Common misconception, lactose free doesn't mean dairy free, so it being creamy and lactose free isn't strange at all, since it very well might still have cream in it, just with the lactose sugars removed. 🙂
@@Yrzi The reason for that is, because the cheap and almost annoticeable way of making milk lactose free was invented by Finnish dairy company Valio. They tried to sell it to America for example, but the big dairy producers did not want to pay part of their income to Valio and also not get rid of their cash cow of nickle and diming lactose intolerant people.
Finnish chocolate is top tier. As a finn you dont get to appreciate how good it is because you rarely get to taste other than finnish or swedish chocolate here.
As Finn with Polish family friends who send Polish chocolate to us at Yule I can say that Finnish milk chocolate is good quality, but but damn Polish make better confette style chocolate and dark chocolate...
I remember getting some swiss premium chocolates from a friend and was like "thats it?", it was very underwhelming and honestly not even close to as good as fazer
Finn here! did my service in 2022, so very recently. the smart thing about these MREs is that they're available in the everyday grocery stores, so if a war happens, they can just be refocused to sending the stuff to the military to feed the soldiers instead of filling shelves. not being specifically made by/for the military means there already exists mass production of them instead of "just enough for training" and then being overwhelmed when they need to ramp up by 10 times. nice vid!
Sure, that applies to every single product and machinery etc., since we adopt the concept of "total war" in wartime, during which most of the resources of the society are put into armed forces. No other choice as a small country.
With the current MREs, thats true. Back in 2018 when I did my service time, we had lots of the MRE made by Leijona Catering, which ones you couldn't buy from the shop of course. But we did also get sometimes some Leader porridge and even some really tasty Blå band meals which you can buy anywhere really. Good times, even hauled some of the left over rations and ate those during weekend vacations xD
The xylitol tablets are meant to be schewed and swirled around the mouth kinda. Its meant as a replacement for chewing gum that just coats your teeth with the good stuff.
Xylitol is a special sugar that can't be digested by the bacteria in the mouth so it's effective against caries. But if you eat too much of it you're getting the runs. The majority of special sugars such as mannitol, mannitol, xylitol etc are actually manufactured at my home town here in Finland. And I was shocked to see how strong chemicals were required to extract these products from the raw material. The smell at the factory is mind blowing, a mixture of super sweet and fermentation.
@@Munakas-wq3gp Is it Naantali? I travelled to Sweden by boat from there and the smell from the old sugar factory made me really sick, so I threw up for hours.
@@Munakas-wq3gp Its that and vanilla scented candles I cant stand those smells. It also triggers a migraine and that hits me almost instantly like if someone throws a stone on my head.
My experiences in Finnish military were some 20 years ago and I was Auxilary mechanic in the Airforce so our gear was never anything new but here are some notes. For the cutlery: Soldiers typically were given LuHa, Lusikka-Haarukka (spoon-fork), foldable thing that when opened had spoon in one end and fork in other. I have heard that some troops were given sporks but they were pretty much hated by everyone. Every soldier also should be carrying knife, most likely puukko although because knives are typically owned by the soldiers, there isn't really any standard what kind of knife anyone should have. As for time the food prep seems to take there are couple of things that may have contributed to that. Water is often available because lakes or snow. In cold weather it's very important to eat *hot* meals because in cold weather energy difference between hot and cold meal is 30%. If you eat cold meals you most likely end up being tired and freezing. The type of rye bread/cracker is called crisp bread and it's very familiar to all finns from school meals and is also common in homes. That package most have taken some bumps because it normally doesn't crumble like that on its own. Those foil packed bread are also great to have in pantry because they last pretty much forever. Fun little fact: crisp bread also burns rather well and common rumor is that if you spread thin layer of army boot polish to crisp bread you get a great fire starter (I have not tested this)
> if you spread thin layer of army boot polish to crisp bread you get a great fire starter (I have not tested this) Can confirm, works well, since you're not supposed to pour kerosene onto the kamiina.
I've heard if you overdo the shoe polish sandwich you can burn through the stove Edit: And it seems like I skipped over a comment and I am not the only one to have heard that
Kaakaojuomajauhe, Cocoa drink powder. It has three separate words written together, Kaakao and juoma and jauhe, just because we like to write words together, and because we can - just like the Germans. But still we don't shout words and spit in the same way as a vegetarian painter did in the 30s and 40s in Germany.
Yeah, the words are usually written together if the thing spoken about is one certain thing. Not always like that, but easier to explain to foreigners. Cocoadrinkpowder would also be a pretty long English word.
Kaakaojuomajauhepakkausselostevirhekoodintarkistusautomaatiojärjestelmäsuunnitteluprosessi have fun 😁 (It means the design process of an automated system for checking error codes in the packaging description of cocoa drink powder.)
we were in the forest basically 1/3rd of the year. i always had fazer chocolate with me. ofc it was quite hard when it was -30C but totally worth it. always.
We didn't have those packages you could make porrisge in, so I had to make it in Pakki, and I burned my chocolate porridge really badly and Pakki was totally ruined after that.
So we were typically issued Trangia camping stoves for our field ops, which we would primarily use to heat up water, of which we usually have an abundance of. Like we carry a shit ton of water in our vehicles, but it's not like our nature has a shortage of clean fresh water either. We'd use the stoves all year round - no matter if it's summer or winter. Sometimes I'd have somebody from my squad heat up some water for the whole squad and mix all of their meals if we were in a hurry or some other tight spot. Those fifteen minutes (plus boiling time) needed to prepare these can be a luxury at times, as Tyler pointed out too. These hot meals were a real savior when we were up in Lapland in -5 F weather (personally though, those dark chocolate bars were my savior). And yeah, as another commenter noted out, we were issued sporks and German-style two piece mess kits, but a few years ago at least, the packages would include a flimsy plastic spoon. Can't count how many I snapped in half while mixing the oatmeal. On another note, those sports drink mixes were notorious for tearing up and covering the contents of each MRE package with a sugary powder. But greetings from Finland! Love your videos.
@@Butterworthdasyrup Another trick up our sleeve was bringing our own electric kettle and hooking that thing up to our APC's power system, but many instructors didn't exactly approve of our meddlings. Luckily our later COs were much more practical and result oriented. The British are so lucky for having a dedicated boiling vessel in every vehicle.
yeah, my love for chokolate has accumulated to the knowledge of its positive effect on my troubled mind, it can put it at ease at worst places with just one bite of that lovely fazer blue original
"How would you heat this up in the woods in Finland" ... Well, you see - Finland has snow, Finland has trees, snow in the liquid form is water, trees in THEIR liquid form is fire. Fire equals heat.
That and they all are having "pakki" with them which doubles as plate and as a kettle, so if there is a fire, there is a way to warm stuff. Also a lot of Finnish streams and rivers are drinking quality and the almost all of the rest of those and lakes are drinking quality after boiling.
@@magicofshootingstar Its rare that the water ain't drinkable even without boiling, mostly near human settlements or downstream from em that the quality is questionable. Like its really rare that we have some kind of bacteria or parasite in the water that flows, of course if it flows from a lake with a children's swimming beach you might wanna avoid the floaters. If you use common sense when looking for water avoiding places like next to the highway its 99% of the times drinkable without boiling, like look at the content in the flask, if you drink it for a longer time its always better to just boil because you never know if the moose stands upstream laughing at you while filling your bottle. Of course it depends if its spring or mid summer or autumn. In winter pretty much everything is safe even the white snow in cities, yellow snow is a rare delicacy that usually kids enjoy. Did some water testing from different sources back in the day and even the water flowing in a smaller city was pretty clean, like you wont die from drinking it but it might have the taste of rubber.
In the finnish army, you either eat MREs or the stuff field kitchens make...which is always hot and yellow. Doesn't matter what the food is, it's always hot and yellow.
After few months in the army I always had hot sauce bottle at hand and would just load every meal with it just to feel something with the exception of oatmeal/porridge. The stuff that the field kitchen made was at times so fucking hideous.
Nice to see the Finnish MREs having come a long way from what they were in the late 90s, back then they were mostly off-the-shelf hiking food and canned meals. Some were clearly failed experiments from the hiking food companies, like Ham Pasta with Banana which was just a crime against humanity lol
We should be proud of how clean our country really is. People who haven't traveled abroad don't have any idea how hideous for example Intia smells. It's like a constant pile of shit everywhere you go
Well, times before EU-membershit there was only some 60'000 lakes in Finland. And nowadays that 188'000 - cause nearly every bloody tiny mudhole is considered as a lake.
