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
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.
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
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.
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.)
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
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
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.
The chocolate bar (Leijona tumma suklaa) is produced by Brunberg, Finland's oldest chocolate factory located in Porvoo. This chocolate is made for Leijona Catering, a Finnish catering company whose largest client is the Finnish Defence Forces. While Leijona chocolate is not sold publicly, Brunberg offers its own branded chocolate nationwide and also has an online shop.
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.
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
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
"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.
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!!!!
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.
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.
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)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
That rye bread is a staple and served in every finnish school with every single meal. I remember back in the day I did my service tending the fire at night and spending my hour both stoking the fire in the tent and being fastidious with putting canned tuna on my crisp bread just to pass the time.
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.
@@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.
That näkkileipä (crispbread) is 100% rye, it is very Finnish (and kind of Nordic thing too) and it used to be everywhere. Soldiers eat a lot of it as it has so much fiber and it's healthy too. When I served, early 90's in the Navy infantry, the huge box of "näkkäri" they delivered to us on marches and survival training said "Only for conscripts and horses" on it, because normal people would be very backed up if they ate a lot of it.
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 😂.
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.
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.
@@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.
I hiked with my husband in UKK National Park in Finland longest for 19 days in wilderness. We drank water from small rivers. The only water we carried: a tiny, tested, liquid soap suitable for both hygiene as well as a drop for washing dishes, a tiny amount of toothpaste, well-salted butter and cheese and 2 spoons of rhum/person for evening fires. All vegetables and meat were dried by ourselves. Instad of carrying water we chose to carry heavy camera equipment. My Backbag still weighted 26 kg:s me weighting 55kg.
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.
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)
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... 😂
@@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
Thanks guys for making an intresting show, with good quality. And one REALLY nice thing is, that you guys are NOT screaming all the time like most of the RUclipsrs. Calm, funny and you guys seem to have good manners. Keep on rocking! I stumbled upon this vid, and subscribed.
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 😅
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
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.
4 месяца назад+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.
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)
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)
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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."💰💰💰
About water... this is Finland you're talking about. Remember those 180K lakes? Any will have drinkable water if you just boil it and most of the time it would be safe to use even without boiling the water. And the land is full of trees so there's no lack of wood to burn either. And during winter, you use snow and fire to boil water. It will work fine, just take quite some time to melt and boil.
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.
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.
Only on one trip I got food made by spades. Rest of the time it was about once a day warm food and rest of the time, eating what was in the bags dry or even frozen like canned pea soup. When all water was frozen solid, I learned to enjoy that cocoa powder as powder and the sports drinks too.
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.
Best trick with that MRE is to mix the coffee, cocoa and creamer in to one canteen. It tastes really great and it will wake you up in the morning or keep you going during the night!
In finnish army all get a standrad equipment "Lusikkahaarukka" aka "luha" which is this tool that has metal fork and spoon and opens like a swiss army knife.
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.
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. 😂
I was in finnish army early 90's. I was leader of service group and one weekend we got 300 curds as dessert for 150 men. We kept those for our 10 men service group. I ate about 30 in two days. I have not eaten curds since. That year, I also gave my mom 10 kg can of pickles as christmas gift.
We eat näkkileipä almost every day here in Finland. Especially in the army and school, it's served with every meal. It's maybe the cheapest food product you can imagine, and it's good. You can also add some butter and cheese on it and dip it in tea.
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
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.
currently serving myself, i tell ya, if you arent picky and tight with money, hoard these meal pouches, they preserve for forever and are great meals when prepared the right way, plus you will have access to dosens of those packs at the unit because almost no one takes their left over meals home
4 месяца назад+1
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. 💪
I'm a Finn, living a bit aside on the demilitarized Åland islands. This video made me obsessed to try out the ham paste. I scoured all the local shops to no avail - until the last one provided me with a shop brand variety. I came home and squeezed some on a rye bread right away... And now I'm like "Oh, so that's how it tastes. ...Or does it?" Maybe I'll give it another try when I'm shopping on mainland Finland and find the brand you used.
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!
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.
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).
1 bag of that sports drink powder is usually mixed with 1L of water. (Finnish canteen is 1L) Your drinks were probably on the strong side. :D We also have this foldable tool called "Luha" (LUsikka-HAarukka) which means Spoon-Fork. We use that to eat. Also to heat water we usually use "Trangia", which is a basically a camping stove. Some hardcore people have some heaters that use gas but the "Trangia"'s are the ones sponsored by government. We also tested this new ration which is a vacuum sealed bag of food inside a larger bag. The larger bag has a small bag of some chemical in it which starts realeasing heat after you add water to it. It was actually very good and fast.
