Nicholas Davis: Stand clear.
We went from a box on wheels
to a whole freaking kitchen, right?
The containerized kitchen provides the Army
with the ability to perform large-scale feeding
and everything that we need to prepare
up to 800 meals three times a day.
My name is Staff Sgt. Nicholas Davis,
I'm an advanced culinary NCO
at Joint Culinary Center of Excellence
field operations training branch.
Today I'll be going over all the equipment
that an Army culinary specialist uses
on the containerized kitchen.
An Army culinary specialist is someone
who has been certified to perform culinary duties
to support the United States Army
and all of their feeding needs.
Now, here is our cooking center.
We've got these grates right here
that allow us to suspend our cooking pots or pans
above our modern burner unit.
Our modern burner unit generates about 52,000 BTUs.
All right, that's a lot of cooking power.
We can fry, sauté,
boil, anything we need to
on this portion of a containerized kitchen.
Right here is our cooking pot.
Cooking pot is nestled in
the cooking pot cradle assembly.
What this does is it contains the heat
from the modern burner unit around that pot.
This is a 15-gallon pot, and as you can imagine,
trying to boil 15 gallons of water
will take quite some time.
This right here is going to cut that time down
and reduce the risk of people getting burned
or heating up the area unnecessarily.
Right here we've got a large griddle.
You'll see around it we've got a splash guard.
Pancakes,
bacon,
eggs,
sausage,
steak,
hash browns,
you name it, we can do it here on this griddle.
I've actually gone so far as to do, like, a hibachi grill.
Underneath the griddle is my grease trap.
This piece right here just slides out.
Anything that I scrape off will funnel into there,
and I can discard it.
Over here, we've got a convection oven.
It works much the same way as a gas oven
that you'll find in your house.
We're going to use our modern burner unit
underneath as our heat source.
Inside is a large fan on the back
that's going to force that heated air around,
regulate the temperature inside the oven,
and decrease our cooking time,
increasing our potential yield.
Next to it, we've got a tray-pack heater.
It is exactly what it says it is.
When we don't have the capacity
to hold food in a refrigerator,
we're going to use the UGR heat-and-serve ration.
That UGR heat-and-serve ration
comes in the form of food, shelf-stable,
contained in heat-resistant plastic trays.
We'll load this up with up to 24 tray packs,
add water,
let that heat warm those tray packs through.
Next to the tray-pack heater
we've got a fully functioning sink.
Running water, heated, that'll drain outside.
There's the ability to
run soap through it.
So now as you're cooking you can clean your hands,
you can rinse off your vegetables,
fruits, all right.
Wipe out your utensils.
Here in this corner, we have a warmer,
a warming cabinet.
Now, this warming cabinet is so critical
to the function of the containerized kitchen.
We can cook all day long,
but I need some way to hold my food safely,
maintain that temperature
prior to serving it to my personnel.
This warming cabinet affords me the option
to cook a large amount of food,
keep it at a maintained temperature
outside the temperature danger zone,
and continue on with my cooking process.
Next to my warming cabinet, going in the opposite way,
I've got two industrial refrigerators.
Now we'll talk about how we serve.
We can configure our cooking center
to be a serving line.
I'm going to remove these grates.
We're going to exercise caution when removing these,
because these will be hot if I've been cooking on them.
So I'll slide this off, just get it out of the way.
I'll grab my serving-line divider.
Place that on top right there.
This is designed to fit
any standard-size pan.
I can put them in here, and I can serve hot food,
or I could put ice in there
and serve cold food if necessary.
Can't do it at the same time, though.
I've got shields here
on the backside of my cooking center.
Those shields are removable.
These shields act to keep all the heat
from these multiple cooking surfaces
on this side of the kitchen.
Up above here, I've got my
industrial hood vent system
that's going to vent out excess heat,
diesel exhaust.
But also, over here,
I've got two large industrial fans
that are also going to vent excess hot air
out of the containerized kitchen.
Now, once we remove as much of the hot air as possible,
I can turn on my ECU,
or environmental control unit.
That's my air conditioning.
I can cool my cooking area down
a little bit to make it a little more comfortable
for today's Army culinary specialists.
This side is going to be for our serving.
We're going to prep. We're going to serve things like
salad, desserts, beverages.
Over here we've got some
insulated food containers for storage.
We've got insulated beverage containers, or dispensers.
Right here we've got a 10-gallon and a 15-gallon pot
that we're going to use for cooking.
You'll notice right here we've got some tray slides.
So as people come through and they get their food,
we've got a little spot for them to rest their trays.
So, starting over here,
we'll go over the assortment of cutlery
that comes with the containerized kitchen.
We've got our paring knife.
Standard 3-inch paring knife.
We've got our 6-inch utility knife,
Utility knife or the rigid boning knife.
This right here
I'm sure some of y'all are familiar with, all right.
Michael Myers.
This is a 10-inch chef's knife.