@@antlamaki1108 Oh! I found where you got that trolling information! You wen't to the one miss spelling in this: Lake Paajarvi is located approximately 100 km north from Helsinki in Finland, a well-known lake country having about 60,000 lakes. In stead of county it says country... You troll you. SHAME!!!!
What a great review. As a international ration collector and reviewer myself, I have never seen a Finnish ration in YT. That’s a great score. Thank you for all of your videos, guests and content!! Cheers.
No idea, but i think when we have that long and cold winter it is better to spend extra time to eat warm food. Boil snow, get dinner and clean drinking water. I really think it worth of it.
Kept me alive 30 hours in -20 and probably close to -30 during night at security level CHARLIE exercise. That must've been the hardest night and day of my life. We were guarding a location and were required to not move much at all. 6-7 times, 3-5 hour shifts depending how far you were located from the tent where u got something warm to drink and fill up your bottle with hot water. Oh my god the feeling when the exercise was finally over and we got on the bus...after that nothing felt hard. sincerely, armored infantry platoon sergeant
I took Finland & Finnish food totally granted, then I moved away and wow, the amount of food poisonings I got from so called "good" restaurants was insane!! Now I really appreciate how absolutely clean our lovely country is! Food & water is pure, air is pure, forests, lakes, it's really pure and nicely kept and I'm proud to be a Finnish person once again. Come here in July and you'll see & won't regret it
@@Butterworthdasyrup Want me to hook you up with a care package? It'll taste like cough medicine to your palate though. 😂 I'll easily go through an 8 oz bag of that stuff.
Contrary to popular belief, quite a few Finns do not like liquorice, I for one do not like it that much, but Salmiakki, liqourice + ammonium chloride, primo.
As a Finnish reserve jaeger, who spend the spring-winter of 2010 fed on "MRE"'s , always competing with like-mindedly desperate people of my unit for the ration bags with CANNED TUNA, the "MRE" bag in this video seems like a luxurious affair for someone, who spent endless nights camping out in the blizzard, feeding on canned liver paté atop näkkileipä (which in imperialist Swedish is called: "knäckebröd"), Brunberg's dark chockolate bars, Knorr's Chevre&Rucola pasta-bags, eaten from a camping pot you had to clean out after the meal, lest you find yourself waking up with a bad case of Montezuma's revenge during a night sleeping in a squad tent during a blizzard, just to go out for a rectal piss.
As a finnish reserve coastal surveillance corporal I can say I spent a total of 2 days in the tent and enjoyed meals prepared by a professional chef at the garrison lol. Choices, choices.
As the king of the reel-ass' I say the year wasn't all that bad. It was also a year where the summer reached over +30 °C and in winter we actually had a lot of snow, which was nice since the last couple of years before that had been kinda meh. We rarely cooked anything ourselves though, they were training a cooking squad too so if the feeding center was too far to bring warm food from the cooking squad got into action. Actually the best meal I had during the year was made by the cooking squad with a soup cannon, it was mashed potatos and sautéed reindeer.
"keltaista ja kuumaa" or yellow and hot in english. A great nickname for the "food" delivered into the field from the feeding center. Most of my unit despised these MREs but I grew fond of them when I was on a long march in the dead of winter and these were our only food.
@@heikkiostergard4504 When I was in the army we didn't even have MRE:s, just a field kitchen and some tasteless food mixes. Luckily I spent most of my army in a special unit where we had our enlisted cooks cooking real food (no nötkötti).
You didn't use those plastic baggies for your pot so you don't need to clean it? We always had those...well, except for the one guy who had mistakenly bought ordinary baggies instead of ones made for that purpose and he then wondered "where did my baggie go?" after he was done with his meal! (The baggie wasn't meant for hot food so it melted and he basically ate his melted plastic bag)
@@affiakerlund6112 Kyllä ampumaradalle tuli eväät ruokalan keittiöltä ja leireillä oli kenttäkeittimet. Sisseillä pussiruoka, jos sellaista tarvitsivat.
@@markonikula2611 riippuu monestakin asiasta. En ollut sissi/tiedustelu, syötiin pussiruokaa marsseilla ja parilla leirillä oli vaihe missä syötiin sitä myös. Toki vakiona voi olettaa että syödään kuumaa ja keltaista ja sitten tulee poikkeukset.
You Tube: "We regret to inform subscribers that this will be Tyler's last appearance on this channel. He is being replaced by his children who have recently demonstrated that they have what it takes to make us money... sorry, sergeant."💰💰💰
Sukker Swedish word for Sugar. Google Translate (SWE -ENG): Kom hit sukker lady 😍(english cousins, swedish pronounce hit as you say heat ; allmost like here)
@@SealedFate1981 The taste is too strong to use 2tbh i was instructed to use 1 and drink the whole 1L anyway. Consuming 4 in one day is not unrealisic as you would easily need 4L of fluids during summer and almost the same during winter field weeks.
@@benjamin6813 That is allso true. Day to day, you need that 4l fluid per day, when in training or true situation. For my tastepuds 2 for 1 litre is all good. That combat ration is for whole day, so everything inside of that bag is needed during heavy training. And for some soldiers is issued allso trangia stove, coz there is some places and situations where you cant use campfire or something like that.
@@SealedFate1981 at best we had trangia, but 8/10 times COLD water 💀. Like porridge is fine with cold but everything else? Nah. Once during summer we left our waterbottles in sunlight for 2 hours to have decent rice
the ziplog mechanism is there for reason. your supposed to fill the water and shake that bag fast. (10min for boiling water and getting that stuff in your guts)
17:59 That's what the sugar packets are for, porridge, coffee, tea, sports drinks, usually the MRE rations at least that we got had 8-10 packets of sugar for these. It's fairly bland since some Finnish palate can be.. well lets say sensitive, salt packets 4 that. The drinks were thick cus you mixed it into about 2-3x less water then it's intended for. When ur starving those peanuts are so fucking good you cant imagine it, also the dark chocolate... I never liked dark chocolate but that shit bussin when you're starving. 26:22 during the winter it's pretty simple, just boil some snow, during summer find a river, lake, plenty of those, if the training is done in a place where those aren't available logistics will take care of the water supply, and the heat, everyone is capable of starting a fire, or we use electric water heaters, or Trangia.
Näkkileipä, aka Crispbread, is really addictive. You can put anything on top of it and it's good. We usually put butter, cheese and cucumber. Some put ham slices, some put cheese and pickles. And other the ham paste obviously. It's all good.
I was expecting that reaction from the chocolate. It's was so good, especially during combat training. The MRE's were fine, i guess. The problem was that they were usually heated up with lukewarm water that was brought from the supply pickup point, so they never cooked properly.
Nothing in this world has ever tasted as good as hard rye bread and meat paste after spending an entire day in a snowy forest in freezing temperatures. When you finally got into a warm tent in the evening, cold, hungry, and exhausted, crawling into your sleeping bag and getting to eat this combination felt like heaven back then. Edit. There is also a tuna version. We used to suck that straight from the tube. It was easy way to get energy when you didn't have time to stop to eat.
The Tunnel you are talking about in 1:05, is the Päijänne Water Tunnel, providing Helsinki with water from the lake Päijänne. Not for driving. :D For transporting water.
The beef and mash potato dish is also called 'hot meal' in Finland. Because it really burns your mouth if you're not careful. It used to be one of the favourite school lunches here. I don't know if they still have it on the lunch menu at schools. I love that ham paste. You can get it from all the grocery stores and I buy it pretty often. Finns are not as crazy about the tube food as the Norwegians are but we do have our tubed ham, liver, and tuna pastes. And of course Kalle's caviar, the iconic tubed fish egg paste from Sweden that almost every pensioner loves, and some younger people too I guess 😂.
That chocolate is probably made by a small(ish) chocolate manufacturer Brunberg in Porvoo, Finland. Most chocolate in Finland is super good, the art was learned from the Swiss.
