How The Military’s Largest Cafeteria Feeds 4,500 Soldiers In 90 Minutes | Boot Camp

These cooks are preparing 4,500 meals at SLO mes Hall, the U.S. Army's

largest

dining facility at 60,000 square feet, serves Army Soldiers. Air Force airmen and Navy sailors training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, daily. I am preparing at least around 3500. to 4 4,000 at least for breakfast, our count increases for lunch, so we automatically feed Le at least 4500, that is a good CL, we need a nutritious and balanced meal, this is the PowerHouse here, so this is where we provide those meals to them. that will allow you to get up and be the best you can that day Business Insider spent 2 days with the slagel staff as they prepared for the biggest meal of the day while following a color-coded system meant to encourage service. members to make healthier choices the three entrees are 600 lb Ginger Roast Beef, 1,400 lb Bombay Chicken, and 210 lb Cheese Tortilini with Marinara.

There is also a variety of vegetables, fast food and a salad bar that

feeds

between 4,000 and 4,500 students. In just 90

minutes

, personnel from all branches of the

military

train at Fort Sam Houston, many of them at the Medical Education and Training

camp

us. In 2013, the dining hall was named in honor of Sergeant First Class Wayne Slagel, a distinguished army combat medic, thanks, oh yeah. ma'am, I can definitely brighten your day. I come here about 3 times a day, it's just included in my B, so it might as well be that the experience is really great. All the staff are very friendly.

I have built a bom with a couple. of them especially for being here for so long, so it's nice to see those familiar faces here. It serves about 66,000 meals each week, about 35,000 for Army

soldiers

, 18,000 for Navy sailors and 13,000 for Air Force airmen. All students must dine at slagel during lunch Monday through Friday to prepare the meal in time for 4,500 students the lunch staff is divided into two shifts the night team who prepares the food and the lunch team who cooks the pans and the serving for today's meal preparation starts at 8:00 the night before Teresa, of course, everyone knows there are knuckles.

I saw it there. Chicken quarters. Have. I haven't seen the Talina. I haven't seen the lasagna. I'm going to check that. Okay, so do your thing. Our night team arrives. They cook the ginger roast, it's not fully cooked, but it browns it and cooks it that way when I come in, that makes it easier to cut once it cools and everything they did and then once we cut it, We return to the cooks begin unpacking about 600 pounds of beef knuckles, move them to pans, season them and take it all to the ovens to brown while the beef knuckles brown in the oven, the cooks begin placing the chicken quarters on trays so they're ready to go in the oven when the lunch crew arrives the next morning.

You have 1,400 pound chicken. Some kind of exercise is on the other side of the kitchen. Another cook finishes boiling macaroni and noodles for pasta. Salad, look, there's good pasta there. A good bit of pasta. It is better to let it rest for about 10 more

minutes

. It should be cold while the pasta cools. The cook begins preparing the salad for the salad bar at the same time as washing and chopping the cabbage. preparation for the Calico cabbage dish with the cooled pasta, the cook returns to the tilt grill to add the peppers, onions and seasonings, then it is placed in a pan and stored in the refrigerator after only 3 hours of preparation, the cooks move all the food to the refrigerator for the next shift okay maybe I need it for my phone.

Preparation of lunch the next day begins at 6:00 a.m. m. One cook seasons the chicken quarters before putting them in the oven while another cooks the roast into slices. How long does it take? you have to slice the fall, although it depar how much like an hour, hour and a half, about 4,500 lb once sliced, the roast is put back in the oven to finish cooking, you know, a 60 gal kettle, the Marinara sauce is made with 114 lb of pizza. sauce vegetable oil and a variety of seasonings is made once the sauce is ready it is poured over the tortillini and placed in the oven to cook with the main dishes underway 450 lb of peas, carrots and cabbage are added to the Tilt Grill and they are boiled while cooking more Pan frying and preparing the remaining products for the salad bar, it is not really a challenge or it is not too difficult for us because most of us have been here for 10 to 15 and 20 plus years, so it is as if we were already in the movement of doing this.

