Bridgeford Shelf Stable Sandwich Review
Living Wild Beyond Granola and Jerky
Our Carte du Jour are the Bridgeford shelf-stable pizza and filled French toast.
Hopefully Brent’s wife didn’t find out he used the "good" China to photograph what is, in actuality, military food!
The first time I ever saw an MRE, I was hooked.
Not because it looked good — let’s be honest, nobody has ever mistaken an MRE for fine dining — but because of what it represented. A complete meal, sealed up, shelf-stable, ready to go anywhere. No fridge, no stove, no problem. To a younger version of me, that wasn’t just food; it was capability.
Over the years, my fascination matured into a growing body of experience.
While I spent most of my career in law enforcement, I’ve still done my time eating MREs for days on end during operations. Not weeks or months, like most of you who served in the military, but long enough to understand both sides of the equation. On a cold morning when you’re facing chicken à la king, convenience and reality collide. Badly.
Ultimately, MREs work, but I’ll acknowledge they also lose their charm faster than expected.
If you’ve been around them long enough, you’ve got your own stories. Mine includes being issued the infamous “four fingers of death” — Frankfurters, Beef, Menu #6 — for breakfast. Not my first choice, but I’ll point out I didn’t have the catastrophic digestive consequences they’re known for. Small victories.
On the flip side, I’ll go on record stating that I’d voluntarily eat meatballs in marinara if it came in a can. Of course, your mileage may vary — wildly!
The Bridgeford shelf-stable sandwiches were originally designed for the U.S. military First Strike Ration (FSR).
These consumer-focused packages contain two individual packaged sandwiches.
MREs go by a lot of names, some more colorful than others. The polite version is “Meals Refused by Everyone.” And yet, despite the jokes, I’ve always found them to be exactly what they’re supposed to be: convenient, simple, and every now and then, surprisingly decent.
The inner packages of the sandwiches come in familiar brown military retort pouches.
Why This Matters
Today, we’re looking at Bridgford’s ready-to-eat sandwiches, specifically their shelf-stable pizza and French toast options. These aren’t full MRE meals, but are the same components our warfighters eat. I purchased mine at a local building supply megastore in the springtime camping supplies display. I’ve always wanted to try them despite the possibility of throwing $50 down the drain, but my inner child forced me to buy a batch and see if they live up to the glossy pictures on the package.
These sandwiches are individually sealed in a brown foil retort package and are designed to fill a very specific role: quick calories, no prep. And like many things that seem niche at first glance, they make a lot more sense once you understand where they came from.
Background: Bridgford
Bridgford Foods didn’t just stumble into this category. These sandwiches were developed with military use in mind, specifically as part of the First Strike Ration (FSR) system.
The idea behind FSRs is simple: when troops are operating in high-tempo environments, they don’t always have time to stop and heat a meal. They need something they can eat on the move, literally while walking, riding, or working.
Such requirements change everything. The food has to be shelf-stable for extended periods, durable enough to survive transport and backpack abuse, edible without preparation, compact and calorie-dense.
To meet these requirements, Bridgford developed the line of ready-to-eat sandwiches. Using specialized processing and packaging, they’ve created bread-based items — something traditionally short-lived — that can sit on a shelf for years and still be ready to eat right out of the wrapper.
It’s not gourmet, and it’s not trying to be, but it checks all the other boxes.
Most of our readers have some sort of emergency prepared food stockpile. Having a full pantry
plus a few boxes of long-term and portable foods under the bed makes for peace of mind,
plus you can always snitch a few things when sudden adventure calls! This is where Bridgeford
comes into the conversation.
Being Prepared
This is where the Bridgeford products caught my attention. Since these were designed for the military, they fit almost perfectly into how I approach outdoor vittles and emergency preparedness as a more-or-less “regular” American.
For my emergency preps, I’m not building a bunker with a year’s worth of freeze-dried stroganoff. I don’t consider that a realistic goal for me and my situation.
If you’ve done it, my hat is off to you.
What I do is maintain a layered capability, starting with a fully stocked pantry with long-term staples. On the same side of things is a freezer in the garage, usually filled with wild game and home-grown vegetables. Next come some bulk dry goods, such as potatoes and rice, which we store in various places. Then comes the actual “emergency food,” such as MREs and similar items like these Bridgeford entrees. Finally, there’s my cache of freeze-dried food.
Lately, I’ve primarily leaned into freeze-dried options simply because of the shelf life — 25 years buys you a lot of flexibility. However, long-term storage is only one piece of the puzzle. The other piece is mobility.
If something happens and we need to leave, I want food that we can take with us. Something that requires no or minimal prep, no additional ingredients and overall, no friction. Plus, beyond emergencies, there’s the simple reality of day-to-day life, such as last-minute fishing or camping trips and range days. This is where the Bridgeford goodies start to make a lot of sense.
I don’t think they’re replacing “real” food — they’re filling the gap when real food becomes inconvenient or unavailable.
Taste is where the rubber meets the road. On the left is the Bridgeford Filled French Toast
and on the right is the pizza (hopefully no one actually needed this explanation!)
Taste Test
So where do Bridgford’s ready-to-eat sandwiches actually land in the scheme of things? Are they just another novelty, or are they something worth keeping on hand?
To rate the items, I’ve devised a mostly-sorta-kinda-scientific point system that looks at various aspects such as packaging, convenience, texture, smell, and — most important of all — taste. After all, none of the other stuff matters if you’d rather starve than ingest the so-called “food.”