It used to be that the finnish mres were built out of readily available products from shops etc. After "leijona catering" took over it started making these with some propietary and some still off the shelves stuff. The one i sent you is not the same "menu" so you can pretty much do another video from it still if ya want. I dont think anyone on youtube has had 2 of these ever 🤣
Pretty sure that is still the case. Leijona Catering contracts domestic companies to produce to a set price - take it or leave it. So a lot of it might be name brand stuff without the branding. The back will still probably say "Produced by Fazer" for the chocolate or the rye crisp bread by "Vaasan", for example.
@@EggwardEgghands Likely true, It just used to be with the full commercial branding on the products before. Now theres the leijona products and i think youre right that its done like that for those.
@@EggwardEgghandsThis was definitely the case for the jaegers in Soviet-stopper Kainuun prikaati, back in 2010. The MRE bags were always filled with some on-brad goods like quick-meal-pasta-bags from Knorr (KNORR as in Marco Pierre White's meme videos), Brunberg's dark chockolate in off-brad wrapping etc.
7 днів тому+5
I have had Leijona caterings own green bags, blå band, knorr and these leader foods when I was in army or do training afterwards. It's where they get it cheap and available. These leader foods are available also in every sports or camping store so it's easy to obtain and send to defence forces during crisis.
The dried bread thingie is pretty much same we had back in Winter War... Recipe haven't changed much, it is like 99% same, used to also eat it in school back in '80s and '90s, kids today have fresh bread, the little lucky bastards... 😂
About these mints. They are xylitol mints. Basically are not toothpaste but xylitol is to protect your teeth similar to toothpaste as in field conditions you likely are not able to brush your teeth. A lot of kids take these after lunch in kindergarden or at school.
At work, with powdered juice, I always add a small amount of hot water to dissolve the powder since cold water never does a good job at it. It may not be as cold but anything is decent when you're thirsty!
Im from finland and people call us spade as like spade of ace whats our logo and my job is to cook food behind fighting lines so that soldiers get fresh food just made warm delivered to them.
what we had to eat food in the field is a spork. But not like a spork that you think about, where it's a spoon with the fork prongs at the end, instead it's a piece of cutlery where one end is a spoon and the other end is a fork, and you can rotate the fork part over the spoon part to make it fit in your bag or wherever you want to keep it, also helps keep the fork from poking holes into everything. It's called LuHa (spork, but in Finnish)
i import these freeze dryed stuff for years now from finnland because they are so good. use them for hiking my favorite ist the Pasta carbonara soo yummy
Aimo Koivunen is cooler than Simo Häyhä if you ask me. He ate his patrols entire supply of Pervitin/methamphetamine and lived on pine cones and one siberian blue jay for a week.
Eh Koivunen was just a tweaker that did some incredible shit while high af. Häyhä fought both Winter, and Continuation Wars, killed 500+ Soviets, got shot in the cheek with an explosive bullet, survived when his mates thought he was dead, he was operated and went into coma, woke up, and the same day the peace deal was signed, in my opinion it's quite clear who is the badass out of these two. Koivunen was a warrior too but I think his achievement gets diminished significantly since he was powered up by meth.
Remembering my service days we called the smash potato ones napalm it will stuck on the roof of you're mouth and burn 😂 but we didn't pour hot water on the meals. We had own pots and pans and cooked on fire 😅
That coffee tastes like ass but we used to get small single serving milk cartons and sometimes I used to dump 2 coffee bags in there with 1 sugar, then shake it until it was dissolved. No bitterness plus you didn't have to burn your mouth to get the coffee down in the morning if in a hurry. Honeynuts were a fucking treat after a week on the training camp in the woods.
Ah yes, the all familiar 'mediterranean asshole'... or the curry rice that had the consistency of a crumbled pencil eraser. Does not bring back fond memories.
Yep, In Finnish military we do have something called "Lusikka-Haarukka" or "LuHa" in short. Which literally translated means "Spoon-Fork" (Spork) And basically is a two sided utensil, other end having a spoon and other side being a fork
spork and luha are different tho.. spork is spoon and fork in 1. luha has 1 fork and 1 spoon. they are not combined into spork. They are only the same in direct translation.
Finnish troops are issued a metal spork and a german style metal mess kit, mess kit is quite a large vessel to boil water in. Group of soldiers is also likely to have a small tent with a stove in it for taking shelter on the field in the winter. If having such a shelter or a fire is not an option, hot water is carried in a thermal container to the troops.
Friend of mine ate so much of that pork paste during his service that he cant stand even seeing it anymore. He also had an unfortunate accident when he stuffed a pack of yoghurt in the pocket of his trousers. It exploded in the pocket during training when hitting the deck. 😂
A typical Finnish military meal when you are in a garrison are pea soup and pancake on every Thursday, and crispbread containing mostly rye flour. Besides there's a military canteen when you can buy coffee and always fresh cinnamon rolls and doughnots. Most Finnish men are very familiar with army food because there has been a mandatory military service for men since 1917, and voluntary military service for women since 1995.
This is much more convenient than the crap we got in 2009. The packet had like 20 different items, with the best (most convenient) being instant noodles and a can of tuna. Then there was a bunch of cans like pasta bolognese or pea soup. To make them properly, you had to cook them in a pot (it would be dirty after each meal). We also got Norwegian MRE's which were much like these, where you just add water. They were much better (except the catfish meal 🤢). With these types its a good idea to heat the water beforehand and pour it into a thermos. Then you can prepare it pretty much at any time, while sitting on a truck, on a break etc. and its always a warm meal.
I never found that a problem to cook the meal in the pot (or in trangia). It was fast, easy and it was no problem to make dishes after the meal. I was in service 03-04.
@@mtlb2674 I was in jaegers, forward observer to be specific. I remember very fondly one cold morning in Rova when we were given 10 minutes (that is really like 5 minutes) and "everyone then cooks that porridge!" In the end I just had to force that undercooked hot porridge down my throat. With these new and the Norwegian meals, we could just boil the water and then eat in the back of that truck.
I spent two weeks at Rovajärvi in november-december 03. Were never had to hurry our meals. During that time I ate the best peasuop in life (so much peas and meat in it). Also the poronkäristys was delicious. Without mentioning the pizzas and sausages we ate in the tent at night time when doing 'kipinä'. But during that two weeks had about 3 hours sleep per day. I fell in sleep twice when driving my MT-LB-U armoured vehicle from the training area to the train station. And that was in public roads in the midlle of the civilian traffic. Those two weeks were a lot of fun but also so exhausting.
The funny thing about snow is that it melts when you heat it up. Even boils. And then again, if that's not enough, it is called the land of a thousand lakes. Pretty sure taking a Trangia along ain't that uncommon either.
Finnish MP from 08-09 here. The military cooks do a good job making stuff for the field (sadly the MP didn't get to eat very much, lol). Those rations are surprisingly good too. I only got to eat them during one camp/military exercise.
Squads are usually issued one heater and a bottle of lighter fluid. How we did these MREs was that one person would take the time to prep all the meals, while the others are doing business. Water is easy to find when you have snow on the ground 75% of the time per year. Other times water is stored in tents. Also there are some MREs that are vacuum sealed and don't need to be heated (my experience was some mashed vegetable mix with beans).
sissi muona! (guirella's Meal) That takes Me back in good ol' conscript days, remembering how that sports drink's smell would stay in Flask for months even when I washed it multiple times (some flasks weren't the newest from stock so that's why)
The prepackaged meals in supermarkets in Finland are surprisingly good. I remember getting some fish soup just because yk I couldn't read the box. Could have easily been a full meal with some potatoes (They do carry all kinds at PRISMA - really huge produce section) - Some other stuff can be weird, I remember being asked if I wanted a burger and I was like omg yes and I ended up getting mostly rice between two buns - really confused the heck out of me.
80' we had dry round bread, what was quite hard. Similar to that one. We called it the clutch plate. It was meant for horses and soldiers. It was always in almost everyone's pocket and it didn't crumble.
So we have the picky eater and the one who eats his plate clean and then everyone's leftovers. There's Swiss chocolate tradition going on in Finland. Xylitol is put to toothpaste, gum etc.
If I can see correctly, the bread is näkkileipä, which is crisp bread in English. It is a staple food in Finland. The chocklad is probably so good because natural milk has been used instead of milk powder.