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.
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
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.
I served my mandatory conscription service in 2023 and I had to survive some war exercises solely with those food packs. It has a lot of content to make sure that every soldier is getting enough food intake during war exercises (Especially in the winter) Heating those up in the forest sometimes was a little challenging.
The tunnel you mention is called the Päijänne tunnel and it is not for driving, freshwater flows through the tunnel from Lake Päijänne to near Helsinki, whwere it is used as drinking (tap) water for the whole Helsinki region. Come taste it, the water is fine. 🙂
You have the "pakki" its metallic mess tin. You can heat your food in it or if we talk about the "survival" food you heat water in it and voila. Hot food hot water.
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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
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.
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"?
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 :-)
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. ruclips.net/video/isLNLpxpndA/видео.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
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
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
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?
The chocolate bar (Leijona tumma suklaa) is produced by Brunberg, Finland's oldest chocolate factory located in Porvoo. This chocolate is made for Leijona Catering, a Finnish catering company whose largest client is the Finnish Defence Forces. While Leijona chocolate is not sold publicly, Brunberg offers its own branded chocolate nationwide and also has an online shop.
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. :)
Combine näkkileipä with army shoe polish and you have excellent firestarter.
Or Näkkäri
I recommend chili-flavored cream cheese and tuna mixed as a paste on knäckebröd
Kalle's kaviar and knäckebröd - aren't they from the same world 😊
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 🤣
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
"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.
@@onr-o1hBack 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.
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!!!!
@@antlamaki1108 Not true.
The same number of lakes have been mentioned before the membership of the EU. I checked it up.
@@antlamaki1108 ' symbol isn't a separator here, it's 60 000 and 188 000. Comma in the US.
The 120km tunnel is to get fresh water from Päijänne lake to the capital.
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.
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.
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)
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
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
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!
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.
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.
That rye bread is a staple and served in every finnish school with every single meal. I remember back in the day I did my service tending the fire at night and spending my hour both stoking the fire in the tent and being fastidious with putting canned tuna on my crisp bread just to pass the time.
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
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! :)
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.
Instant mashed potatoes should be in every ration, loaded with chicken/beef stock and a bit of herbs.
That näkkileipä (crispbread) is 100% rye, it is very Finnish (and kind of Nordic thing too) and it used to be everywhere. Soldiers eat a lot of it as it has so much fiber and it's healthy too. When I served, early 90's in the Navy infantry, the huge box of "näkkäri" they delivered to us on marches and survival training said "Only for conscripts and horses" on it, because normal people would be very backed up if they ate a lot of it.
better than "normal" bread
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 😂.
To add to the tubed things, Voileipä Pikkelssi is also very good!
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.
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.
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!
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.
I hiked with my husband in UKK National Park in Finland longest for 19 days in wilderness. We drank water from small rivers. The only water we carried: a tiny, tested, liquid soap suitable for both hygiene as well as a drop for washing dishes, a tiny amount of toothpaste, well-salted butter and cheese and 2 spoons of rhum/person for evening fires. All vegetables and meat were dried by ourselves. Instad of carrying water we chose to carry heavy camera equipment. My Backbag still weighted 26 kg:s me weighting 55kg.
The sports drink sachet is meant to mixed with one liter of water. Exactly the amount of water, that fits in the Finnish canteen.
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.
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)
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... 😂
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
Thanks guys for making an intresting show, with good quality.
And one REALLY nice thing is, that you guys are NOT screaming all the time like most of the RUclipsrs. Calm, funny and you guys seem to have good manners.
Keep on rocking!
I stumbled upon this vid, and subscribed.
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 😅
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
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.
Another fun fact about Finland: They have the highest concentration of metal bands per capita in the world, with about 58 per 100K.
"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
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)
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.
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.
Näkkileipä is the typical bread/crackers that every school cafeteria has and you can eat as many as you want
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!
Background music should have been “Finlandia” by Jan Sibelius.
Will let our editor know for next time!
Jean
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.
Yus! I love these I look forward to them and get so excited when they pop up!
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.
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!
