Have you ever been so hungry that you raided your pantry or snack stash and devoured everything in sight, even plowing through previously opened bags of chips well past their sell-by date? We’ve all taken a bite of something that was a little past its prime, but what if you ate a snack that was 153 years past its expiration date? One brave soul did and he wasn’t dared to do it either.
Steve1989 MREinfo is a YouTuber who is an expert on taste testing military rations. MREs already have a checkered reputation, but Steve doesn’t review fresh rations on his channel, he’s into more vintage flavors. He’s eaten everything from spaghetti from the Vietnam Era to chocolate from WWII, but in his latest video he takes retro war zone eating to the extreme sinking his teeth into a Civil War Era hardtack, which is basically a large cracker that looks like a thicker version of matzo. Steve described the taste as a mixture of “old library books, moth balls, and rubber tires.” How this guy knows what an old library book tastes like I don’t want to know, but considering he’s eaten military rations that your grandfather wouldn’t even chow down on during the Invasion of Normandy, he’s probably licked an old dusty copy of War and Peace just for curiosity’s sake.
Despite the hardtack’s age, it’s incredibly preserved. According to Steve, hardtack was even prone to being infested by maggots. Most likely, the maggots died off as this hardtack appears to be bug free. Soldiers would usually dunk the hardtack in coffee to soften it, this insane YouTuber unfortunately didn’t have 153-year-old coffee to wash it down, but he did have some instant coffee from the 1980s that he whipped up for his meal.
(Via: YouTube)