The New York National Guard was looking for a few good chefs and they found them at the Dutchess BOCES Career and Technical Institute (CTI) on December 2nd.
Members of the National Guard visited the school to introduce students in the CTI culinary arts program to food service opportunities in the military. They brought a mobile kitchen to demonstrate field kitchen operations. The mobile kitchen was brought in on a trailer, stabilized with trailer stands, and then both sides were expanded to operational status.
The full service kitchen on wheels is used by the military to feed the troops in the field. Chefs work in the center of the kitchen and troops climb stairs on each side to fill their plates and then efficiently step off from the opposite end.
The culinary students were able to show off their cooking skills after a tour of the mobile kitchen. In the CTI kitchen, they were challenged to work in teams and transform MRE (meals ready to eat) rations into delicious dishes. The guardsmen were impressed as they watched the knife skills, creative seasoning, and plating. When time was up, they tasted each meal and talked with the chefs about their choices.
The MREs included a variety of ingredients including freeze dried chicken fajita mix, powdered drinks, tiny bottles of hot sauce, tubes of cheese, peanut butter, Combosâ, and freeze dried spaghetti and meatballs.
For more information about the culinary arts program, or any CTI offering, contact principal Mitchell Shron at 486-8001, ext. 4555 or at mitchell.shron@dcboces.org
To view the article and video published in the Poughkeepsie Journal, please visit:
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/life/food/2015/12/02/mre-boces/...