from the Catterick-based 5th Regiment Royal Artillery, who served up a sweet chilli prawn salad, chicken chasseur with roasted garlic mash and broccoli mornay, and a chocolate-orange bread and butter pudding.
“I’ve cooked for 50 soldiers in Afghanistan but VIP catering is very different and this gives us an opportunity to push the boat out and show what we are capable of,” Lance Corporal Luke Smith, of the winning regiment, explained.
And it seems that Britain leads the way when it comes to culinary excellence, with our American allies lagging well behind despite a significantly larger budget.
“One of the main differences between the UK and the Americans is that they don’t have real chefs,” Sgt Hopkins says. “Where we are trained in catering, they are only really trained in opening boxes and warming up food. They have a lot more money for food than the British but you couldn’t just give them a load of ingredients and tell them to cook something good. Their food is a lot more basic, though there is a lot more of it.
“They [the Americans] would have massive salads, as well as items they normally have back home like hot dogs, pizzas and burgers. When in Afghanistan we shared a camp with the Americans and every Sunday they would close their kitchen and come and eat in ours because we used to give them a full roast dinner. They loved it.”
Often cooking from basic gas stoves in conflict zones, the tastiness of the food served would betray the apparatus used to deliver it, while often being the same as what is eaten back home from the more advanced environment of the kitchen barracks.
“You tend to eat more cooked breakfasts when out in the field, a lot of pasta and rice dishes, generally food that is high in carbs and protein,” Sgt Hopkins explains.
“For the evening meal they would often have meat, spuds and vegetables. We work off a three-week menu cycle, so menus are all planned out once you put your orders in. The guys would get decent variety, with plenty of fresh fruit, yoghurt, juice drinks - anything you expect to get in the UK they would generally get out [on the front-line], though maybe not always as good.
“Food delivery is all done through food contractors to supply fresh rations. There’s often a big distribution centre so food is sent out as and when you need it by lorry. In smaller locations it can be brought to you by helicopter.
“As caterers we try to impress and give them a good service. For breakfasts, you would have toast, cereal, fried breakfast, poached egg on toast and continental breakfasts. In Kuwait we were using local fresh fruit and vegetables on a daily basis. In the Falklands fresh vegetables were brought in on aeroplanes with all the troops.”
With the centenary of Britain’s entry into the First World War recently passing you would be forgiven for thinking the types of food soldiers were eating back then had significantly changed in the last 100 years. “To be honest, the food they were having in the trenches during the First World War is pretty much the same now as it was then, though I’d like to think that what we give them today is better quality,” Sgt Hopkins adds.
