Narrator: This... Narrator: ... is Navy Culinary A School. Reid: You have no flavor on this plate, none whatsoever. OK, right? Your meat is not done at all. Narrator: Navy sailors spend up to nine months on deployment on vessels like aircraft carriers and destroyers in oceans around the world, thousands of miles from land, which is why every year, the Navy trains 3,900 culinary specialists to join the fleet. Everybody's got to eat, and it's either going to make people happy or make them upset. Narrator: After graduating from boot camp, future Navy culinary specialists head to Fort Gregg-Adams, Virginia, where they spend five weeks at the Navy's Culinary Specialist A School, learning how to cook meals for up to 5,000 sailors. Johnson: It's a five-week course, and it's going to teach them food preparation, sanitation, nutrition, and any type of basic food skills.

they need to prepare food when they make it out to their next command out in the fleet. I want you to take a fork, and I want to see your face expression. You need some water? Yeah, it does have that. Johnson: The role of a Navy culinary specialist is to feed Navy sailors and also DoD personnel established on Navy military installations as far as on ships, submarines, Seabee battalions, also they serve at the vice president's house, the president's house, and also four-star flag officers. On a carrier, we're serving about three to 5,000 people total, so that's a big difference. Narrator: Students arrive at the schoolhouse with varying levels of cooking experience. I have really never had any experience cooking before I came here. I went to the Culinary Institute of America. I love to cook. My passion is cooking. Taco Bell, Applebee's,

AMC and Chipotle. Some of them have minimal experience working in restaurants, but most of them do not have any experience, and we prefer some without any type of experience, so we can train them the right way, the way that it should be done. They're getting me ready for the fleet, and I'm not going to be cooking for 20 to 30 people. I'm cooking for 1,000 to 3,000. Narrator: Business Insider spent five days following different classes in various stages of training where students learn the importance of sanitation and nutrition, techniques of cookery, small-quantity baking, and culinary math. With the Department of Defense deploying naval ships to the Middle East amid the threat of war, as well as a growing Navy presence in the Indo-Pacific region, sustaining our sailors is paramount. When we're sanitizing it, we're only reducing it to the number of microorganisms to a safe level.

But when we talk about sterilizing, right, we make free of the microorganisms. So basically, we're taking all the microorganisms, right? Know the difference? Students: Yes. Narrator: Students spend the first week of training in the classroom, learning the importance of sanitation and nutrition. We is the No. 1 reason why people are able to get sick. So what we try to do is, make sure they take care of their hygiene first. Narrator: At the end of each training block, students must pass a written exam. You've got to read the instruction, that's what they are there for. Inside the instruction verbatim, it tells you exactly how things should be done. Narrator: During techniques of cookery, students learn the basics of cooking, from how and when to utilize specific equipment to the various techniques they'll need to prepare a meal. We go over the knife safety training, which is four safety rules when it comes to carrying a knife.

Knife, knife, knife, knife, knife. From there we go to different types of chops, right? Cube chop, dice, so forth and so on. If I say cube, what type of cut is that? Cube, what's cube? How many inches? You got it right there. What it say? Narrator: Before students can enter the lab. Class 180, attention. Narrator: They go through a uniform inspection. I'm looking for a nice crisp smock, right? With two fresh creases in the front, four creases in the back. The fingernail have to be cut, and if their fingernails are cut, they also got to be free of dirt, grime, or anything that cause food to be contaminated. If they haven't shaved, and they don't have any type of no-shave document, then they need to go do the proper shave. And from there I'm just looking for a nice, clean uniform.

Nothing on their uniform at all. Fall out. Narrator: Each class begins with a demonstration from the instructor. Horizontally first, down the line. Cut as many lines as you can till you get to the top. Flip it directly towards you, right, vertical. Narrator: They show students how to prepare a meal step by step following a recipe card. Reid: You got to know how to read a recipe card, right? Once the instructor facilitates how to make their product, their job is to go back and literally verbatim emulate what their instructor put out. One, two, three, four. Huh, what is this? Reid: Some of them come from a background where they were watching their grandmother or their mother cook back at home, and they're trying to take what they learned from back at home and bring it here. But they have to understand some of the things that we was taught bringing up wasn't always the proper way to do it.

