Where to buy freeze-dried meals in Spain

Decathlon, yes; the supermarkets, mostly no

If you want a freeze-dried meal in your hand this week, go to Decathlon. Its Spanish online shop listed 17 results for freeze-dried food, under its own brands Forclaz and Simond, with single mains of 100–120 g at €6.99–7.99 and a larger 150–170 g Maxi Pack at €11.99.¹ The specialist online shops carry far more, and none of the seven supermarket chains we searched had a freeze-dried meal in its online shop on the day. The searches are dated under the sources, and a store’s shelf can differ from its website, especially at Lidl and Aldi, whose online shops don’t list their whole food range.

What to type: comida liofilizada

Freeze-dried is liofilizado in Spanish, and a freeze-dried meal is comida liofilizada. That’s the phrase on Spanish packs and in Spanish search boxes. Two near misses to know:

• Comida deshidratada is dehydrated, dried in warm air. Decathlon sells Forclaz mains under both words, so read the title before you add one to the basket.²
• Liofilizado on its own, in a supermarket, mostly finds instant coffee (café soluble liofilizado).³⁴⁵

In Decathlon’s menus the pouches sit under comida vivac, bivouac food.⁶

Shop by shop

We ran three searches in each shop’s own search box: liofilizado, comida liofilizada and comida deshidratada.

Decathlon’s own pouches, by the label

The nearest store is the quickest answer, so it’s worth knowing what the own-brand pouches hold before you go:

• Forclaz pasta bolognese with pea protein, 100 g: 390 kcal, made up with 250 ml of hot water in nine minutes, €7.99.²⁰
• Forclaz vegetarian chilli, 120 g: 419 kcal, €6.99.²¹
• Forclaz rice and lentils, 110 g: 494 kcal, €6.99.²²
• Simond mushroom risotto, 120 g: 554 kcal with 150 ml of water, €7.99.²³

At around 400–550 kcal, one of these is a dinner for a day out rather than for a long day climbing. Forclaz’s freeze-dried range had no chicken dish on the day; its chicken curry with rice, 120 g, is sold as comida deshidratada.²

Two things to watch. Decathlon’s site also shows other sellers’ pouches, Trek’n Eat, Lyo Food and Voyager among them, at €13.65–24.99; those are marketplace prices, not Decathlon’s, and the listings often leave out the weight and the energy.¹ And Barrabés files Firepot under freeze-dried, while liofilizado.es puts the same brand in its dehydrated section,¹⁸¹⁷ so check the pack’s own wording if the difference matters to you.

Bringing them from the UK

Freeze-dried meals are light, so it’s tempting to fill a suitcase in Britain. The European Commission’s rule for travellers coming into the EU is short:

The page lists the exceptions: powdered infant milk and infant food, special foods needed for medical reasons, under 2 kg and in unbroken packaging; fish up to 20 kg; honey, live oysters, mussels and snails up to 2 kg; and up to 10 kg from the Faroe Islands or Greenland.²⁴ Read the ingredients of anything you pack against that list, and check the page itself before you travel.

What a pouch costs here

A single freeze-dried main costs about €5 to €19 in Spanish shops, and the middle of liofilizado.es’s 313 single mains is €10.37.¹⁷ Decathlon looks cheaper partly because its pouches are smaller. The sticker misleads, because pouches run from a light lunch to two dinners. Look at three lines before you pay: the energy per pouch (kcal), the water it needs, and the best-before date. The 22 brands are set side by side, per 1,000 kcal and per kilo, in what a freeze-dried meal costs in Spain.

Ours

We make cooked mains, freeze-dried whole, in two sizes: a Standard pouch of 110 g and a Large of 200 g. Lentils & Chorizo (Standard) takes 230 ml of water and is ready in 8 minutes from the kettle. Most of our mains can also be made with cold water, 20–30 minutes depending on the meal; the meat stays a little firmer that way and a little liquid may be left. Not all of them: Porcini Mushroom Risotto is hot water only.

From our range

Meals Discovery Pack

3 Standard mains to start with: Chicken & Rice, Lentils & Chorizo and Thai Red Chicken Curry & Rice.

€27.90Hear from us before the shop opensSee the box