My service ended just a few months ago and as someone who has eaten these, the best of the best was the pasta meal and ham paste on dry bread. Also it was a jackpot if u got a chocolate bar in ur mre pack as not every packet had the same meals. One bar of chocolate can take u far when in the military xP
Very nice spread friends. We have A friend in this community from Finland, who would enlighten even more info, should you ever need it. All components you tried, looked awesome. Your translations are better than I could do, so I am impressed at least, LOL. I love the fact you are not afraid to try something un are unfamiliar with. Always try, then if you don't like, then you know. Never just say no, unless obviously spoiled. Always free for biscuits and gravy, agreed. The Brits had the cola drinks in their ration packs for yrs. Tasted like flat cola, but I always enjoyed it. I highly enjoyed your review, as always. Peace from Kentucky, John. Hope you both had some fun.
back in my time at Finnish military, i usually mixed few pieces of chocolate in porridge to get some flavor on it, and back then we had blueberry soup in MRI as well, so we usually played a bit with our MRI to mix better combinations
That was what we were eating in conscription service. We have own waterboilers with us and there is water everywhere available. If you have 10 minute break you boil water and put it to foodbag, when there is next break your food is ready. You can eat nuts and rye bread on the go. 💪
My combat vest had always atleast 4 bars of chocolate. Perks of having friends who were field cooks 😂I ate so much of the Kinkku-pastejia that even the smell of them makes me gag today
Nice to see two kids trying our food. As a reservist, I think food is great in Finnish military! (Spent a week of my vacation at CIOR event, and all food was culinary.) And every real man starts his day with an oat porridge! That is a fact.
Fun thing about those Nut Walker salted peanuts and honey peanuts. Those are made in Thailand and if you look closely you can see that on the packaging the word "Nettopaino" (the net weight) is misspelled as "Nettopiano" (a net piano) :D
as a person who spend way too much time in the forest with finnish military you probobly got the best package only i would always change the porridge to to yogurt, but the mashed potatoes was almost like a currency everyone wanted it and maybe we had little fights over it (havent watched more than whats in the bag) edit after watching the video: 1. usually i would put little more water than they say no matter what the product is imo makes it so much better. and we didnt stir the bags with spoons or forks, we shaked them like crazy 2. the chiracha would go in bot lunch and dinner meals. (for me, I would even ask if anyone didnt want to use theirs to get it in both meals) 3. the sports drinks i would usually put one or two bags in to the 1l bottle that we have 4. the coffee depends who do you ask from but for me i would go one or two days without coffee and put two or three bags of coffee in to make one drink 5. the nuts and the chocolate are god tier when you have been in the forest whole day.
Ah come on...I am German and I joke with my girlfriend in the kitchen a lot about the "GESCHMACK!" meme. XD keep at it! Also in other news: Great video about the Finnish MRE!
I must say that pronouncing is quite good. I accept. Second note. Finnish chocolate is quite good, sadly not many people know how good. I hope everyone has chance to try it out one day!
The stainless steel folding spoon-fork must be one of the oldest pieces if equipment that is still standard issue in the Finnish military. Those portions are large when you are in warm summer conditions, but when you are moving on skis for long distances in arctic winter temperatures, your body may use up to 7000 calories per day, mostly just for keeping body heat. Most Finns like the crisp rye bread. No matter how much experience you have, it is still completely impossible to eat a crisp bread on a sofa without making a mess.
Winter in Finland... There's probably a lots of snow, so clean water isn't an issue but fire would be. If you're cold and hungry, you'd probably eat the s#&t anyways... 😂
6:15 it´s called "Essbesteck" "Ess" comes from "Essen" which means "eat/ing" I´m not very good in explain something in english and my english isn´t very good too. But I´ll try it anyway.. If you want to spell "Geschmack". You say the "A" like "Ä" which stays for "ae". It´s more like "apple" which means in german "Apfel/Äpfel" But the normal A, like in "Geschmack" is more like " A ttention" but a little bit higher. You could try the google translate for attention -> Aufmerksamkeit and press the sound icon. But yeah, it´s very complicated. I mean, you have "the" and we´ve der,die,das,dem,den,.... haha. Greetings from germany again. Ben :) Edit: I love your humor about german stuff. :D
Finland is known to have good chocolate. Mainly because know-how was original recipe and know-how was imported from Switzerland in 1920s by Carl Fazer. We Fins really appreciate good quality chocolate. It is rather expensive but we value quality over quantity or cheap price.
Common misconception, lactose free doesn't mean dairy free, so it being creamy and lactose free isn't strange at all, since it very well might still have cream in it, just with the lactose sugars removed. 🙂
Lactose free milk products are pretty rare outside of the Nordic countries so I get that people assume they must have no milk in them.
Yes, lactose is just the part of dairy milk that upsets most adult's tummies, no lactose, no problems.
@@Yrzi The reason for that is, because the cheap and almost annoticeable way of making milk lactose free was invented by Finnish dairy company Valio. They tried to sell it to America for example, but the big dairy producers did not want to pay part of their income to Valio and also not get rid of their cash cow of nickle and diming lactose intolerant people.
Lactose free means just that the lactose (milk sugar) has been broken down to regular sugar.
@@Munakas-wq3gp exactly :-)
Finnish chocolate is top tier. As a finn you dont get to appreciate how good it is because you rarely get to taste other than finnish or swedish chocolate here.
I came here to say this. Finnish chocolate is really underrated.
definitively underrated worldwide, FAZER ON TOP
I've tasted Swiss, Swedish, German, Finnish, all kinds of chocolate and I'd say Finnish is the best and not biased at all 🤫
As Finn with Polish family friends who send Polish chocolate to us at Yule I can say that Finnish milk chocolate is good quality, but but damn Polish make better confette style chocolate and dark chocolate...
I remember getting some swiss premium chocolates from a friend and was like "thats it?", it was very underwhelming and honestly not even close to as good as fazer
Finn here! did my service in 2022, so very recently.
the smart thing about these MREs is that they're available in the everyday grocery stores, so if a war happens, they can just be refocused to sending the stuff to the military to feed the soldiers instead of filling shelves. not being specifically made by/for the military means there already exists mass production of them instead of "just enough for training" and then being overwhelmed when they need to ramp up by 10 times.
nice vid!
Sure, that applies to every single product and machinery etc., since we adopt the concept of "total war" in wartime, during which most of the resources of the society are put into armed forces. No other choice as a small country.
Where can I buy this? What product should I search for, have not been able to find this.
@@SamiNamiPrisma has those and the outdoor ones. They are expensive tho so keep that in mind
With the current MREs, thats true. Back in 2018 when I did my service time, we had lots of the MRE made by Leijona Catering, which ones you couldn't buy from the shop of course. But we did also get sometimes some Leader porridge and even some really tasty Blå band meals which you can buy anywhere really. Good times, even hauled some of the left over rations and ate those during weekend vacations xD
The "smart" is debatable. Can someone give me one good reason why there are artificial sweeteners in "MRE"?
The xylitol tablets are meant to be schewed and swirled around the mouth kinda. Its meant as a replacement for chewing gum that just coats your teeth with the good stuff.
Xylitol is a special sugar that can't be digested by the bacteria in the mouth so it's effective against caries. But if you eat too much of it you're getting the runs. The majority of special sugars such as mannitol, mannitol, xylitol etc are actually manufactured at my home town here in Finland. And I was shocked to see how strong chemicals were required to extract these products from the raw material. The smell at the factory is mind blowing, a mixture of super sweet and fermentation.
Essentially it's there to help with dental hygiene. Don't want your soldiers to get cavities.
@@Munakas-wq3gp Is it Naantali? I travelled to Sweden by boat from there and the smell from the old sugar factory made me really sick, so I threw up for hours.
@@ac3toni No, Kotka. There is no smell outside the factory, you need to go inside the process room... I'm really surprised you reacted like that.
@@Munakas-wq3gp Its that and vanilla scented candles I cant stand those smells. It also triggers a migraine and that hits me almost instantly like if someone throws a stone on my head.
My experiences in Finnish military were some 20 years ago and I was Auxilary mechanic in the Airforce so our gear was never anything new but here are some notes.
For the cutlery: Soldiers typically were given LuHa, Lusikka-Haarukka (spoon-fork), foldable thing that when opened had spoon in one end and fork in other. I have heard that some troops were given sporks but they were pretty much hated by everyone. Every soldier also should be carrying knife, most likely puukko although because knives are typically owned by the soldiers, there isn't really any standard what kind of knife anyone should have.
