Everybody appreciates good manners, even firefighters with dangerous work on their minds. Back at the firehouse, out of harm’s way, they must coexist in 24-hour shifts, so behaving well counts.

There’s etiquette in the firehouse kitchen, where duties are rotated, and while each station has its own particulars, rules go something like this: When you cook, make plenty so there’s something to leave for the next watch. And: No copying.

“If someone has a special recipe for, say, Chinese roast pork, and you’re in the same company as that firefighter, it’s bad form to use his recipe until he transfers out,” said Capt. David Jenkins, the Honolulu Fire Department’s public information officer, who’s put in more than two decades of service and has cooked many a firehouse meal.

“There is a point of pride to cooking in the firehouse,” he said. “If you’re not a good cook at the beginning of your career, by the end of it you’ll have at least a few good recipes under your belt.”

The Honolulu Firefighters Foundation is holding its 7th Annual Signature Food Festival benefit on Friday, featuring dishes by chefs from the Royal Hawaiian, Sheraton Waikiki, Moana Surfrider and Sheraton Princess Kaiulani hotels. Firefighters will also prepare a firehouse pastele stew. Proceeds will benefit the fire department’s public safety programs.

Most stations rotate cooking duties daily. The City and County of Honolulu provides a food budget of $10 a day per firefighter, out of which the cook must provide lunch and dinner. One fire truck calls for five positions, so a platoon at a one-truck station must be fed on $50 a day. The assigned cook does the daily food shopping based on what’s on sale.

At the two-truck Kakaako fire station, five-year veteran Jonathan Doane had cooking duty last week. When he arrived at work, he found that the previous shift had left plenty of kalua pig, and he turned it into pulled pork sandwiches for lunch.

Doane had $100 to buy ingredients for a required two entrees, plus a stir-fry or vegetable salad. After shopping, he returned with chicken and fresh corned beef, a favorite among his coworkers. The trick to delivering two courses, he said, is to use both the oven and the stove.

“You put one dish in the oven and it’s taken care of. Then you cook the other one on the stove.”

Among the dishes in Doane’s repertoire are kalua turkey made from the quarter hind (“the meat is darker and more moist”) and other Hawaiian food.

Doane is a second-generation firefighter whose dad also worked at the Kakaako station and taught him to cook. But he said it’s easy for any new firefighter to succeed in the kitchen.

“The good thing about the firehouse is that it’s pretty much a second home, so if you’re not good in cooking people will step in to help. It kinda forces their hand,” he said with a laugh.

Jenkins said that over the years, firefighters become skilled at stretching their purchases.

“One of the things I’ve really enjoyed in my career is the challenge of not knowing what I’d be cooking until I got into the store. Then I’d go through my mental Rolodex to think of recipes,” he said. “If I saw a pork shoulder, I knew I could make a roast and maybe some chop suey. I could save the bone and make soup. So one purchase could be spread over several meals.”

These days, he said, with increased awareness of healthful eating, rib-sticking dishes like beef stew share the menu rotation with fish and poultry, large salads and meals where ground turkey subs for beef.

Amid such changes, good recipes endure. As a newbie, Jenkins bought a notebook just for keeping recipes. When he worked at different firehouses and ate a good dish, he’d ask the cook for the recipe to add to his book.

“I still have that 24-year-old composition book of recipes I collected over the years,” he said. “I still use it at home, and now, my 14-year-old son cooks from it.”