Keeping cookbooks in a GIT chef repository doesn't scale well. I keep my cookbooks in an instance of Chef server, acting as a cookbook repository (I don't connect VMs to this chef server). It is designed to fulfil the same purpose as Nexus (or artifactory) in Java development, a place to hold my development dependencies.
When loading a new chef server I download my cookbook's dependencies using Berkshelf, referencing this chef server using an "chef_api" directive:
This will all change with Berkshelf 3.0 (Just released). I want to check out berkshelf-api which I'm hoping will simplify my work-flow. Reportedly Berkshelf-api can serve up cookbooks from:
- Community cookbook site
- An instance of chef server (like I do)
- Cookbooks stored on file-system (This might suit you better)
Hope this helps.