Now, this right here,
we're going to do a lot of our major cutting.
We got ribs, we gotta cut up a lot of vegetables.
This is a knife that we're going to use for that.
We've got a scimitar, or a steak knife.
Long, used for cutting meat.
A lot of times we'll get large pieces of meat.
We gotta break them down, make them a little bit smaller.
We'll use this to cut that.
Producer: What kind of large meats do you get?
We have what's called a steamship round,
which is basically the hind quarter of a cow.
We'll cook that up, all right, carve that.
Prime rib, turkeys, things like that.
Pork roast.
Any of those large cuts of meat that we may get,
we're going to use our scimitar knife to cut those up.
And then to ensure that all of our knives
keep a straight edge, we've got a butcher steel
that we can use
to make sure that we do all of our cuts properly.
Next,
I've got my heavy-duty neoprene gloves.
We use these gloves
when we're pulling stuff out of hot water.
So, when we're preparing our meals,
more often than not our water's going get
up to about 170, 180 degrees.
We don't want to go too much higher than that, boiling.
That increases the risk of burning yourself,
and it's going to increase the evaporation of the water
and increase our water-consumption rate.
We've got a can opener.
Standard everyday can opener that you see at your house,
but we open a lot of big cans.
Our slotted spoon.
Standard serving spoon, 15-inch serving spoon.
When that one won't cut it,
we've got our 21-inch serving spoon.
A lot of times if we've got
a large amount of food that we're serving,
we've got big pans that we're going to serve out of.
This is going to be beneficial to get back into the corners.
It serves the same purpose as the other one,
you just get a little more reach out of it.
Next is our skimmer.
So, with our skimmer,
this is used to skim stuff off the top of stocks.
I can actually also use this
if I just want to strain something out.
Here I've got an assortment of food turners.
So, this long food turner,
I'm going to use this for something more like eggs,
if I got pancakes.
So I can get in on the side of it, use that,
and I can flip it over.
This food turner with that rounded front,
I'm going to use this for something a little more sturdy.
If I'm cooking steaks or bacon or something like that,
I'm going to use this to get in there.
I can flip it over.
All right, a lot more sturdy.
This food turner, probably one of the best ones we have.
All right.
Heavy-duty. I can use this to scrape my griddle
as well as flip my steaks, eggs, burgers.
Anytime I'm cooking meat,
I'm looking for one of these food turners.
My baker's scraper,
I'm going to use my baker's scraper,
I use this to clean my griddle,
I use it to clean my tabletops.
Depending on what type of rations we have,
I may get up on here, make bread, cookies.
I'm going to use my baker's scraper
the same way that I would use it in a regular kitchen.
This is our food scoop.
We're going to use this anytime we have something
that might stick to the spoon,
things like ice cream or mashed potatoes,
refried beans, softer vegetables like spinach.
We'll use that so we can get it in
and ensure that everyone gets a proper portion size.
Next we have our tongs.
Anytime we want to grab something,
we're going to use our tongs.
Next is our serving fork.
I use this much in the same way as tongs.
For things that are a little bit closer,
a little bit smaller, I'll use my 15-inch fork.
I've got my 21-inch fork.
Especially when I'm using my large griddle,
I'm going to use this 21-inch fork.
Next is my whisk.
So, this right here is a rigid whisk.
You can tell the tines on it are a little bit thicker.
But I can also use this to add air to stuff
if I want to make things like meringues or whipped cream.
Next, I've got my rolling pin.
Everybody knows what a rolling pin is for,
but here we use it for a few other things.
We use our rolling pin to break up ice
for when we pre-chill our insulated food containers.
We have a 4-quarter pitcher.
When you're preparing food for 800 personnel,
you don't have time for small measuring cups.
4-quarter pitcher is going to allow us
to scale out, to measure out large amounts of liquid.
If you don't need to go quite so big as 4 quarts,
this is a 1-quart dipper.
We're going to use this to help transfer food
from our large cooking pots to our serving dishes.
Next, we have an 8-ounce ladle.
Now, precision is everything.
We have a set of measuring spoons.
We're going to use our measuring spoons
to ensure we're getting the right measurements
according to those recipe cards.
Everything we do is hot, so we've got our hot pads.
We're going to use these hot pads
when we're moving hot pans,
we're removing stuff from the oven.
I'll even use my hot pads sometime
when I'm cleaning my griddle,
just to give myself a little bit of protection
from that hot stuff that's on the griddle.
I've got a variety of serving pans.
This is a half pan.
Anyone who's worked in food service
can identify this as a 6-inch half pan.
We'll store food in here to serve it.
We can prepare food in here even.
Step up from the half pan
is our 6-inch line pan.
Some people may know it as a hotel pan.
This is a 6-inch line pan.
And that's all the equipment
that a US Army culinary specialist uses
in our containerized kitchen.
[group laughing]
He's working, OK?
Jokes.
Jokes!