Only a true wild camper gets excited over finding a new dehydrated product whilst shopping in Tesco. We’ve tried dehydrated skimmed milk in the past (Tesco, Marvel) and we’ve not been that impressed. They can be used to mix into other products such as puddings, but proved a bit vile in coffee.
So while we knew full fat dehydrated milk was available on-line, the postage had put us off and we really didn’t want to buy a pack of six. So we were best pleased when this Nido appeared in the local Tesco Extra world food aisle.
What can we say? For £3.79 or so you get 400g which mixes up with cold water to produce around 3 litres of full fat milk. I wouldn’t normally drink full fat, my taste-buds are used to semi-skimmed, but I’d rather go without that bother with the emulsion paint that’s known as skimmed milk.
In use, this mixed up without lumps at all with cold water in the bottom of my mug, which then received the hot coffee fresh from the pot (cowboy style). It does taste different, with a hint of coconut, but not unpleasant and better than skimmed powder. I don’t normally like coconut, they’ll always be the ones leftover from a box of Quality Street, so don’t let that put you off. You just need to be careful not to use too much as it really does make the coffee taste creamy!
Don’t however, add this to hot coffee! It will curdle a bit, and while we managed to stir the majority of them out, it did look like we’d added sour milk to the coffee and wasn’t very appetising. Still tasted fine though!
We also resorted to using this at home in order to make pancakes when we’d run out of milk. They were just as good as usual, and if my pancakes are good then everything’s good.
Overall, this has to be one of the better options for wild camping coffee, or puddings, rather than supplementing the skimmed variety with condensed milk in a tube.
This is an essential for the Wild Camping and Car Camping Larder.
Went through 8 gallons of this when laid up one winter. It seemed ok to make a whole gallon out of the three liter can. Reused the gallon milk jug by premixing with hot water numerous times in another smaller container to get a thick mush then funnel into gallon and add progressively more cold water between shakes and there you are. Undoubtedly fresh is better but I could drink and cook with this without looking back especially for a bug in or out type situation. If you want fat and shelf life this is the way to go.