick hot chocolate fix.

The package also included an Apple Sauce packet that seemed to be designed specifically for adding sweetness and energy. The sauce itself was very sweet, almost cloying, and lacked any discernible tanginess. While this wasn't my preferred apple sauce texture, I appreciated its straightforward, no-nonsense approach to providing a quick energy boost.

Finally, I turned my attention to the Patriotic Sugar Cookies that accompanied Meal 22. As I examined them, I discovered that they were actually star-shaped cookies with patriotic themes in mind rather than the typical red-white-and-blue sprinkles. The texture of these cookies was a curious blend between biscuit-like firmness and Nilla Wafer-like crumbliness.

The next item in my package was a coin packet containing what appeared to be Chiclets gum, along with instructions on how to "work it" for optimal flavor experience. I found the idea of a candy-coated exterior paired with a sugar substitute to promote oral hygiene quite intriguing.

**Puzzle Making**

As an aside from Meal 22's culinary adventure, I found myself puzzled by several items in my meal package. The first puzzle was attempting to identify various food shapes within the pack. Each item presented itself as something different – whether it was claimed to be a bell, top of a capitol building, or star-shaped cookie.

The pièce de résistance came when I discovered that certain components were labeled simply as "gum" without any specific flavor identifier. The resulting puzzle pieces seemed to blur the lines between various gum flavors and their respective wrappers.

**Patriotic Sugar Cookies Puzzle**

Among these puzzles lay one particularly intriguing challenge: solving the shape of each cookie within my package. As I studied each piece, I realized that only a few could be definitively identified as bell-shaped objects. The remaining pieces seemed to be cleverly disguised representations of other everyday items – though whether any might actually have been genuine remains an open question.

**Raspberry Beverage Puzzle**

Another enigma arose when examining the Raspberry Beverage packet itself. Why had it been packaged in such a distinctive and elaborate way, complete with an ornate label? While I couldn't uncover any obvious answers to this puzzle, the overall presentation of these beverages suggested that there was more at play than mere packaging design alone.

**Gum Puzzle**

And finally, within this tangled web of enigmas lay another challenge: deciphering which individual components might be Chiclets gum. Upon closer inspection, I realized that I could only identify one or two items as clearly being gum – the rest were more likely to have been other sugar substitutes or candies.

