It's not often I write about meat. But we live in interesting times, so let's have a look at some meat. Morliny Hamburger Patties. From Poland, land of meat.
If this blog had any long-term readers they would probably wonder why I started writing about MREs a few years ago. MREs are ready-to-eat military meals from the United States. They were developed as a compact replacement for canned rations. The first MREs were fielded in the early 1980s, but I've always associated them with the 1991 Gulf War. Plastic food for a plastic war.
The various different members of NATO have their own analogue of US MREs. Italian and French MREs get high marks on the internet for the quality of the food. Some Italian MREs even have a little packet of alcoholic cordial. I haven't tried them. I have however tried some Polish MREs, and they stand out for the quality and quantity of their meat.
But why did I write about MREs? Earlier this year I popped over to Greenland to have a bash at some hiking on the arctic circle trail, but my original plan was to go in 2020. Back then I did some research, assembled some equipment, booked my trip, and thought about the type of food I would eat. And then I put everything in a cupboard because COVID put the brakes on international travel for two years. Greenland came through COVID better than most, with around 12,000 cases and 21 deaths, but I imagine the country's tenuous economy was hit hard.
The trail takes about ten days to navigate. It's not technically hard - you don't need crampons - but there is no chance of resupply. Between Kangerlussuaq and Sisimiut there are a few hiking huts, but no roads, no shops, very little trace of human life. You have to carry ten days' worth of food in your backpack. That's around 20-30,000 calories, or alternatively four kilograms of butter or, more rationally, about eight kilograms of cheese, nuts, beef, and chocolate.
I quickly decided that MREs were a bad idea. They're good for weekend hiking, but for ten days they're far too bulky. Each MRE is a single meal, so over ten days I would need to carry at least twenty of them, which would take up all of the space in my backpack even after stripping out the flameless heaters and spoons and so on. I would still be left with masses of plastic packaging that I'd have to carry with me until I found a rubbish bin. It just wouldn't work. MREs are still fascinating novelties, which is why I continued to write about them after I had rejected them, but they're not practical long-distant hiking food.
In the end I brought along a Trangia cooker and some rice, plus a pot cosy, and some powdered soup, stock cubes, olive oil, beef jerky. After a bit of experimentation I worked out a method of cooking rice that used as little fuel as possible. The tricky bit was "the meat". What to go with the rice? Spam? Cheese? Nuts? After scouring corner shops and pound shops I tried out a bunch of processed-and-probably-sterile meat, thus the subject of this blog post.
What is Morliny? It's a brand, or a sub-brand, of Animex Foods, which was founded in Warsaw during the days of the Soviet Bloc. Animex was bought up by Smithfield Foods of the United States in 1999, which in turn was bought by China's Shuanghui Group in 2013. Was the sale controversial? We were pally with China in 2013, but I imagine some people back then were worried that China was trying to adulterate people's precious bodily fluids. I'm not worried because I drink a lot of alcohol, which has the effect of sterilising my blood. Checkmate, China.
Animex's most famous brand is Krakus, which was aimed at the export market and has been around forever. Morliny itself was invented in 1992, presumably for the Polish domestic market, although by a quirk of fate Polish domestic food is now sold quite widely here in the UK. Judging by the packaging these burgers are made in Poland and shipped to the UK, or train-ed, whatever.
I picked some up from the Polish section of my local supermarket. They're pre-cooked. The instructions suggest microwaving them or putting them in the oven or frying them; I grilled mine, which made the exterior crispy but didn't change the appearance very much:
Here in the UK we have something called Westler's Tinned Hamburgers. They're infamously bad. They come four to a can, with gravy, and there are lots of blog posts about them. I tried one a long time ago. Imagine eating a blood clot that doesn't taste of anything. It's not so much that the taste was revolting, it's that it had no taste but was slippery and greasy and insubstantial.
Morliny's burgers are a couple of levels better. Not good, but at least edible, which might be why no-one on the internet seems to have written about them. Have you ever tasted grilled Spam? The Morliny burger tastes of grilled Spam, but without the salt, so in other words it doesn't taste of much at all. It has a very vague and inoffensive savoury taste, but otherwise nothing.
On the positive side it isn't covered in slippery gravy, and it has a mouthfeel; not a great mouthfeel, but at least it has one.
Morliny Hamburger Patties are essentially a hot filler for the inside of a hamburger bun rather than something you might eat by itself. The suggested burger on the packet - with bacon and a slice of egg - would be palatable, but you'd only taste the bacon. But on the other hand they're vastly superior to Westler's hamburgers and are at the least inoffensive. Furthermore they're only about £1 for a packet, but they're quite small, so you might want to double up.
How long do they keep without refrigeration? I have no idea. My hunch is that reheating them with a Trangia would be trivially easy, and if you bought along some onion and tomato ketchup you would have a decent camping meal, the end.