Pretty much, we're trying to break the mindset of what they utilize from home. I got one chef who is paying attention, right? Seaman Amoah's product is almost done, right? So I got one out of ten that is paying attention. Are you sure? Because you already added your carrots and your potatoes. They started off perfect. What happened is, they ended up putting all the ingredients all in at once, and when it comes to making beef stew, certain ingredients are supposed to be put towards the end. It went from looking like soup to looking like beef stew. Tell me that doesn't look good. I mean, Amoah's looks great, but he got a competitor now. The way it looked before, I was like, damn, I can't cook, but I see this now, and it's like, damn, I did that, I did. You need constructive criticism, so it's really good.

It is. Is it? Yes, sir. Did you taste the meat? Yes, I tasted the meat. Reid: Was the meat nice and tender? It was good. - It is good. You keep saying it's good, I don't see, I don't even trust your word, man. Put some more water here. We have to be honest with the person that we are selecting to eat their food, because in order for them to learn, they got to know their mistakes. And if we're not able to tell them the mistake, then we're doing them a disservice. Reid: We're making a rice bed. And we'll pack it in there. Nice and packed, we'll put it in the center. So what you want to do is, you want the heart of the ship and morale of the crew to be showing, right? Let's put it in there, and flip it over. If it don't, then we're going to be in a world of trouble.

All right? All the way around. All about presentation, all right? Take your paper towel, all right? And try to get close to the edge as possible, right? We eat with our eyes, so if their plate doesn't look pleasant, then we're not going to eat it. I have this thing where at the end of the meal, once they get done with their product, I give them an opportunity to come up with their own restaurant. I sit down, and I treat them as a restaurant manager or a CEO, and I am the customer. Jonathan: Good morning, sir. Good morning! Jonathan: Welcome to Pilaries. Reid: And I do construct the criticism back to them, so they get the idea of what it feels like once they get to the fleet. Because once you get to the fleet, there's going to be a lot of constructive criticism out there, and you got to be able to learn how to take that.

Reid: OK. Before you serve me that, sir, I'd like to know, what is on this plate? It has potatoes, beef, it has limited-edition sauce only created by us. I'll make sure we get a little carrot, all right? Get a little bit of potatoes in there. All right, here we go. Sir, you wouldn't make $2 off this plate. All right? You wouldn't make a dime off this plate. One, presentation, OK, presentation. Two, you have no flavor on this plate, none whatsoever. When he said that it wasn't so good, that it was probably like $2, not $10. What you did is boost up my cholesterol. Look at all that oil. You understand what I'm saying? It was my first time, my first time going off a recipe. I got some very good commentary on my food. It wasn't the best. OK, that's fine.

We're going to keep striving for greatness. Good afternoon, sir. We're going to JT's. Reid: JT's, OK. We want you to try our newest - Beef ragu. Reid: Beef ragu, OK. Beef ragu, all right. Missing the enhancement here. All right? Missing some type of salt. This has more of a creamy taste. We're not looking for anything creamy. So right now, right, you're looking at a four and a half. All right, you're looking at a four and a half. Reid: Right, you got to add more seasoning. You got to add more flavor. You got to bring it out. But other than that, man, I think you all did an outstanding job, man. I like that you all finished in a reasonable time. Tate: Following the recipe, I followed it a little bit, but then I know he said sometimes you can like steer off

and you have to try to break that habit from how you cook at home to how you cook in the military. When he tasted the food, he said he didn't taste it, but I know I put a lot in there. Getting a four and a half was a little bit of a shock, but I mean he has to keep it real with us and let us know, like, hey, you did this pretty well, but you need to work on this, and you can do this better. Go ahead and put your meat inside your pot. You give them an inch, sometimes they like to take a mile. They want to be creative with the product that they are making, but they get outside of what we tell them to do sometimes. With us, it's all about teaching them the basic knowledge, right? Because by teaching them basic knowledge, that gives them an opportunity, right, to take that mile when that mile is presented to them.

