Question about Army Cooking

[BOD]

Does the British Army have soldier cooks and at what formation level are they attached to - battalion, brigade, division??

Or is this outsourced to private contractors now?

A reference to military cooking on another site got me wondering. Do a lot of that nowadays

[trail2]

There should be a lot of questions asked about Army cooking
Actally the food was pretty good when I was in.
We had ACC types at Regi level but on detached Sqns or troops we messed with whatever main unit/ship we were with at the time.
Don't know what its like nowadays. But the way the gov pinches on squadies I would not be suprised to hear they make them buy meals from the local tranny.
Jon R.

[Tye Possum]

I don't know about cooks but I saw a show about Canadian soldiers in training, I think it was called combat school. There was a guy eating a meal out in the field and I don't think that's what your asking about but thought I'd mention it anyways... He was eating one of those meals they get now, I think it was one of the ones that cooks itself and he was actually complaining. I thought it looked better than what I had for lunch that day and considering he's in the army I thought that was funny... I'd imagine they have some sort of cooks around, at least at the big bases or whatever. I don't know if they're in the army or not though.
Just out of curiosity, why do you want to know? It just sounds like an odd thing to wonder about... Though I've been known to wonder about strange things from time to time as well.

[BOD]

Just out of curiosity, why do you want to know? It just sounds like an odd thing to wonder about... Though I've been known to wonder about strange things from time to time as well.

Fair question. After all I might be some maniac out to infiltrate a garrison by becoming a cook for a catering company.

I came across a site that had me in laughter because it was so true. Only funny for old soldiers

Basically it went like this

You know that you are getting old if when you were a soldier....

(followed by examples like this)

--You zeroed your weapon with a Canadian bull instead of an oscilloscope

--The S1 office had typewriters.

--You had to queue to use the public phone whenever you had to make a call.

-- You were trained on the AR-15/M16 (i.e no forward assist )

-- You know what musketry and skeleton order are but not LBV, and

-- your meals were cooked by real army cooks

[ScarletPimpernel]

Catering in the Army is the responsibility of the Royal Logistics Corps. Chefs are usually employed at battalion level.

However, in many places catering has been contracted out to various companies.

Service chefs generally produce a high standard of food (usually for very little money); contractor catering is usually less successful, in my experience.

On operational deployments, chefs will deploy with their battalion. In large bases e.g. Basra COB, Camp Bastion, cookhouses are run by contractors and usually offer exceptionally good food - especially curry, as most of the chefs are from Asia.

[BOD]

Thank you.

Does a battalion have enough chefs or do they need to bring in others for deployments.?

Sounds silly I know but I'm curious to know how things may have changed worldwide in the last 30 years.

[Tor helge]

Ah, army chefs.
When I "did time" we had a chef who went under the nickname Dr. Mengele.
At least one of the companies in our battalion was always halfe force because of food poisoning, depending of who got to the mess first at lunchtime. Thank God it was never enough to all .

Tor