What's it like to cook for an institution?

Someone told me about 20 years ago that in jail, cooking was a privilege because it was a paid job, and they got to eat food that others didn’t get to eat (for example, cuts of meat that they put to the side).

It’s been a dream of mind for a long time to cook in an industrial kitchen, like a lunch lady. The drawback seems to be budget issues, more than anything. Our food here is so gross compared to the fresh foods in some other countries.My nail lady is a lunch lady, and my neighbor.

I worked in a nursing home kitchen (does that count?)

Almost everything was frozen pretty much. We prepped stuff like fruit, veggies, meat and that is it. Most desserts were frozen too.

We had over 100 people to cook for, so it was just a lot of food to prep, but pretty easy as I said most was frozen and flavorless, so no need to worry about all that.

Burgers were usually baked, we had a griddle mainly for special orders like grilled cheese or whatever wasn’t on the menu.

We also had to puree stuff.

I mainly did prep work, but there really was no actual “cooking”.

I was a cook in the Army Reserve. The food was properly prepared, but sometimes what we received was not of the highest quality. Then if the meat was full of gristle, they blamed it on us.

For prep of large quantities of something that had to be mixed by hand, such as a vat of potato salad, I’d scrub well way past my elbows (and rinse of course), then I’d dig in with my hands and arms to mix it up. There’s no way you could use a giant spoon to mix it.

One summer I worked in a huge kitchen where they served 1500 people a night. I had to peel a 50 lb sack of onions every day or so. The first few days were very difficult because I couldn’t see from the tears, then I got used to it and no more tears after that.