Narrator: Everything the students learn during techniques of cookery is put to the test at the end of the week, when they take a practical and a written exam before moving on to the next stage of training. Onion yellow, basil sweet. Narrator: During the practical, students have one hour to make spaghetti and meat sauce according to the recipe card, this time without the help of their instructor. In order for you to pass your product, you just have to do the basics. You got to know how to read a recipe card. Reid: With the basics, you got to understand that the recipe card that we are making today, it required us to cook a small batch of spaghetti meat sauce, not a large batch. So we can't get behind ourselves and try to add more to the pot, and then we end up overpowering our product. Tell me that don't look good. That really do. Do you see how good that smells?

You can literally smell the seasoning, can't you? See how like theirs, it just smells like - If you don't smell the aroma, bro, you're not cooking, bro. Get out of the kitchen. It has got more taste- Tate: Yours has no scents. Do you smell it? It smells great. We're always going back and forth. Oh, no, you don't do this, you don't do this. And bringing it in the kitchen is, it's more just like a motivation like, all right, my food is going to be better than yours. Narrator: As the practical comes to an end, the students hurry up to finish their meals and present them to the instructor. Reid: I'm looking for attention to detail. I'm looking for how much did you pay attention when I was actually giving out the instruction. I'm also looking for how much you paid attention to the actual recipe card.

What I'm looking for is plate presentation. I'm looking for a nice flavor. - Let's go! If he says my noodles are bad, I understand. If he says the meat is great, I would understand too, because I tried it. It's great. Good morning, sir. Welcome to Polaris. I would like to introduce you to our chef. Good morning, sir. Can I help you? Reid: Well, today I would like to know what's on your menu for today. Today we have spaghetti. As soon as I gave him my plate, you can see the oil, and I saw it too. All right, take a look. You see all that grease in there? What you think you're supposed to do in this situation right here? You're supposed to drain the grease off, all right? Reid: But you can't able to drain the grease out, right? You could have utilized flour to absorb that, right?

You do not want to serve your customer, right, a plate of grease. He gave me some good feedback. Again, it was too oily. He said it was good, it was just too greasy. And the noodles was, from the start, I already knew my noodles weren't going to be so great. They were pretty dry. But other than that, it do have a good taste. Do have good taste. As far as sauce-wise though, I'm looking more for that, right? I didn't really get a good taste of the sauce, right? It tastes more like ground beef and noodles. Just make sure, right, you focus more on the sauce. All right, tracking? I'm tracking. Reid: But it do got good taste though. So a good deal. Good deal. Personally, my dish to me, it was good. I kept re-tasting it, Amoah said that it had no salt, so I kept adding salt to it,

I kept adding water or tomato paste, and slowly it kept changing the flavor, and my result was good. It was too oily, I understand. I didn't know how to remove that, but my end result, it was pretty good. I liked it. Reid: I'm actually kind of nervous. You literally taste every season, right? No, that's not a - Reid: I should not be tasting the oregano, I should not be tasting the thyme. I taste both of them. Why? Why? Why do I taste that? Reid: Why would you over-season it with basil? You know what basil, I mean, oregano and thyme is? It's one of those exquisite tastes that you don't want to overpower with, because it gives a bad taste in your mouth after, right? But that's all I taste, though. What's the other flavor? By tasting that part right there, now it's oversalted.