As for time the food prep seems to take there are couple of things that may have contributed to that. Water is often available because lakes or snow. In cold weather it's very important to eat *hot* meals because in cold weather energy difference between hot and cold meal is 30%. If you eat cold meals you most likely end up being tired and freezing.
The type of rye bread/cracker is called crisp bread and it's very familiar to all finns from school meals and is also common in homes. That package most have taken some bumps because it normally doesn't crumble like that on its own. Those foil packed bread are also great to have in pantry because they last pretty much forever. Fun little fact: crisp bread also burns rather well and common rumor is that if you spread thin layer of army boot polish to crisp bread you get a great fire starter (I have not tested this)
> if you spread thin layer of army boot polish to crisp bread you get a great fire starter (I have not tested this)
Can confirm, works well, since you're not supposed to pour kerosene onto the kamiina.
@@maxlundgren3482 Should be noted that like particle board a crisp bread burns so hot it can eat through the stove ...
I have this fork/spoon swivel thing in my garage and I was just yesterday thinking to put it to trash 😂
I've heard if you overdo the shoe polish sandwich you can burn through the stove
Edit: And it seems like I skipped over a comment and I am not the only one to have heard that
certified lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas
Kaakaojuomajauhe, Cocoa drink powder. It has three separate words written together, Kaakao and juoma and jauhe, just because we like to write words together, and because we can - just like the Germans. But still we don't shout words and spit in the same way as a vegetarian painter did in the 30s and 40s in Germany.
He brought the spitting and shouting with him from Austrian culture when he migrated to germany.
Are u referring 2 the guy on the film on 1:04 perhaps? With his fellow comrades Herring und Garbage. ua-cam.com/video/isLNLpxpndA/v-deo.html
Yeah, the words are usually written together if the thing spoken about is one certain thing. Not always like that, but easier to explain to foreigners. Cocoadrinkpowder would also be a pretty long English word.
Kaakaojuomajauhepakkausselostevirhekoodintarkistusautomaatiojärjestelmäsuunnitteluprosessi have fun 😁 (It means the design process of an automated system for checking error codes in the packaging description of cocoa drink powder.)
@@ShadowManceri aika paska
The porridges goes a long way when you toss cocoa powder in there. Absolutely banging.
Toss a couple of bits of the chocolate in there as well...
Fr so good
Ooh, never thought of that!
we were in the forest basically 1/3rd of the year. i always had fazer chocolate with me. ofc it was quite hard when it was -30C but totally worth it. always.
We didn't have those packages you could make porrisge in, so I had to make it in Pakki, and I burned my chocolate porridge really badly and Pakki was totally ruined after that.
So we were typically issued Trangia camping stoves for our field ops, which we would primarily use to heat up water, of which we usually have an abundance of. Like we carry a shit ton of water in our vehicles, but it's not like our nature has a shortage of clean fresh water either. We'd use the stoves all year round - no matter if it's summer or winter. Sometimes I'd have somebody from my squad heat up some water for the whole squad and mix all of their meals if we were in a hurry or some other tight spot. Those fifteen minutes (plus boiling time) needed to prepare these can be a luxury at times, as Tyler pointed out too. These hot meals were a real savior when we were up in Lapland in -5 F weather (personally though, those dark chocolate bars were my savior).
And yeah, as another commenter noted out, we were issued sporks and German-style two piece mess kits, but a few years ago at least, the packages would include a flimsy plastic spoon. Can't count how many I snapped in half while mixing the oatmeal. On another note, those sports drink mixes were notorious for tearing up and covering the contents of each MRE package with a sugary powder.
But greetings from Finland! Love your videos.
Thank you so much for the explanation. Makes perfect sense. I can see why those chocolate bars were your favorite!
@@Butterworthdasyrup Another trick up our sleeve was bringing our own electric kettle and hooking that thing up to our APC's power system, but many instructors didn't exactly approve of our meddlings. Luckily our later COs were much more practical and result oriented. The British are so lucky for having a dedicated boiling vessel in every vehicle.
yeah, my love for chokolate has accumulated to the knowledge of its positive effect on my troubled mind, it can put it at ease at worst places with just one bite of that lovely fazer blue original
"How would you heat this up in the woods in Finland" ... Well, you see - Finland has snow, Finland has trees, snow in the liquid form is water, trees in THEIR liquid form is fire. Fire equals heat.
That and they all are having "pakki" with them which doubles as plate and as a kettle, so if there is a fire, there is a way to warm stuff. Also a lot of Finnish streams and rivers are drinking quality and the almost all of the rest of those and lakes are drinking quality after boiling.
It all makes sense now!!!
We just use Jetboils and Trangias now. 😅 Or get distributed boiling water by the auxiliaries.
@@oscarn-Back in the ancient times we just heated water boilers on Xa-185 intercoolers or used trangias 😂
@@magicofshootingstar Its rare that the water ain't drinkable even without boiling, mostly near human settlements or downstream from em that the quality is questionable. Like its really rare that we have some kind of bacteria or parasite in the water that flows, of course if it flows from a lake with a children's swimming beach you might wanna avoid the floaters. If you use common sense when looking for water avoiding places like next to the highway its 99% of the times drinkable without boiling, like look at the content in the flask, if you drink it for a longer time its always better to just boil because you never know if the moose stands upstream laughing at you while filling your bottle. Of course it depends if its spring or mid summer or autumn. In winter pretty much everything is safe even the white snow in cities, yellow snow is a rare delicacy that usually kids enjoy. Did some water testing from different sources back in the day and even the water flowing in a smaller city was pretty clean, like you wont die from drinking it but it might have the taste of rubber.
In the finnish army, you either eat MREs or the stuff field kitchens make...which is always hot and yellow. Doesn't matter what the food is, it's always hot and yellow.
But it allways really good. Or at least it was back in 03-04
After few months in the army I always had hot sauce bottle at hand and would just load every meal with it just to feel something with the exception of oatmeal/porridge. The stuff that the field kitchen made was at times so fucking hideous.
Well tbh sometimes its green and hot. Source, field cook
@@mtlb2674 only thing that sucked there was napalmi hot sticky mashpotatoe (mummonliima) that got stuck in palate and burned through you :D
what you mean by yellow? Food seasoned with turmeric?
Nice to see the Finnish MREs having come a long way from what they were in the late 90s, back then they were mostly off-the-shelf hiking food and canned meals. Some were clearly failed experiments from the hiking food companies, like Ham Pasta with Banana which was just a crime against humanity lol
Tyler, you MUST try ham pasta with banana!!!😂
barf
I remember trying that. Not the greatest.
Kinkkupasta banaanilla oli oikeastaan aika hyvää kun ulkona oli -30 astetta ja lunta pari metriä. Ei tainnut jäädä keneltäkään syömättä.
@@Butterworthdasyrup 🤣
Where do you get clean hot water? in Finland? LOL. Well you get the water of one of the 187,888 lakes.
We should be proud of how clean our country really is. People who haven't traveled abroad don't have any idea how hideous for example Intia smells. It's like a constant pile of shit everywhere you go
Well, times before EU-membershit there was only some 60'000 lakes in Finland. And nowadays that 188'000 - cause nearly every bloody tiny mudhole is considered as a lake.
@@antlamaki1108 Oh! I found where you got that trolling information! You wen't to the one miss spelling in this: Lake Paajarvi is located approximately 100 km north from Helsinki in Finland, a well-known lake country having about 60,000 lakes. In stead of county it says country... You troll you. SHAME!!!!
What a great review. As a international ration collector and reviewer myself, I have never seen a Finnish ration in YT. That’s a great score. Thank you for all of your videos, guests and content!! Cheers.
No idea, but i think when we have that long and cold winter it is better to spend extra time to eat warm food. Boil snow, get dinner and clean drinking water. I really think it worth of it.
Thank you, Tyler, for the sweet mention! Just say the day and I will make you some homemade biscuits and gravy!!🧡✨💚
So sweet that he is clearly proud of you!
@@evilcritter Joshua is just a fantastic young man and he still hugs his mama!! Who could ask for more?!🧡✨💚
@@carriefoscatodesign all a son can do for Mama ; Love Her
@@mikkohonkkila so true!
I just picked up a Finnish M39 from 1942. They were and still are masters of cold weather combat
Now go find Lapua D166 bullets, those two are match made in drawing board
that hot chocolate and coffee has kept me warm during some of the coldest nights of my life in the military.
