News chefs of No 3 Mobile Catering Squadron at RAF Wittering train for operations

RAF Wittering will dish up the next generation of armed forces chefs as the squadron prepares for operations.

Brisk temperatures, winds and cold rain met trainee Royal Air Force chefs as they learned how to cook for large numbers in a deployed setting.

The Deployed Skills Course gave the newly-qualified chefs in No 3 Mobile Catering Squadron (3MCS) hands on experience of catering in field conditions.

Flt Sgt Michael Liu from 3MCS said: “This course is not easy.

"Firstly, there’s hygiene standards in a tented kitchen, just because you’re outdoors there can’t be any let up in cleanliness.

"Secondly, you must work with what you’ve got in the ration packs, there are no recipes, but we still have a requirement to create interesting, nutritious and tasty food.”

RAF chefs and air ground stewards form Trade Group (TG) 19, a key element of the wider RAF Logistics Profession.

Recruits who join TG 19 must first do basic military training before doing their trade training, which they have now completed.

Leading aircraftman, Charles Sapin, said: “It’s a real challenge thinking about the different recipes that you could make with the rations, but learning to use the equipment and seeing how different it is from working in a permanent kitchen has been great.”

Basic military skills were also on the menu for the trainee chefs.

Aside from working in the kitchen, 3MCS corporals Mike Salmon and Sean Bunday taught the students how to camouflage and disrupt the outline of tented kitchen.

The course lasts for ten days; six days of classroom-based learning and four days of work in a tented kitchen. A ten-man operational ration pack is the basis for most of the recipes cooked by the trainee chefs, although it is supplemented by a few basic fresh rations.

Flt Sgt Liu said: “What you’ve got to understand is the relationship between food and morale when you are on an operation or an exercise.

"Personnel are working very hard over long hours; they need something familiar and nourishing.”