So that means that you went heavy with the salt? So why would you put them side by side, man? Did you follow the recipe card? That recipe card said half a teaspoon of oregano and thyme, right? No more than one-fourth. But I can guarantee you all did more than just that. This right here feels like a tablespoon of each. I want you to take a fork, and I want to see your facial expression. Tate: You want him to eat just meat? Reid: That's what he needs to taste. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You need some water? Yeah. Some juice? Yeah, it does have that. Got a kick to it. Reid: Oregano and thyme. Tate: Seeing him do it, I'm like OK, but then when I'm back there doing it myself, it's like, oh crap, all that just went right out the window.

So I'm a little frustrated, but I'm going to get it together soon. Reid: Y'all kind of over-garnished. I like that y'all made the ground beef pile in the middle, but you should not have added none on the side. You didn't need nothing on the side. Before I ate it, and if you would've took it to a judge, what you think that judge would've said? I mean, he probably would have been disrespectful like that, but that's probably what he would've said. But it do got some type of flavor, it's just all over the place. Just moving forward, man, let's focus more on making that sauce, right? I asked for a sauce. OK? This is just ground beef with noodles. Reid: You all go ahead and enjoy y'all's meal, man. They didn't do too well as far as paying attention to detail, because

if so, then they would've actually made more of a spaghetti meat sauce than just ground beef and noodles. Overall, it was fun. I think they did good. I got a lot of great plates as far as presentation-wise. I did get a lot of great flavors when it comes to each product. Certain product wasn't so great. Narrator: These trainees will continue to develop their culinary skills during the remaining three weeks of training, but once they get to their galley, everything they learned at A school will be put to the test. Reid: As far as in a DDG, a smaller platform, those are our type of CS's that put in a lot of work because they don't have that many CS's in the galley. So a lot of things that they have to pick up at a quick, timely manner in order for them to be able to run the galley by themselves. Weekly we purchase around five to $7,000 of food.

It all depends on our class size. And yearly, I mean, you name it, it can go up to $180,000. Narrator: According to the Navy, the average culinary specialist makes about $48,000 a year. Johnson: And that pay can vary if they're going on a sea-going vessel, a submarine, or any type of shore-duty facilities, but the average sailor makes around $4,000 a month. The first thing we're going to do is go over the utensils that we have at our station. Can you please hold up the first utensil, please, so everybody can see it? In the Navy, you're out for a good while, and sometimes it can be a little depressing, but baking is therapy. It helps with your stress level. People don't realize that, but just baking, there's something about it that kind of eases the soul. This will begin our block for baking for your pies today.

So I hope everybody studied for their pies. Did we study over the weekend? Students: Yes. Hammond: OK, all right. When they get to the galley, they're going to be doing large quantity, but they have to learn to bake with small quantities from the beginning. So I'm just going to roll, roll back towards me. Roll and lift. Roll and lift. If you do it the same way I do it, you'll get the same results, OK? Usually with pie, that is a difficult day. It's rolling the pie crust and getting the thickness that they need, or thinness, I like to say, making sure that they have enough coverage for it to actually fit in the pie pan, and then actually putting it in the pie pan without it tearing, breaking, and so forth. So they really have to pay attention to the instruction during the demo for that. That looks good. You all can turn your oven off.

once you pull your pie out. One fault when it comes to making quick breads is overmixing, so we're going to mix these by hand. In this module, we go over quick breads, breads and sweet doughs, we do cookies, and cakes and pies. I bake more brownies and cookies, stuff like that, so getting to learn how to bake biscuits, cake, stuff like that, from scratch, I take it in and try to soak it up as a sponge. Thomae: No, just want to shape it now, don't keep mixing it. Reynolds: So the culinary school in New York, they're teaching you how to make small batches. And compared to the Navy, they're going to be ready for the fleet. And I'm not going to be cooking for 20 to 30 people. I'm cooking for 1,000 to 3,000. So that big quantity difference,

It's going to help me to learn how to multitask or triple-task if I have to, compared to doing one, two steps. I'm learning to do three, four, five steps at a single time. So, 7 and a quarter ounces, there's only 8 ounces in a cup. You said you put a cup and a half in. That's what, 12 ounces? You went 5 ounces over. That's why we measure. That's why we weigh it. Because weighing is more accurate, right? One of the sailors totally messed up all the ingredients, started over, not a big deal. If you want to remeasure all this stuff and give it a shot, go ahead. That's fine. I failed to read the instructions. Simply, I failed. I got nervous, I got locked up. I normally never do that, but it was because of that and not following instructions. Yeah, way too much.