Kept me alive 30 hours in -20 and probably close to -30 during night at security level CHARLIE exercise. That must've been the hardest night and day of my life. We were guarding a location and were required to not move much at all. 6-7 times, 3-5 hour shifts depending how far you were located from the tent where u got something warm to drink and fill up your bottle with hot water.
Oh my god the feeling when the exercise was finally over and we got on the bus...after that nothing felt hard.
sincerely,
armored infantry platoon sergeant
I took Finland & Finnish food totally granted, then I moved away and wow, the amount of food poisonings I got from so called "good" restaurants was insane!! Now I really appreciate how absolutely clean our lovely country is! Food & water is pure, air is pure, forests, lakes, it's really pure and nicely kept and I'm proud to be a Finnish person once again. Come here in July and you'll see & won't regret it
Surprised Finland doesn’t have salted licorice in their MRE😂
I gotta try some of that!
@@Butterworthdasyrup You won't liiiiiike it! Definitely an acquired taste!
Thing that many seems not realize is that salty taste for salty licorice comes from 'salmiakki' ammonium chloride.
@@Butterworthdasyrup Want me to hook you up with a care package? It'll taste like cough medicine to your palate though. 😂 I'll easily go through an 8 oz bag of that stuff.
Contrary to popular belief, quite a few Finns do not like liquorice, I for one do not like it that much, but Salmiakki, liqourice + ammonium chloride, primo.
As a Finnish reserve jaeger, who spend the spring-winter of 2010 fed on "MRE"'s , always competing with like-mindedly desperate people of my unit for the ration bags with CANNED TUNA, the "MRE" bag in this video seems like a luxurious affair for someone, who spent endless nights camping out in the blizzard, feeding on canned liver paté atop näkkileipä (which in imperialist Swedish is called: "knäckebröd"), Brunberg's dark chockolate bars, Knorr's Chevre&Rucola pasta-bags, eaten from a camping pot you had to clean out after the meal, lest you find yourself waking up with a bad case of Montezuma's revenge during a night sleeping in a squad tent during a blizzard, just to go out for a rectal piss.
As a finnish reserve coastal surveillance corporal I can say I spent a total of 2 days in the tent and enjoyed meals prepared by a professional chef at the garrison lol. Choices, choices.
As the king of the reel-ass' I say the year wasn't all that bad. It was also a year where the summer reached over +30 °C and in winter we actually had a lot of snow, which was nice since the last couple of years before that had been kinda meh. We rarely cooked anything ourselves though, they were training a cooking squad too so if the feeding center was too far to bring warm food from the cooking squad got into action. Actually the best meal I had during the year was made by the cooking squad with a soup cannon, it was mashed potatos and sautéed reindeer.
"keltaista ja kuumaa" or yellow and hot in english. A great nickname for the "food" delivered into the field from the feeding center. Most of my unit despised these MREs but I grew fond of them when I was on a long march in the dead of winter and these were our only food.
@@heikkiostergard4504 When I was in the army we didn't even have MRE:s, just a field kitchen and some tasteless food mixes. Luckily I spent most of my army in a special unit where we had our enlisted cooks cooking real food (no nötkötti).
You didn't use those plastic baggies for your pot so you don't need to clean it? We always had those...well, except for the one guy who had mistakenly bought ordinary baggies instead of ones made for that purpose and he then wondered "where did my baggie go?" after he was done with his meal! (The baggie wasn't meant for hot food so it melted and he basically ate his melted plastic bag)
As a finnish army recon we carry the water with us and have these small "stoves" with us. "Normal" troops eat what field chefs make.
Cocoa, coffee and sugar islike a potion for puskasissi
My experience was that when you have a shooting exercise you get what the field chefs make and when you have a tactical "combat" exercise you get mre
@@affiakerlund6112
Kyllä ampumaradalle tuli eväät ruokalan keittiöltä ja leireillä oli kenttäkeittimet. Sisseillä pussiruoka, jos sellaista tarvitsivat.
@@markonikula2611 meinasin just tää
@@markonikula2611 riippuu monestakin asiasta. En ollut sissi/tiedustelu, syötiin pussiruokaa marsseilla ja parilla leirillä oli vaihe missä syötiin sitä myös. Toki vakiona voi olettaa että syödään kuumaa ja keltaista ja sitten tulee poikkeukset.
You Tube: "We regret to inform subscribers that this will be Tyler's last appearance on this channel. He is being replaced by his children who have recently demonstrated that they have what it takes to make us money... sorry, sergeant."💰💰💰
Hahaha fine I’ll post another treat review with the kids tomorrow
Yup, Josh, Big Fella and the kids. We love you Tyler, but that's the show we want to see now.
Like to see the boys eat an aussie crm 😊 know T-man has. Go the Vegemite 😅
@@rodericklenz5030😂😂
I want all the options!
"Oh yea, we're not going to say that" Let me guess, DanSukker?
Or pussi
Could also have been pussi. (which means bag or pouch)
Sukker Swedish word for Sugar. Google Translate (SWE -ENG): Kom hit sukker lady 😍(english cousins, swedish pronounce hit as you say heat ; allmost like here)
@@mikkohonkkila "Sukker" is Danish, it's "socker" in Swedish
Instant mashed potatoes should be in every ration, loaded with chicken/beef stock and a bit of herbs.
The drink's a bit 'thick' - did you check the instructions? Perhaps it was for 500 ml?
it 100% is, you use one bag for your issued green military water bottle. Made me mad when i saw this part of the vid tbh
@@benjamin6813 actually issued bottle is 1l, so you have to use 2 of those, that is one reason why you allways get 2 citrus and 2 cola.
@@SealedFate1981 The taste is too strong to use 2tbh i was instructed to use 1 and drink the whole 1L anyway. Consuming 4 in one day is not unrealisic as you would easily need 4L of fluids during summer and almost the same during winter field weeks.
@@benjamin6813 That is allso true. Day to day, you need that 4l fluid per day, when in training or true situation. For my tastepuds 2 for 1 litre is all good. That combat ration is for whole day, so everything inside of that bag is needed during heavy training. And for some soldiers is issued allso trangia stove, coz there is some places and situations where you cant use campfire or something like that.
@@SealedFate1981 at best we had trangia, but 8/10 times COLD water 💀. Like porridge is fine with cold but everything else? Nah. Once during summer we left our waterbottles in sunlight for 2 hours to have decent rice
The 120km tunnel is to get fresh water from Päijänne lake to the capital.
the ziplog mechanism is there for reason. your supposed to fill the water and shake that bag fast. (10min for boiling water and getting that stuff in your guts)
17:59 That's what the sugar packets are for, porridge, coffee, tea, sports drinks, usually the MRE rations at least that we got had 8-10 packets of sugar for these.
It's fairly bland since some Finnish palate can be.. well lets say sensitive, salt packets 4 that. The drinks were thick cus you mixed it into about 2-3x less water then it's intended for.
When ur starving those peanuts are so fucking good you cant imagine it, also the dark chocolate... I never liked dark chocolate but that shit bussin when you're starving.
26:22 during the winter it's pretty simple, just boil some snow, during summer find a river, lake, plenty of those, if the training is done in a place where those aren't available logistics will take care of the water supply, and the heat, everyone is capable of starting a fire, or we use electric water heaters, or Trangia.
Näkkileipä, aka Crispbread, is really addictive. You can put anything on top of it and it's good. We usually put butter, cheese and cucumber. Some put ham slices, some put cheese and pickles. And other the ham paste obviously. It's all good.
The best of two worlds, näkkileipä and Kalles kaviar. :)
I was expecting that reaction from the chocolate. It's was so good, especially during combat training. The MRE's were fine, i guess. The problem was that they were usually heated up with lukewarm water that was brought from the supply pickup point, so they never cooked properly.
No wonder because they are made by Brunberg, their chocolate is so good!
Nothing in this world has ever tasted as good as hard rye bread and meat paste after spending an entire day in a snowy forest in freezing temperatures. When you finally got into a warm tent in the evening, cold, hungry, and exhausted, crawling into your sleeping bag and getting to eat this combination felt like heaven back then.
Edit. There is also a tuna version. We used to suck that straight from the tube. It was easy way to get energy when you didn't have time to stop to eat.
