The idea of a meal in a can seems wrong, so I don't know what to make of the news from Food2, about a new British product that encapsulates meals in self-heating cans. Hotcan choices are non-toxic, have a three-year shelf life and "no unpleasant odor."
"The ability for food and beverages to heat themselves sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it's not!" advertises Hotcan's Web site.
Chicken casserole, all day breakfast, vegetable curry, and sausages and beans are among the seven flavors -- all of which seem to be crap shoots of different magnitude. Although the company only ships in England, there are "international oppertunities," which, just based on the spelling, suggest the distribution network isn't quite going to reach us in Kansas City.
This isn't a well-developed niche market and past response to meals in cans has been tepid. Consider the cheeseburger in the can,
which made the rounds last year. The Onion AV Club tried the offering from Germany, to the disgust of all who sampled it, though this video review suggests it was "kinda ok."
But canned meals have a much-longer history inside the armed forces. A half-pound of emergency rations was touted as "a day's meal in a can the size of a cake of soap" by The New York Times back in 1910. There is probably a reason that the emergency rations from 1910 haven't been adapted for the commercial market.
The
moral may be that it's best to stick with established canned goods based around a few ingredients.
There's even a cookbook, A Man, A Can, A Plan to guide you through the process.
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