Shawver: I realized when I poured the water in there, because I didn't weigh it. What they teach you, basics, measurements, and reading, and I never followed the instructions. Baking is, like they say, is like an art and a science. So I think unlike cooking where you can kind of miss a step here, miss a step there, add a little bit too much, or take some away there, you really got to follow the recipe here and be precise in time, temperature, and ingredients. So all play a big role in baking. I honestly thought they would come out not the way I wanted it, and to be honest I'd rate them about 8, about a 7, 8 and a half out of 10. They came out fluffy the way I wanted it. The golden brown on the top, it was getting there. I know if I left them a little longer, it'd get to it.

but I felt like it would've dried it out. Narrator: Again, students must pass a written exam that covers everything they've learned in the classroom. Thomae: We do a practical, which is a muffin. Basically giving them the recipe card based off of everything that they've learned since they've been in small-quantity baking. They're just let loose to see how the product turns out. Hammond: They cannot ask their instructor any questions. I can't even tell them to turn their oven on when they're supposed to turn on their oven. We all had 20 minutes to gather all our ingredients. We weren't able to start and combine stuff until everyone did that. I looked at the recipe about two, three times, knew what I was going to do, what I was going to take action of before he called the timer. You now have one hour to mix, bake, and clean up all your stations.

and then obviously pull your muffins out of the ovens. Don't forget to follow the methods. All right, you all can begin. Are they following the recipe? Are they doing the right methods? Are they measuring instead of weighing, or weighing instead of measuring? Just basic stuff like that. Did they preheat the oven? And we're just looking for consistency. These are standardized military recipes, so we're just looking for consistency. How many people got close to the same product? I'm confident in my skills. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're going to come out pretty good. So this is exactly what happens when you overmix right here. This one actually looks really nice. Reynolds: I ended up overmixing, which doesn't really cause the taste of the muffins, but more of the look, so I didn't get that muffin top how it's supposed to look. Everything else did come out though,

came out nice and golden brown, and the flavor was 8 out of 10. Thomae: This is all basic-level entry for baking. Like, some of them have never done it before. We'd never fail anybody for giving a good shot, basically. But out of the nine students, seven of them had really great, just great muffins. Oh, that's nice, good golden color right there. That's pretty good, Estrada. Honestly, the way I felt about going into the practical, I didn't really want to do it. Baking wasn't really my forte, it's not my strength, but you got to step out of your comfort zone sometimes and just do the best you can. Good job, man! My muffins were good. I kind of like mine a little more golden, could have used a little bit more sugar, but we got to follow the recipe to the T, so.

Oh Chief, you got to try it. Thomae: Baking is, in my opinion, the most important thing on the fleet. That's where you're going to have the highest morale boost right there. You get a nice, hot, fresh muffin, cookie, cake. If it tastes good, it looks good, you're just going to be happier eating it. So that we know if the entrees or the side dishes we are putting out, the crew likes, right? Which is really important during deployment, because it's going to be things you're going to put out, and the crew is going to absolutely hate, but the things that they do like, you'll see those are over 100%. Narrator: Students must also master what's known as culinary math, where they learn to adjust recipe cards to accommodate the size of the crew they're feeding. Johnson: All our recipe cards we have, they are per 100 portions.