The intricacies of these puzzles reveal an undercurrent of playful creativity and attention to detail in Meal 22's packaging design.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: engreetings my beautiful lovelies it's emmy welcome back to another combat military ration taste test today i'm back with more american rations and i'm going to be tasting this this is a usmre it is menu 22 beef goulash and it was very kindly sent to me by quan quan thank you so much for sending this to me i didn't even know this mre existed apparently it is new for 2019 and it is beef goulash so goulash traditionally comes from central europe more specifically hungary and it is a soup or a stew made with beef but it's usually made with lesser cuts of meats like the shank or tougher portions that require lots of stewing it's traditionally made with paprika and peppers and that's what gives it its red color so while i was doing my research about goulash i discovered there's actually an american version of goulash that doesn't use red peppers but instead uses tomatoes so it's a tomato-based kind of stew but it uses lots of elbow macaroni as well so it's more of like a casserole-like dish and in a lot of ways like a homemade version of hamburger helper i had no idea that that was called goulash but based on this description this looks like it might be more like the hungarian version this is one ration for a soldier it contains everything they need for one meal but of course it does not have water it does have a flameless ration heater which allows you to warm up the rations without any flames any fire any matches it just uses a chemical reaction that is catalyzed with water from what i've heard from many soldiers these are often eaten cold without any heating whatsoever so let's go ahead and open this up so here it says very clearly that this is a peelable seal and in the past i have struggled with the seal but sometimes it is okay it's very very tight these are water tight oh my i need to work on my grip oh man i want to open it the way it's supposed to be open because then oh my hard oh gosh it's so tough on your thumb do you ever see those strong men videos where they can rip phone books with their hands amazing or quarters insanity okay so here we are finally got it open it's very satisfying once you do that like all mres this comes in a very tough mill plastic bag which we can reuse and here are the contents wheat snack bread made by sterling foods this is interesting i've never seen this before this is like an empty box or containers okay it says here mre is designed to meet unique nutritional needs of war fighters so it tells you actually what has been added to fortify the food it's like a sleeve that you can open up okay what's this for maybe i'll figure that out but it has the nutritional information about the beef goulash 240 calories for the entire pouch eight grams of fat 17 grams of protein and 25 grams of carbs here's our flameless ration heater this is what we'll use to heat up the ration wow look at that that's a zippy applesauce so it's enhanced with maltodextrin for increased performance what i thought maltodextrin was a sugar or a thickener okay applesauce enhanced milk chocolate cocoa beverage powder great handy-dandy spoon strawberry jam pack wow look at these patriotic sugar cookies oh my goodness i hope the sprinkles are red white and blue that would be cool all right that's my prediction on that otherwise why would they be patriotic do they have icing on them i don't know i'm going for sprinkles that's what my guess is all right so here is the goulash yes it says right there beef goulash this is chunky peanut butter and here's our little accessories pack beverage base powder raspberry type three two pieces of gum toilet paper salt and a moist towelette so i was hoping for a little hot pepper packet or something or sauce but i'll go through my pantry and see if i can find my little mini bottles of tabasco because i think that's going to go really well with beef goulash oh look i see okay now i know what this is so this is a sleeve that actually goes around our flameless ration heater with our ration inside so this acts as a little bit of an insulator and it also keeps the flap folded over which is nice okay that makes sense these main entrees used to come in a cardboard box and then after you put the ration into the heater you would shove the whole thing into a cardboard box this makes a little bit more sense it has a little bit more room for expansion and yeah a little bit more streamlined okay mystery solved okay let's go ahead and do this open this up um let's open this up let's open this up oh my gosh hair here i'm trying okay tear here oh no see okay frh not impressed not impressed okay now will it open place it above the heater don't drop it to here we have to hold it we're going to put the water just to that line oop and slide the ration all the way down fold it over and now we're going to put the sleeve around it like that oh it's starting to fizz oh and now it's starting to get hot now i'm going to elevate this this is my rock or something i'm going to elevate this on my little spice thing so that the water does not leak out oh yeah things are happening there you hear that yes that is a good flameless ration heater it is not faulty all right let's set that aside it's exuding all kinds of lovely smells let's mix up our beverage base powder it says sugar add to 20 ounces of water and agitate that's a lot of water if i pour this into my canteen you won't be able to see what it looks like so i'm just going to mix a bit of it into a glass so you can see the color smells like raspberry push-ups so we'll put a little bit of that in there whoa look at that color but it looks like cherry kool-aid whoa my association with raspberry is more of like a magenta red rather than this kind of red i actually reuse these spoons they're really tough and strong so there's that ready for my beef goulash it smells just like kool-aid alrighty there's that oh i forgot to wash my hands my moist towelette latex free i hope it's lemon scented it is that's my favorite kind i love it i love it i love it and it smells like oh it's not very strong though there's ones that are stronger lemon scented it smells just a little bit lemon scented i'll take it but there are ones that are really zingy they smell like lemon fresh joy soap but this is fine it doesn't smell very alcohol just a little bit of lemon scent okay so now i'm clean and fresh let's continue i did find my little bottle of tabasco sauce so we're gonna try that on the goulash let's make our other beverage and this is the milk chocolate cocoa beverage powder it says to add six ounces of hot or cold water into this bag or just right up to this fill line so let's do that i like that everything is contained in the plastic bag and oh bummer designer is 2019. why isn't this bag gusseted pretty sure i've had a version of this where the bag is gusseted so it actually stands up you can open it and it stands up which would make a lot of sense for a beverage that you're drinking out of a bag right come on engineers all right so i'm going to pinch right at that line and that should help me approximate how much water to add yeah right to there make sure this is really well sealed because i've made the mistake not having that sealed and it's not pretty now shake it up probably roll it down for a little extra