The Making of a Back Country Cuisine Meal

Have you ever wondered how the Back Country Cuisine meals you’ve used on your outdoor adventures came into being? Like how did they decide on that flavour, where did the recipe come from and how did they make it? Well, here’s the answer.

Meal Inspiration

New meal inspiration is everywhere – your favourite meal growing up, a fantastic takeaway you had on the weekend, your favourite cooking show or what you or your friends ate on an overseas holiday. This comes through as consumer and team feedback that then goes into Back Country Cuisine’s new product development process.

Development and Testing – Invercargill, Southland NZ

Once we’ve got an idea, the next step is making up a trial recipe and sourcing any new ingredients needed. Our Food Technologist then makes up the meal to see if it tastes any good. If it does, we then work on entering all the data into our ingredient management system to see what the meal’s nutritional profile looks like. We iterate through these steps until we get a great tasting meal that provides the amount of energy needed to fuel outdoor adventures. Then we test it on ourselves and our brand ambassadors.

Production

Once we approve a new meal, it then needs to be scheduled for production. We normally do a small run first to make sure it works as planned and if it does, we then use these meals to send out to stores to try before we launch the new meal. Because we produce every ingredient separately and only combine them in the pouch, we can ensure every meal tastes the same and delivers the same desired nutrition ever time.

Distribution – Invercargill to the rest of NZ

Once we’ve made a great new meal, we need to deliver it to your favourite outdoor store, so you can get it for your next outdoor adventure. That’s why we let outdoor stores know about our new products early and send them some to try before they start selling them.

Outdoor Eating

The next part of the process is up to you. Choosing your outdoor adventure, who to go with, which Back Country Cuisine meal, boiling the water and following the instructions on the pouch. Always remember, you can add more boiling water after the 10 to 15 minute rehydration period. You can’t remove boiling water if you’ve added too much.

Pouch recycling

As a member of the Soft Plastics Recycling Scheme, our Back Country Cuisine pouches can be recycled. All you need to is take them home after use, wash them and then take them to the supermarket with you on your next shopping trip and put them in the soft plastics recycling bin.

That’s it, that’s how a new Back Country Cuisine meal comes into being for you to take on your outdoor adventures.