What do cooks do in the military? What sort of fare do the prepare? What additional responsibilities do they shoulder?

Does anybody have any experience cooking in the military? Has anybody known any military cooks? What have they had to say about it?

Within Canada, the military will pay for cooking school and offer you a $40,000 salary in exchange for three and a half years of your life. Upon finishing cooking school and obtaining a Red Seal, there is an instant promotion as well. People have been discussing it with me at length, but nobody seems willing to discuss much more than the entrance information.

Free fried chicken and watermelon!

I've never liked watermelon.

I can't say that I'm particularly intrigued by this offer, but I like to be well-informed of my options.

I think it's generally being phased out in favor of private contracts. Chow halls in garrison around here are run by sodexho, and in the sandbox they hire arabs, pakis, and even filipinos come over to work there.

So yeah, anachronism.

Well, from my experience, all the meals are pre-determined a long ways before they're put out in the chow halls. If you're working on a non-forward Air Force base, you're probably just going to be making food for the singles who live without dependents in the barracks. At my missile base, we've got chefs that go out to the missile field with the alert fire teams and cook for them.

Overall, from the cooks I've talked to at the chow hall and in the missile field, it's a pretty good job. Of course, I can't speak for those who have seen Army, Navy, or Marine chefs in action, but I'm sure its a pretty easy paced job.

No question that it provides one hell of a great opportunity for civilian jobs once you retire.

E: I just found this link. It might help you more.

http://www.militarychefs.com/

Cooks in the US navy (CS) seem to be some of the most assholish people in the fleet. Part of the problem is that unless you're on staff for an admiral, you don't really make any food. They generally put you to work in a battalion take care of barracks. They make all of the food on the ships, yes, but all the shore-duty gallies are run by civilians.

In the army, if your unit is not deploying anytime soon, then you will cook at thje Dining Facility, serve food, or run the cash register. I must say that at the DFAC's the food is not bad at all. They have a grill where you can "short order" hamburgers, or steak and cheese sandwiches. They also usually have grilled cheese, fries, onion rings, beans, and several other dinner items. There is usually someone standing next to the grill who will make you a fresh sandwhich if you tell em what you want on it.

For breakfast you can order your eggs any style from the person on the grill, or have them make you an omlette, or you can just get the standard powdered eggs that they serve as well as biscuits and creamed beef gravy, sausage, bacon, pancakes, french toast, fresh fruit, all kinds of stuff that you prepare.

I was on KP once and had to help out the cooks in the field, and you will cook field chow in this mobile kitchen thing.

The cooks I have met are generally pretty nice people, and you get to work with females.

Now that everyone is getting ready for deployment, the cooks are starting to go out to the field with us and stuff, so now they have civvies running the DFAC's, and let me tell you, I liked it alot better than when soldiers were running it. Civilians are assholes.

Civilian contractors are arseholes.

They fed my Muslim mate fucking ham. After 3 weeks of being told to get it right, they sent him a halal marked meal, with HAM in it. If they can't get that right, what else will they fuck up?

How would it be different with military cooks? I've seen contractors immediately change their policy whenever someone started complaining. I'm sure military cooks would be the same way, if they were still really around.

It would probably come down to them wearing a little tag with a crescent or some other icon indicating his preference of religion and culinary requirements for such. Anyone who doesn't want to wear a Muslim tag would still have to put up with sausage on their breakfast plate.

Ok, thanks for the 100% US response that's completely and utterly useless to a Canadian.

Hey man, no problem. Always here to help.

Is there anyone here in the Canadian anything? I'm pretty sure it's all UK and US.

This is something I have been looking into as well, The Canadian navy as a cook. I told my mom and she started to cry :(.

I still want to know what their FTX at AIT would be. Do they go and find a crowd of 500 to cook for :?

I know the USAF guys go through pretty much an entire culinary college. I guess they have taste test judges.

Also, I think Canada, like the US, competes in Germany's culinary Olympics by signing up their top military chefs.

If they are confident enough in their chefs to compete in major culinary competitions like that, I'm sure their training would be rather extensive.

There are regularly international, national, regional, and local culinary "Olympics" and contests; they're not unusual or rare.

Yes, the Canadian military will send you through a Professional Cooking program; it sounds like a great opportunity.

I found out that Canadian Forces Cooks go through an 18-week course. Here's what the website says:

On completion of the Basic Military Qualification (BMQ), Cooks attend the 18-week Training Course at the Canadian Forces School of Administration and Logistics (CFSAL) in Borden, Ontario. Based on a combination of theory, demonstration and hands-on experience, a candidate will learn the following MOC basic skills:

Cooking terminology, weights and measures, conversions and equivalencies

Introductory baking and meat cutting

Small and large quantity cooking of a full range of products

Field cooking

Food safety practices and techniques

Food service standards and basic food cost controls

Fire and safety precautions

Equipment & facility maintenance

On successful completion of Basic MOC training, the Apprentice Cook will gain hands-on experience through an 18-month on-the-job training (OJT) program. The scope of employment focuses on meal preparation and service tasks. Cook supervisors determine priorities and meal production plans, provide direction and monitor cooking tasks. A Cook who demonstrates the required abilities, ambition and potential may undertake advanced occupational training through formal courses.


Here's the link: http://www.forces.ca/v3/engraph/jobs/jobs.aspx?id=861&bhjs=0

The Air Force uses the same job structure type, with Apprentice, Journeyman, Craftsman, Superintendant, so its making more sense to me. If that's the case, the chef's scene looks very stable in Canada.

There's more to it if you look into the entry plans.

http://64.254.158.97/pdf/NCM-SEP_all_en.pdf

From what I gather, someone can enter and have cooking school paid in full, plus be paid a half-decent wage. Then, once finished school, if they get their red seal, a person can enter at a higher rank and pay grade.

It's not laid out very clearly, which is why more information would be of interest.