I already have this idea, you know, I know how many

soldiers

I'm going to feed. I was told we fed so much last night, so I know how to project this count for the next day. In the hot kitchen, the chicken is removed from the oven. It is placed on serving trays and topped with bomb sauce, the chicken is placed in warmers to remain at a safe temperature until lunch, while the ginger roast returns to the oven to continue cooking. I have never met a person before who hasn't eaten a sweet tooth, but again my key word is balance.

Cooks prepare the desserts by cutting more than 2,000 slices of cake and placing them in individual serving containers. Slagel orders over 1,800 cakes a week, so the desserts we offer here at Slagel come in a multitude of combinations. some are pre-made and some are made on premises however we try to reduce the sugars and fats but the most important thing is the taste so if we can trick them and give them a great taste then we have one in 2022 slagel Hall me served 2.1 million it's not about how much food we serve it's what our grocery bill is so our grocery bill is astronomical according to slagel meshall spends $14.2 million annually on food which is provided to students for breakfast, lunch and dinner, which are served 365 days. a year and managing that food is a logistical challenge.

I have dairy products from Monday to Friday, I produce the same thing on Monday Wednesday and Friday and then I have bread on Monday Tuesday and then Thursday and Friday, so basically something always happens with what arrives or what Exit the kitchen in Slagel has 10,000 cubic feet of refrigerator space, that's a big freezer. It can probably hold up to $300,000 worth of food, but I range between 187 and 200,000. My meats will basically be hidden back here, where my popsicles are my breakfast. items sausages pancakes waffles will be all our vegetables, which are asparagus, green beans, broccoli, peas, corn, get to that back wall over there while lunch near the staff prepare the dining rooms and move the products to the salad bar, an elevator he help them. food is moved between the two floors of the dining room food is removed from warmers and placed on the serving line outside participants begin to make their way to the dining room participants are normally required to march toward lunch in formation, however, in On this day due to an unusually cold morning in Texas, the trainees were allowed to arrive independently to fetch the rice rather than being limited to a single item.

It's great to have a variety, especially during the week. It's not the same every week. It personally takes me a little longer to try. I figured out what I want to eat today, but I just follow the line they offer us. I think it's two proteins and then two sides, so there's a different variety of sides, so sometimes it's hard to choose. You want to try, you tried. I always stop at the salad bar. They usually try to add a little extra protein, so maybe some eggs or some ham cubes to my meal, which serves 4,500 students in 90 minutes, is not an easy task.

The slagel is divided into two floors, each with its own serving and dining lines that feed 1,100 at a time, each meaning that students must eat quickly so that everyone can be fed in the allotted time, the most of the companies we have have between 200 and 300 people if you are closer to the front of the line you get a little more time if you are near the back you don't get as much but about 15 or 20 minutes for everyone at least and then you know that they want you out ready to go so we can go back to class and you know, focus on our primary studies and everything, there's no specific calorie count that we're trying to hit because we don't tell a person that you can't pass again Down the line, however, it has to be balanced, the menu follows a program implemented by the DOD known as go for green that encourages service members to make healthier choices on the line of duty.

Foods that students should eat occasionally, such as hot rolls and red. Foods that students should rarely eat, like sauce, if you were to ask me why students need so much food and why we have to provide them with the balanced food that we do, it is because they are not on the couch anymore, they are here training to defend the country that we all love and to do it you have to have the spirit that we do not provide, but what we do provide is the fuel and the energy that your body needs when lunch comes to an end, the students leave Hall month to return to their training while the slagel staff cleans the dining room and prepares for dinner, which is now only 4 hours away and that's when they can probably escape. to some restaurants that I'm not going to name and they're not looking for love, they're just looking for a little more fat, you know what I'm saying.