About water... this is Finland you're talking about. Remember those 180K lakes? Any will have drinkable water if you just boil it and most of the time it would be safe to use even without boiling the water. And the land is full of trees so there's no lack of wood to burn either. And during winter, you use snow and fire to boil water. It will work fine, just take quite some time to melt and boil.
i love the fact that these guys go through the same thing that most finnish enlisted go, but without the cold and hurry :D
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.
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.
Spade honor
T. Superspade
Only on one trip I got food made by spades. Rest of the time it was about once a day warm food and rest of the time, eating what was in the bags dry or even frozen like canned pea soup.
When all water was frozen solid, I learned to enjoy that cocoa powder as powder and the sports drinks too.
Tomorrow im going to buy some kinkkutahnaa for some reason i started to crave it xD
Same here. 😅🤣
@@onr-o1h i ran out of it :D
Thanks
I'm half-Finn. I love their language, I think its so cute.
Thoroughly enjoyable, kudos to you both for the video!
I gave these to my father on father’s days when I was in the military 😹😹😹
I bet he enjoyed them
I'm glad to see the crisp bread packaging hasn't change in the past 20 years at least.
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.
That ham paste is the bomb! Absolutely loved it in the army
I'm so using that "nature valley them selves everywhere" hahaha that got me good
Best trick with that MRE is to mix the coffee, cocoa and creamer in to one canteen. It tastes really great and it will wake you up in the morning or keep you going during the night!
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
In finnish army all get a standrad equipment "Lusikkahaarukka" aka "luha" which is this tool that has metal fork and spoon and opens like a swiss army knife.
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.
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. 😂
I was in finnish army early 90's. I was leader of service group and one weekend we got 300 curds as dessert for 150 men. We kept those for our 10 men service group. I ate about 30 in two days. I have not eaten curds since. That year, I also gave my mom 10 kg can of pickles as christmas gift.
The ham paste and crispbread were my delicacy during conscription service
The tunnel is for fresh water
We eat näkkileipä almost every day here in Finland. Especially in the army and school, it's served with every meal. It's maybe the cheapest food product you can imagine, and it's good. You can also add some butter and cheese on it and dip it in tea.
I can feel the moment they realize the love of the food in their bellies and the taste of the chocolate -> and they will bring the country to victory.
fun fact most parts of the mre incuding all the meals and drinks arecommonly awailable from normal crosery stores.
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
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.
currently serving myself, i tell ya, if you arent picky and tight with money, hoard these meal pouches, they preserve for forever and are great meals when prepared the right way, plus you will have access to dosens of those packs at the unit because almost no one takes their left over meals home
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. 💪
I'm a Finn, living a bit aside on the demilitarized Åland islands. This video made me obsessed to try out the ham paste. I scoured all the local shops to no avail - until the last one provided me with a shop brand variety. I came home and squeezed some on a rye bread right away... And now I'm like "Oh, so that's how it tastes. ...Or does it?" Maybe I'll give it another try when I'm shopping on mainland Finland and find the brand you used.
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!
spoon and fork thing is called LuHa here in finland. It's LusikkaHaarukka (SpoonFork in english). So u can call it SpoFo :D
Spork!
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 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.....
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).
1 bag of that sports drink powder is usually mixed with 1L of water. (Finnish canteen is 1L) Your drinks were probably on the strong side. :D
We also have this foldable tool called "Luha" (LUsikka-HAarukka) which means Spoon-Fork. We use that to eat.
Also to heat water we usually use "Trangia", which is a basically a camping stove. Some hardcore people have some heaters that use gas but the "Trangia"'s are the ones sponsored by government.
We also tested this new ration which is a vacuum sealed bag of food inside a larger bag. The larger bag has a small bag of some chemical in it which starts realeasing heat after you add water to it. It was actually very good and fast.
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.
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
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.
I served my mandatory conscription service in 2023 and I had to survive some war exercises solely with those food packs.
It has a lot of content to make sure that every soldier is getting enough food intake during war exercises (Especially in the winter)
Heating those up in the forest sometimes was a little challenging.
The tunnel you mention is called the Päijänne tunnel and it is not for driving, freshwater flows through the tunnel from Lake Päijänne to near Helsinki, whwere it is used as drinking (tap) water for the whole Helsinki region. Come taste it, the water is fine. 🙂
You have the "pakki" its metallic mess tin. You can heat your food in it or if we talk about the "survival" food you heat water in it and voila. Hot food hot water.