Three to four thousand members of the Army and National Guard graduate every year from the eight-week course, which trains soldiers how to prepare a wide array of food in a variety of settings.
After instruction in the techniques of cooking and baking, trainees prepare three meals a day for their fellow soldiers in an actual garrison kitchen. Training culminates outdoors, where trainees cook for hundreds of soldiers in the same mobile kitchens they could be cooking in if deployed.
Insider spent five days at the Joint Culinary Center of Excellence, where we observed different classes at various stages of training.