insurance now we've got a little bladder of milk chocolate cocoa beverage powder strawberry jam and peanut butter so i believe this is going to be the makings of a pbj i'm going to need the peanut butter really well peanut butter and jelly that's what i like in my belly you know i never grew up eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly so i don't have a deep huge love for it i actually prefer peanut butter and honey i know i know i can hear you guys crying it's all good but i do love strawberry jam of all the jams and jellies strawberry is my favorite so that's a good choice all those songs that you learned in grade school yeah oh boy i see the bread is the same as before look at that do not eat do not eat okay look i love how they attempt to make it look like a slice of bread isn't that funny yeah it smells a little bit like biscuits definitely yeasty bread like my past experience with this bread has not been that great it's really dense it has a strange crumb but again this is supposed to last a long time the best way to consume this is to butterfly it because it is so dense like that little squiggle of peanut butter yes come on terrible package tear for mama tear at corner listen i'm trying okay okay oh yeah this is smelling like good old-fashioned smokers reminds me of my grandfather who loved to have toast for breakfast although he liked marmalade which i've never really come to love we got our peanut butter and our jelly i guess we should spread it because we want a nice even distribution right and then we wipe our knife on our pants okay i'm not gonna do that just kidding gotta wipe off my knife ah that's better peanut butter meats jelly boom mush wow peanut butter and jelly itadakimasu the taste is pretty good spot on you've got strawberry jam chunky peanut butter right on the bread is a little bit strange it's very dense when i think of peanut butter and jelly you have peanut butter jelly on white bread and it creates this kind of like sticky mass in your mouth that gets into like all the crevices in your teeth this doesn't happen with this this is much drier it's much denser you need a little bit more saliva to kind of get things going but the flavor's right the flavor is spot on i've had this with the cheese bread the spicy jalapeno cheese bread this i think is the best version i've had so far because you've got that nostalgic peanut butter and jelly combination here let's go ahead and check on our entree okay this is feeling nice and toasty typically you would open the ration on the top like this so in the field i would imagine you would just eat it right out of the packet like this nice warm and toasty but since we're not in the field and you want to see what i'm eating i'm going to just pour it out onto this plate also i think you can get a better idea of how big the portions are based on the description this sounded like it was more like the european style goulash because it contains paprika but in terms of how it's mixed together with the starch itself it's a little bit more like the american style so maybe it's a little bit of a hybrid it smells really good it smells tomatoey it does have that kind of processed food tomato smell to it which is an unpleasant kind of familiar smells a little bit like jarred tomato sauce and i see some carrots i think this is rice there's little bits in here and the description said this is spinach here's a piece of beef hmm i like that the beef is incredibly tender it tastes familiar in the sense that it's like beef stew but that little bit of smoked paprika really stands out i feel like it's a more kind of creative flavorful version of like the dinty more pre-made canned beef stew it's pretty salty i wish i would have saved my bread or this came with crackers it definitely needs some sort of additional starch to go with it the vegetables are well cooked and tender although i can't distinguish the carrots from the spinach they all kind of taste the same but that's not necessarily a bad thing either i think i'll probably like it even more with a little bit of tabasco so let's go ahead and add some they should bring these back these are so stinking cute and reusable i know they have to try to save them costs but baby tabascos oh yeah oh man alrighty so let's go ahead and taste our raspberry beverage here we go wow it kind of reminds me a lot of crystal light it has that artificial sweetener flavor to it and artificial raspberry flavor but somehow it's very satisfying too it takes me back to the days of being in preschool or after school daycare where they would make gallons of this stuff you know crystal light and you get little dixie cups yeah you know it's a throwback righty let's go ahead and taste the milk chocolate cocoa beverage powder which is essentially hot chocolate oh it actually thickened up a little bit so it looks a little bit like a like a yoohoo drink or something smells just like hot chocolate alrighty here we go and it tastes like hot chocolate a little bit watery it actually tastes like reconstituted dry non-fat milk powder yeah with cocoa exactly and it's sweet instant i just want it to be hot now i shouldn't mean it with hot water z applesauce let's just squirt some out just to see what it looks like oh yeah looks like applesauce although it looks a little bit runnier oh it's very sweet super sweet but yeah that's applesauce tastes like pureed cooked apples just a little sweeter than i like i like my apple sauce with a little bit of a tang this doesn't have too much tanginess a little apple flavor lots of sugar hmm probably good for a little energy boost patriotic sugar cookies oh they're a little bit crumbled rats oh man it's gonna be like a puzzle so i predicted red white and blue sprinkles but these are actually in patriotic shapes rather than having patriotic decorative sprinkles so based on my dig findings i've discovered at least five different cookie styles this is the bell i thought this might be a bell but it might be something else it might be the top of the capitol building or something can't quite tell missing information here this is a coin and this is the american flag and here we have a star yeah they're kind of like a hybrid between a biscuit and a nilla wafer you've got that vanilla flavor in there not quite as firm as a biscuit but not as crumbly as a vanilla wafer we're going to wrap things up with our two pieces of gum look like little chiclets i'm predicting peppermint here we go the gum is a little bit cold so it takes a little bit of time to kind of work it and soften it up it has a candy coating on the outside so i'm presuming that this gum contains xylitol and it's a little bit of an anti-cavity chewing gum so a way to promote potential hygiene so there you have it that was meal 22 beef goulash a very solid mre i would say alrighty i hope you guys enjoyed that one i hope you guys learned something please check out the military ration playlist which includes domestic and international ration taste tests i hope you guys enjoy that one i hope you guys learned something big thanks again to quan for sending this to me and making this episode possible and let me know down in the comments below if you've ever had an mre please share this video with your friends follow me on social media like this video subscribe and i shall see you in the next one toodaloo take care bye let's finish with the puzzle making puzzle making puzzle making hear me go\n"