Mountain house bag as a pot?

I'm betting they just use it for eating out of and add hot water. I don't think it will withstand a flame but I haven't used Mountain House products in years so I obviously haven't tested it.

Yes,

you can boil in virtually any container. With the interior coating, etc I wouldn't want to consume the water afterward.

In addition, it won't last for many uses.

You can boil in the bag no problem but you have to keep it quite a ways above the flame and it takes forever. I have even boiled water in a plastic 20oz mountain dew bottle in this manner, but the bottle was badly distorted and it took about 45 minutes with the bottle hanging about 18 inches above a fire.

does anyone know if you can put one of those bags on direct flame? coals?

>does anyone know if you can put one of those bags on direct flame? coals?

I doubt it. I'm no chemist, but the only reason this works is because the water inside continuously absorbs the heat energy from the fire. In addition, any material that is not touching water, i.e. the upper part of the bag, will melt.

You can boil water in a paper cup by setting it in the fire, but every bit of the cup that isn't touching the water burns off.

I think it'd be just a messy, fussy, hassle.

As Travis mentioned, you can boil water in a paper cup by simply putting the cup full of water on a flat spot in the fire. The cup will burn down to the water level but the water will come to a boil.

I've used this technique with a Starbucks cup to soft-boil an egg. It's a fun "parlor trick."

Direct contact with heat, no. The bags do burn in a fire (or more likely melt rather than burn but they do ash up).

I have reduced aluminum cans to mere ashes over a camp fire. I guarantee same result with MH bags unless there's plenty of water inside — in which case the fire will still singe it, but won't totally incinerate it.

Two other issues to think about: stability and evenness of cooking.