Second Opinion
For this test, I brought in my brother Chadd to serve as what I’ll officially refer to as “stunt stomach.” I did this because one opinion is interesting, but two start to form a pattern. Plus, he works cheaply.
To keep things structured and avoid the usual “yeah, it’s kinda good” non-answer, we used an AI-developed Field Worthiness Scale (FWS). The goal was simple: evaluate these as a field food, not restaurant haute cuisine.
We scored six categories: Appearance & Smell, Taste, Texture, Practicality, Satisfaction and the Morale Factor. Each category was scored 1 to 5, with five representing “This is good stuff; it earns a spot in my kit,” while one characterizes “Something is seriously wrong here.”
The Bridgeford pizza isn’t intended as "health food," but the ingredient list is surprisingly similar to commercial pizza.
It seems unlikely, but there are minimum preservatives in the Bridgeford sandwiches yet the unopened package
has a shelf life of at least 3 years.
“Pepperoni Pizza With Cheese and Sauce”
Let’s set expectations correctly about this awkwardly named food: this is not hot, fresh pizza from a national chain and certainly not your favorite hole-in-the-wall pie. If that’s your benchmark, you’re going to be disappointed but you’re also missing the point. What this is is shelf-stable pizza, which puts it into strange territory.
The flavor profile was familiar, in a very specific way. Think crust-forward, with a sauce leaning more toward ketchup than a rich marinara. The ground pepperoni shows up quietly and understated. The cheese? Let’s just say it contributed more to appearance than flavor.
Chadd nailed it with one comment, “This tastes like our grade-school pizza.” I wouldn’t call this strictly a criticism; it’s more of a reference point. No single ingredient stands out, none of the tastes are overwhelming and while it might not be gourmet, it also shouldn’t violently offend anyone. Think “boring,” but in a good way.
The room-temperature pizza compared to the heated version. If you have an MRE heater, campfire or even an engine block,
the warmed pizza doesn’t look significantly different but the taste and mouthfeel are better.
Heat Changes Everything
Once heated, the slice improved noticeably. The pepperoni became more pronounced, the sauce edged more toward actual pizza sauce, and the overall experience felt closer to “real food.” The cheese still didn’t quite make a strong argument for its existence, but the slice as a whole stepped up.
Most of our scores lined up except for one category, the Morale Factor. I gave it a five while Chadd gave it a three. My reasoning leaned toward the idea that after a long, cold day outdoors, when you’ve been living on jerky, granola bars and trail mix, this would feel like a real meal. Heat it up, sit down for five minutes, and suddenly you’ve got something that feels like comfort food.
Chadd agreed but didn’t think it placed as high on the scale. Fair enough.
Out of the package, both of us landed in roughly the same place, agreeing it’s not the worst pizza we’ve ever eaten, and under the right circumstances, this would be wholly enjoyable. In fact, I’ve already got plans for it.
Later this summer, I’ll be carrying a couple of these on a mountain hike with the specific goal of surprising my group with a hot pizza lunch at elevation. I think they’ll be delighted because so far, I haven’t found a single mountaintop where Domino’s or Pizza Hut delivers.
It seems preposterous: "military" food tasty enough to serve to friends. However, Brent and his "stunt stomach" brother
Chadd found the Bridgeford Filled French Toast is tasty, regardless. This one has become part of Brent’s regular rotation
of easy-transport, minimal-preparation outdoor foods for a backpack or range bag.
Filled French Toast
If the pizza was “reasonable,” the French toast was something else entirely.
The moment you open the package, you get hit with a strong maple aroma. Not subtle and certainly not artificial, just immediate and unmistakable. It smells really, really good, assuming you like maple syrup.
From there, it only gets better. The pastry is dense, soft, and slightly doughy, while the filling is moist, sweet, and cinnamon-forward. With the first bite, you realize the flavors blend well rather than compete. Overall, it drew a unified “yum!” from both of us.
Chadd noted that at 390 calories per pastry, it’s not just a snack — it’s legitimate fuel. Stack that against one of the “meal replacement bars,” which are essentially glorified candy bars.
Both of us independently came to the same conclusion: this would be outstanding with a cup of coffee on a cold morning.
Not “good for field food.” Just … good.
In fact, we agreed on something pretty telling: you could serve this in a coffee shop setting and most people would never guess it came out of a military ration package.
Bottom Line: This one isn’t just a niche preparedness item; it’s something you could legitimately look forward to eating.
If you’re looking for easy, tasty food for your adventures, Brent recommends these ready-to-eat sandwiches from Bridgeford.
Final Thoughts
The reality of food tests is that individual taste varies, sometimes wildly. What works for me might not work for you, and vice versa. Hopefully, with two people testing side by side, you at least get a broader perspective.
Our conclusion is Bridgford’s ready-to-eat sandwiches do exactly what they’re supposed to do: provide shelf-stable, durable and reasonably, mostly, pretty-much tasty food for active people. The pizza is a situational win, especially when morale matters, while the French toast is a straight-up standout.
If you’re building out your bug-out kit or just want reliable, grab-and-go food for outdoor adventure, these are worth a look.
Especially, as I mentioned before, I haven’t yet found a wilderness mountaintop where pizza delivery is an option!
NOTE: A companion video for this story is available at: https://youtu.be/KiTe_cFBeWs
Want more online exclusives from GUNS delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for our FREE weekly email newsletters.