We learn culinary math, and the culinary math that we teach them is quantity yield adjustments. Also, how to do recipe conversions, because you may have a small ship that has only 150 people, that's a submarine, and you may go to a carrier that carries over 5,000 people. Narrator: Students also learn equations used to determine the crew's satisfaction with a specific dish. Narrator: Everything the students learned in the first four weeks is put to the test in the final stage of training, known as Galley Week. Students will spend four days preparing meals inside a kitchen similar to those found on Navy ships and shoreside facilities. The biggest challenge for our students is being up this early and not being quite used to it, because in boot camp, they don't get up this early. So, 4 o'clock in the morning wake-up, sometimes 3:45, to get here by 5, and immediately start working. There is no time to come in and, I'm going to take a break.

I want to sit down. You've got to come in here and get down to business. Narrator: They work as a team to prepare breakfast and lunch each day. Foreman: It's just a small practice run for those going to the ships. Narrator: Galley Week culminates with a special meal. This class is preparing oxtail, curry chicken, chicken dumpling soup, ribs, and mac and cheese. Foreman: So special meals are served to the entire schoolhouse. They get to express to the rest of the students and instructors to show the techniques, the baking, and they get to showcase that I can follow a recipe card, I can put out a good product and follow directions. Knott: Reading recipe cards on the book for tests is one thing, but reading it and then actually incorporating that into the actual dish is a lot harder than you really think it is, especially doing it the Navy way.

I'm in charge of the curry chicken, so I'm just browning it, and then we're going to marinate it and put it into the oven, and then it's going to cook the rest of the way. I'm only browning it right now. You need help? Yeah. When you cook a big meal like this, you tend to get distracted, or you tend to get tired, so I was making sure everybody stay on their P's and Q's. Because if you contaminate the rest of this, you have to throw away 20 eggs just for one, make sense? All right, let me know if you need help, man. These past few weeks I have enjoyed every single moment. When I step inside the classroom, I just, I open up my mind, I soak up knowledge like a sponge, and it just has been great, to be honest. I had a lot of fun in that five weeks.

that I was dreading has gone by really fast, and I really miss it, to be honest. I'm not even gone yet. Narrator: As lunchtime nears, the class begins moving the food to the dining room. Good morning, sir. Good morning, sir. On behalf of Class 150, we would like to cordially invite you to lunch today. On today's menu, we have - Knott: Jerk ribs, oxtail stew, curry chicken. Do you accept our invitation? Yes, I will be down there shortly. Perfect. Lunch starts at 11. OK. Thank you, sir. Knott: Inviting people to breakfast and lunch, that's a big thing for us here at A school. We want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to eat what we have created for them. So today my role, I was setting up the ward room. You get the drinks, you create a menu

of what the officers would like to eat. Today we had to set it formal, so we had a formal dining set today. As you saw today, that you have to be here, you have to be here, you have to make sure that this person is taken care of, whatever they're short over here. So just making sure that you're focused on the mission, but making sure all parts of the mission come together, so it can get played out perfectly. Class 150, attention. ♪ Marching down the avenue ♪ ♪ Marching down the avenue ♪ ♪ Class 150 coming through ♪ ♪ Class 150 coming through ♪ Ladson: So today we graduated A school, so we received our certificates that we finished class. Very bittersweet, because everyone's going to different parts of the world, but also a great moment too, as well, especially for me, being promoted to E4. Narrator: The Navy says

over 99% of students who start the course graduate. A lot of classes come in and they don't all stay together. Some people fall behind. Everybody that's here right now is everybody that we had when we started. Johnson: They were going to leave for two weeks, spend time with their family, recharge their batteries, then after that, they'll go to their ship. So when I get home, I'm going home with my mom. My mom's already, she already knows what she's making me for dinner. Getting my nails done, finally being able to wear earrings again. Narrator: Once these new culinary specialists deploy, they'll spend three to five years preparing meals on Navy ships before they can prepare meals at a shoreside facility. Oh, Estrada in the back. This is a standard Navy recipe muffin right here. Yep. Not bad, not bad.

How Navy Cooks Are Trained To Feed 5,000 Sailors On Aircraft Carriers | Boot Camp | Business Insider

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