And vegan version. Had to eat it to not die, but i think it was actually just play dough
The Tunnel you are talking about in 1:05, is the Päijänne Water Tunnel, providing Helsinki with water from the lake Päijänne. Not for driving. :D For transporting water.
It's big enough to drive through with trucks during maintenance breaks though.
If your coffee is bitter, put a little salt in it VERY little, and it will decrease the bitterness!
The beef and mash potato dish is also called 'hot meal' in Finland. Because it really burns your mouth if you're not careful. It used to be one of the favourite school lunches here. I don't know if they still have it on the lunch menu at schools.
I love that ham paste. You can get it from all the grocery stores and I buy it pretty often. Finns are not as crazy about the tube food as the Norwegians are but we do have our tubed ham, liver, and tuna pastes. And of course Kalle's caviar, the iconic tubed fish egg paste from Sweden that almost every pensioner loves, and some younger people too I guess 😂.
That chocolate is probably made by a small(ish) chocolate manufacturer Brunberg in Porvoo, Finland.
Most chocolate in Finland is super good, the art was learned from the Swiss.
It used to be that the finnish mres were built out of readily available products from shops etc. After "leijona catering" took over it started making these with some propietary and some still off the shelves stuff.
The one i sent you is not the same "menu" so you can pretty much do another video from it still if ya want. I dont think anyone on youtube has had 2 of these ever 🤣
Pretty sure that is still the case. Leijona Catering contracts domestic companies to produce to a set price - take it or leave it. So a lot of it might be name brand stuff without the branding. The back will still probably say "Produced by Fazer" for the chocolate or the rye crisp bread by "Vaasan", for example.
@@EggwardEgghands Likely true, It just used to be with the full commercial branding on the products before. Now theres the leijona products and i think youre right that its done like that for those.
@@EggwardEgghandsThis was definitely the case for the jaegers in Soviet-stopper Kainuun prikaati, back in 2010. The MRE bags were always filled with some on-brad goods like quick-meal-pasta-bags from Knorr (KNORR as in Marco Pierre White's meme videos), Brunberg's dark chockolate in off-brad wrapping etc.
I have had Leijona caterings own green bags, blå band, knorr and these leader foods when I was in army or do training afterwards. It's where they get it cheap and available. These leader foods are available also in every sports or camping store so it's easy to obtain and send to defence forces during crisis.
@@EggwardEgghandsIf I remember correctly, the chocolate is by Brunberg. I think there was a Brunberg logo on the back.
The dried bread thingie is pretty much same we had back in Winter War... Recipe haven't changed much, it is like 99% same, used to also eat it in school back in '80s and '90s, kids today have fresh bread, the little lucky bastards... 😂
About these mints. They are xylitol mints. Basically are not toothpaste but xylitol is to protect your teeth similar to toothpaste as in field conditions you likely are not able to brush your teeth. A lot of kids take these after lunch in kindergarden or at school.
Tomorrow im going to buy some kinkkutahnaa for some reason i started to crave it xD
Same here. 😅🤣
@@oscarn- i ran out of it :D
At work, with powdered juice, I always add a small amount of hot water to dissolve the powder since cold water never does a good job at it. It may not be as cold but anything is decent when you're thirsty!
smart!
Im from finland and people call us spade as like spade of ace whats our logo and my job is to cook food behind fighting lines so that soldiers get fresh food just made warm delivered to them.
what we had to eat food in the field is a spork. But not like a spork that you think about, where it's a spoon with the fork prongs at the end, instead it's a piece of cutlery where one end is a spoon and the other end is a fork, and you can rotate the fork part over the spoon part to make it fit in your bag or wherever you want to keep it, also helps keep the fork from poking holes into everything.
It's called LuHa (spork, but in Finnish)
i import these freeze dryed stuff for years now from finnland because they are so good. use them for hiking my favorite ist the Pasta carbonara soo yummy
Aimo Koivunen is cooler than Simo Häyhä if you ask me. He ate his patrols entire supply of Pervitin/methamphetamine and lived on pine cones and one siberian blue jay for a week.
Eh Koivunen was just a tweaker that did some incredible shit while high af. Häyhä fought both Winter, and Continuation Wars, killed 500+ Soviets, got shot in the cheek with an explosive bullet, survived when his mates thought he was dead, he was operated and went into coma, woke up, and the same day the peace deal was signed, in my opinion it's quite clear who is the badass out of these two.
Koivunen was a warrior too but I think his achievement gets diminished significantly since he was powered up by meth.
@@unknownentity8256 Yeah but everyone has heard about Häyhä while Koivunen is more obscure. And a more fun story imo.
Remembering my service days we called the smash potato ones napalm it will stuck on the roof of you're mouth and burn 😂 but we didn't pour hot water on the meals. We had own pots and pans and cooked on fire 😅
That coffee tastes like ass but we used to get small single serving milk cartons and sometimes I used to dump 2 coffee bags in there with 1 sugar, then shake it until it was dissolved. No bitterness plus you didn't have to burn your mouth to get the coffee down in the morning if in a hurry. Honeynuts were a fucking treat after a week on the training camp in the woods.
I dare you to eat Leader's "Tikka Masala" and "Mediterranean casserole" for one week straight
I raise your bet with eating a veggie omelet three times in one day.
@@Butterworthdasyrup That sounds something I wouldn't touch with a 6 ft stick
Ah yes, the all familiar 'mediterranean asshole'... or the curry rice that had the consistency of a crumbled pencil eraser. Does not bring back fond memories.
Sounds like something you would vomelet...
Try Blå Band's taco stew.... I had that in one of the mre's and I gotta say that thing is worse than leader's tikka masala.....
Yep, In Finnish military we do have something called "Lusikka-Haarukka" or "LuHa" in short. Which literally translated means "Spoon-Fork" (Spork) And basically is a two sided utensil, other end having a spoon and other side being a fork
spork and luha are different tho.. spork is spoon and fork in 1. luha has 1 fork and 1 spoon. they are not combined into spork.
They are only the same in direct translation.
Finnish troops are issued a metal spork and a german style metal mess kit, mess kit is quite a large vessel to boil water in. Group of soldiers is also likely to have a small tent with a stove in it for taking shelter on the field in the winter. If having such a shelter or a fire is not an option, hot water is carried in a thermal container to the troops.
Use the Spork, Luke! :)
Friend of mine ate so much of that pork paste during his service that he cant stand even seeing it anymore. He also had an unfortunate accident when he stuffed a pack of yoghurt in the pocket of his trousers. It exploded in the pocket during training when hitting the deck. 😂
180 000 lakes
6 month -30 winter
But where are they gonna get water?
Yus! I love these I look forward to them and get so excited when they pop up!
I gave these to my father on father’s days when I was in the military 😹😹😹
I bet he enjoyed them
A typical Finnish military meal when you are in a garrison are pea soup and pancake on every Thursday, and crispbread containing mostly rye flour. Besides there's a military canteen when you can buy coffee and always fresh cinnamon rolls and doughnots. Most Finnish men are very familiar with army food because there has been a mandatory military service for men since 1917, and voluntary military service for women since 1995.
This is much more convenient than the crap we got in 2009. The packet had like 20 different items, with the best (most convenient) being instant noodles and a can of tuna. Then there was a bunch of cans like pasta bolognese or pea soup. To make them properly, you had to cook them in a pot (it would be dirty after each meal). We also got Norwegian MRE's which were much like these, where you just add water. They were much better (except the catfish meal 🤢). With these types its a good idea to heat the water beforehand and pour it into a thermos. Then you can prepare it pretty much at any time, while sitting on a truck, on a break etc. and its always a warm meal.
I never found that a problem to cook the meal in the pot (or in trangia). It was fast, easy and it was no problem to make dishes after the meal. I was in service 03-04.
@@mtlb2674 you must not have been in a very much of a hurry. 😅
I was in the artillery. So there never was a hurry when we were eating. KSE 😇
@@mtlb2674 I was in jaegers, forward observer to be specific. I remember very fondly one cold morning in Rova when we were given 10 minutes (that is really like 5 minutes) and "everyone then cooks that porridge!" In the end I just had to force that undercooked hot porridge down my throat. With these new and the Norwegian meals, we could just boil the water and then eat in the back of that truck.
