Is there a preferred way to create root file-systems for Debian-based customized installations? We are currently going with multistrap but although it's better than hand-crafted chroot stuff, it still has a lot of edges and corners. Is there a more reliable and less error-prone way to produce a root filesystem of a Debian installation with some additional .debs installed?

(I don't want to send out a Debian installer with a preseed file though.)