In the premiere episode of The Legend of Kitchen Soldier, Master Sergeant Park Jae-young and a fellow soldier escort the new recruit, Kang Seong-jae, to his new posting. Along the journey, Seong-jae dozes off, his mind drifting back to the struggles he endured working two jobs—a supermarket attendant and a water delivery person—to make ends meet. His decision to enlist and his life experiences propel him to become the best trainee. Master Sergeant Jae-young is thrilled that headquarters has finally sent them an ace recruit.
Seong-jae's new posting is in the Fourth Company, First Battalion, 60th Regiment, 29th Division, Ganglim post. Here, Jae-young introduces him to Tak Mun-Ik, nicknamed TMI, to help with his onboarding. Seong-jae undergoes a psychological evaluation and hesitates when asked if he has experienced loss or depression lately. Suddenly, he hears a voice that startles him, making him think Jae-young has called.
Once the results are out, Mun-Ik shocking informs Jae-Young that Seong-Jae is S-class. While Seong-jae assumes it's an exemplary class above A-class, it turns out to include soldiers who require special attention. Just then, Cha Seung-woo walks in, excited to meet the new ace recruit, only to be disappointed upon learning that headquarters sent them another reject.
The evaluation reveals that he is addicted to gaming and has high depressive symptoms. Jae-young calls him into his office, the Room of Truth, to examine his reports. It turns out that Seong-jae enlisted two months after his father, Kang Yong-il, died. Jae-young gives him a smiley button pin and orders him to pin it on his chest until Jae-young says otherwise.
With this newfound insight into Seong-jae's background and struggles, the episode sets the stage for a journey filled with challenges and growth as Seong-jae navigates his new life as a soldier under the guidance of Master Sergeant Jae-young and his fellow comrades.
Mun-Ik led Seong-jae to meet the outpost commander, First Lieutenant Cho Ye-rin. As he introduced himself, a mysterious game-like window popped up, visible only to him, revealing that he had been registered as an ordinary soldier. Ye-rin was worried when he seemed distant, and Mun-Ik mentioned that he had talked about hearing and seeing things. She insisted that he should report to her if things got too difficult to handle and asked Mun-Ik to take him to the dining hall for some food.
Inside the dining hall, the soldiers lined up to get their meal from the Military Cook, Sergeant Yoon Dong-hyun. His meals were terrible, but because the soldiers feared him, none of them called him out—except for Corporal Kim Gwan-chul. Mun-Ik warned Seong-jae to brace himself for the worst when he entered the dining hall. Gwan-chul's squad was excited that it was their turn to get the recruit, but their excitement faded when he turned around and they saw the smiley button. They called him over to their table and started teasing him, but Dong-hyun came to his rescue.
Seated alone at a table to enjoy their meal, Mun-Ik warned Seong-jae not to react after tasting it because Dong-hyun was watching them. Seong-jae took a bite of the mashed potatoes, and his head started spinning because it was just terrible. He tried to hold it in, but when he took a sip of the soup, he couldn't help but run for some water. Gwan-chul tripped him, and he lost consciousness for a minute, feeling like he was drowning in a bowl of terrible soup.
Later, Seong-jae met with the Company Commander, Hwak Seok-ho. After learning that his mother ran a food truck, he assigned him to the kitchen as a Kitchen Soldier. While Jae-young and Seok-ho argued about assigning him kitchen duty since he was a high-risk soldier, the game-like window popped up again, introducing a Chef's Path tutorial about his journey to becoming The Legendary Chef.
Seong-jae's first task under Dong-hyun as a kitchen assistant was to organize all the provisions in the pantry by expiration date. Meanwhile, Jae-young called the headquarters and confronted Master Sergeant Ran-hee for sending them a high-risk soldier. Another officer who had just been promoted, Lee Min-gu, overheard the confrontation and decided to drop by Ganglim post for a surprise inspection.
Back in the pantry, the Chef's Path game window popped up again with a task for Seong-jae to use a skill to organize the storeroom and gain 100 experience points. Just then, Min-gu showed up for the inspection, and he criticized everything about the kitchen and hall until he entered the storeroom. Min-gu was speechless, seeing that Seong-jae had organized the inventory with military precision, which made him lose his cool. Ye-rim and Dong-hyun started arguing, and the game window popped up again, congratulating Seong-jae for completing the quest.
A flashback showed how the pop-up helped Seong-Jae with organization by strengthening his body, leveling up, and granting skills like the chef's eye, which could instantly tell an item's expiration date. The game leveled his voice to 2, and his body tingled with the new sensation. Ye-rin asked to speak to Seong-jae in her office. The game window popped up again, distracting Seong-jae, and Ye-rin mentioned that a spirit had possessed some past recruits and had started seeing and hearing things.
Dong-hyun's discontentment with Seong-jae's assignment to the kitchen is palpable, especially with only 100 days left until his discharge. He fears that working with a high-risk soldier could jeopardize his career. Meanwhile, the game pop-up appears once again while Seong-jae is in the showers, this time with a recipe for beef seaweed soup. As he falls asleep, the game window saves his progress.
The next morning, Dong-hyun and Seong-jae must wake up early to prepare breakfast. To his surprise, the menu for the day is beef seaweed soup, and the game pop-up shows the recipe. However, Dong-hyun assigns Seong-jae to clean the floor instead. As the soldiers gather in the dining hall, Pyo Ji-yong believes that seaweed soup is a foolproof menu, but Gwan-chul notes that Dong-hyun always manages to fail, often by adding dark soy sauce instead of soy sauce. Ji-yong jokes that the soup is too dark and could potentially kill them. Gwang-chul takes a bite, confident that the food cannot harm them, but in an exaggerated sequence, the soldiers appear to be on a battlefield fighting for their lives.
Instead of an enemy army, they are under attack from Dong-hyun, who is firing sausages at them like machine-gun bullets. Gwan-chul angrily confronts Dong-hyun about his terrible cooking and storms out. The rest of his squad follows, and Dong-hyun leaves too, ordering Seong-jae not to look for him since he is on the edge.
Elsewhere, Battalion Commander Baek Chun-I from headquarters decides to have breakfast at the Ganglim post due to complaints about the food. Seok-ho texts Ye-rim, who is heading home after her shift, and she is forced to go back and prepare to receive Chun-Ik and Min-gu. In the kitchen, only Seong-jae is available, and Dong-hyun is nowhere to be seen. Since the food is inedible, Seong-jae offers to make use of the beef seaweed soup recipe downloaded from the system. He substitutes beef with a layer of sea urchin roe hidden beneath since Dong-hyun had used up all the beef earlier and adds a secret ingredient at the end. The system gives him 3 stars and an additional half star for creativity.
At the end of the episode, Baek Chun-ik suddenly collapses after tasting Seong-jae's special seaweed soup.