I spent two weeks at Rovajärvi in november-december 03. Were never had to hurry our meals. During that time I ate the best peasuop in life (so much peas and meat in it). Also the poronkäristys was delicious. Without mentioning the pizzas and sausages we ate in the tent at night time when doing 'kipinä'. But during that two weeks had about 3 hours sleep per day. I fell in sleep twice when driving my MT-LB-U armoured vehicle from the training area to the train station. And that was in public roads in the midlle of the civilian traffic. Those two weeks were a lot of fun but also so exhausting.
The ham paste and crispbread were my delicacy during conscription service
Re hydrated mashed potatoe, that...I can eat. ❤😂
The tunnel is for fresh water
The funny thing about snow is that it melts when you heat it up. Even boils. And then again, if that's not enough, it is called the land of a thousand lakes. Pretty sure taking a Trangia along ain't that uncommon either.
The sports drink sachet is meant to mixed with one liter of water. Exactly the amount of water, that fits in the Finnish canteen.
Finnish MP from 08-09 here. The military cooks do a good job making stuff for the field (sadly the MP didn't get to eat very much, lol). Those rations are surprisingly good too. I only got to eat them during one camp/military exercise.
Oh shit.. comments are about to pop off when the Swedes see this.
I was one of those who didn't really like the ham patee. Paste as you called it. I traded that for the tuna cans/pouches. 2/14 and ISAF 2016-2018
Squads are usually issued one heater and a bottle of lighter fluid. How we did these MREs was that one person would take the time to prep all the meals, while the others are doing business. Water is easy to find when you have snow on the ground 75% of the time per year. Other times water is stored in tents. Also there are some MREs that are vacuum sealed and don't need to be heated (my experience was some mashed vegetable mix with beans).
Spork is the word You are looking for
sissi muona! (guirella's Meal) That takes Me back in good ol' conscript days, remembering how that sports drink's smell would stay in Flask for months even when I washed it multiple times
(some flasks weren't the newest from stock so that's why)
fun fact most parts of the mre incuding all the meals and drinks arecommonly awailable from normal crosery stores.
The prepackaged meals in supermarkets in Finland are surprisingly good. I remember getting some fish soup just because yk I couldn't read the box. Could have easily been a full meal with some potatoes (They do carry all kinds at PRISMA - really huge produce section) - Some other stuff can be weird, I remember being asked if I wanted a burger and I was like omg yes and I ended up getting mostly rice between two buns - really confused the heck out of me.
Thoroughly enjoyable, kudos to you both for the video!
I'm so using that "nature valley them selves everywhere" hahaha that got me good
The field cutlery in germany is called KOCHGESCHIRR!
80' we had dry round bread, what was quite hard. Similar to that one. We called it the clutch plate. It was meant for horses and soldiers. It was always in almost everyone's pocket and it didn't crumble.
We get water from snow or lakes....and plenty of firewood
Those sport drinks needs half liter water.
So we have the picky eater and the one who eats his plate clean and then everyone's leftovers. There's Swiss chocolate tradition going on in Finland. Xylitol is put to toothpaste, gum etc.
quality food is good morale booster for sure.
If I can see correctly, the bread is näkkileipä, which is crisp bread in English. It is a staple food in Finland. The chocklad is probably so good because natural milk has been used instead of milk powder.
My service ended just a few months ago and as someone who has eaten these, the best of the best was the pasta meal and ham paste on dry bread. Also it was a jackpot if u got a chocolate bar in ur mre pack as not every packet had the same meals. One bar of chocolate can take u far when in the military xP
Very nice spread friends. We have A friend in this community from Finland, who would enlighten even more info, should you ever need it. All components you tried, looked awesome. Your translations are better than I could do, so I am impressed at least, LOL. I love the fact you are not afraid to try something un are unfamiliar with. Always try, then if you don't like, then you know. Never just say no, unless obviously spoiled. Always free for biscuits and gravy, agreed. The Brits had the cola drinks in their ration packs for yrs. Tasted like flat cola, but I always enjoyed it. I highly enjoyed your review, as always. Peace from Kentucky, John. Hope you both had some fun.
back in my time at Finnish military, i usually mixed few pieces of chocolate in porridge to get some flavor on it, and back then we had blueberry soup in MRI as well, so we usually played a bit with our MRI to mix better combinations
Its called Lusikkahaarukka 🇫🇮
That was what we were eating in conscription service. We have own waterboilers with us and there is water everywhere available. If you have 10 minute break you boil water and put it to foodbag, when there is next break your food is ready. You can eat nuts and rye bread on the go. 💪
My combat vest had always atleast 4 bars of chocolate. Perks of having friends who were field cooks 😂I ate so much of the Kinkku-pastejia that even the smell of them makes me gag today
Background music should have been “Finlandia” by Jan Sibelius.
Will let our editor know for next time!
Nice to see two kids trying our food. As a reservist, I think food is great in Finnish military! (Spent a week of my vacation at CIOR event, and all food was culinary.) And every real man starts his day with an oat porridge! That is a fact.
Fun thing about those Nut Walker salted peanuts and honey peanuts.
Those are made in Thailand and if you look closely you can see that on the packaging the word "Nettopaino" (the net weight) is misspelled as "Nettopiano" (a net piano) :D
i love the fact that these guys go through the same thing that most finnish enlisted go, but without the cold and hurry :D
Hey I was wondering when I would see this post! I’m glad you got to try it and share it with your audience! Thanks for sending me some stickers!
You can just close the bags after pouring water and give it a shake and keep it sealed for a while, thats how it gets done nicely
Suomi always wins, with everything 🙄 😅 🎉❤🇫🇮
Thanks for the video!
as a person who spend way too much time in the forest with finnish military you probobly got the best package only i would always change the porridge to to yogurt, but the mashed potatoes was almost like a currency everyone wanted it and maybe we had little fights over it (havent watched more than whats in the bag)
edit after watching the video:
1. usually i would put little more water than they say no matter what the product is imo makes it so much better. and we didnt stir the bags with spoons or forks, we shaked them like crazy
2. the chiracha would go in bot lunch and dinner meals. (for me, I would even ask if anyone didnt want to use theirs to get it in both meals)
3. the sports drinks i would usually put one or two bags in to the 1l bottle that we have
4. the coffee depends who do you ask from but for me i would go one or two days without coffee and put two or three bags of coffee in to make one drink
5. the nuts and the chocolate are god tier when you have been in the forest whole day.
Ah come on...I am German and I joke with my girlfriend in the kitchen a lot about the "GESCHMACK!" meme. XD keep at it! Also in other news: Great video about the Finnish MRE!
I must say that pronouncing is quite good. I accept. Second note. Finnish chocolate is quite good, sadly not many people know how good. I hope everyone has chance to try it out one day!
I’d love to see you taste astronaut space food rations
Great idea!
Thank you for the fun, family-friendly content. You guys 🪨 (or something)
The stainless steel folding spoon-fork must be one of the oldest pieces if equipment that is still standard issue in the Finnish military.
Those portions are large when you are in warm summer conditions, but when you are moving on skis for long distances in arctic winter temperatures, your body may use up to 7000 calories per day, mostly just for keeping body heat.
Most Finns like the crisp rye bread. No matter how much experience you have, it is still completely impossible to eat a crisp bread on a sofa without making a mess.
Was In army In Finland back 1988,and all food was good, even these you make by yourself at woods
Winter in Finland... There's probably a lots of snow, so clean water isn't an issue but fire would be. If you're cold and hungry, you'd probably eat the s#&t anyways... 😂
6:15 it´s called "Essbesteck"
"Ess" comes from "Essen" which means "eat/ing"
I´m not very good in explain something in english and my english isn´t very good too. But I´ll try it anyway..
If you want to spell "Geschmack". You say the "A" like "Ä" which stays for "ae". It´s more like "apple" which means in german "Apfel/Äpfel"
But the normal A, like in "Geschmack" is more like " A ttention" but a little bit higher. You could try the google translate for attention -> Aufmerksamkeit and press the sound icon.
But yeah, it´s very complicated.
I mean, you have "the" and we´ve der,die,das,dem,den,.... haha.
Greetings from germany again.
Ben :)
Edit: I love your humor about german stuff. :D
Finland is known to have good chocolate. Mainly because know-how was original recipe and know-how was imported from Switzerland in 1920s by Carl Fazer. We Fins really appreciate good quality chocolate. It is rather expensive but we value quality over quantity or cheap price.