I’ve shared that one of my summer goals is to teach my boys to cook.
Nothing fancy.
No chef hats or complicated techniques.
Just survival cooking. The kind that will keep them alive in their bachelor years.
They are seven and nine, and they’ve helped me in the kitchen in the past, but I want them to gain some independence.
I had each of them choose one simple meal that they would make every other week. My goal is for them to become comfortable enough with their meal to make it completely on their own by the end of the summer.
Here are a few of my tips for teaching kids to cook:
1. Keep it simple. My boys chose . . . spaghetti and tacos. These are pretty much the easiest meals we eat. But they are real meals, and perfect for a child.
2. Focus on basic kitchen skills. Even with these simple meals, basic skills are involved.
For example:
- Knife skills. My nine year old chose spaghetti because he wanted to make garlic bread to go with it. I am teaching him to keep his fingers far away from the knife. (I taught him the “tuck your fingers in” technique right after this picture!)
- Recipe reading skills. You probably don’t read them (I don’t!), but there are instructions on the back of taco seasoning packets and pasta boxes. Reading these instructions will help a child start to understand the format in which recipes are written.
- Basic cooking techniques. From how to boil water to how to drain the fat off of ground beef . . . these are the things that make someone feel comfortable in the kitchen, which is my ultimate goal for my kids.
3. Give yourself lots of time, and them lots of praise! Even though these are the meals that I can have on the table in less than fifteen minutes using my pre-cooked ground beef, they may take an hour to prepare with the kids. Because I want them to know how to get a meal from the store to the table, I have them defrost and cook the meat on their own. And of course, the teaching and the not-as-skilled child-hands just add more time.
And what about younger children?
I didn’t plan for my five year old to have her own meal for the summer. Turns out, she just assumed that she would have one. I let her make jambalaya using a mix in the rice-cooker. It’s about as easy as possible, doesn’t involve any contact with heat, and she can easily chop the meat because it’s technically already cooked and easy to cut with a dinner knife.
She also volunteers to help out when the boys cook! I definitely don’t want to squelch her love of being in the kitchen!
And now for our Menu Plan for the week:
Monday – Spaghetti
Tuesday – Crockpot Chicken BBQ sandwiches
The rest of the week involves kids at grandma’s, me at Savvy Blogging Summit, hubby at a family reunion, etc . . . so I’ll stock up on some easy stuff for them to have.
I’ll be linking this up to Orgjunkie.com for Menu Plan Monday.
I’ve always told my son (who is 20) that he needed to have a killer meal in his repertoire to impress the ladies. His is also spaghetti (with doctored up sauce), garlic bread and strawberry salad with a homemade dressing. I ask him to make it at least once a week during winter months to ‘keep his skills up’ LOL – I think more moms need to make sure their sons know how to cook. Good post.
I too have my kids cook. They are responsible for a breakfast, lunch, and dinner each week. It is different each week. Some times I pick the meal, other times they do. My menu for this week is posted on my blog.
The Lego King is 10 & has been helping prepare meals for quite awhile now. Some ‘tools’ that helped him & my two older kids are a children’s knife called ‘My Safe Cutter” that has a zig-zag type edge that doesn’t cut skin (similar to the cutting tools you get in a jack-o-lantern kit at Halloween); the other item we have is called a ‘Hold ‘N Slice’. It looks like a pointy metal hair pick & it holds items that they cut & it also helps them learn how to make even slices. The last thing that we use are a good pair of kitchen shears, they help cutting lettuce & pizza, breadsticks, etc. Pampered Chef sells the My Safe Cutter & the Hold ‘N Slice. While I was looking to see what the actual names of those things are I noticed that they have a thing called a ‘Finger Guard’ too…. they’re all around $5…. I don’t sell Pampered Chef…. just been invited to alot of parties…. lol
http://www.pamperedchef.com
What a great mom you are!! ^_^ And that spaghetti dinner looks good to me!
love having our little ones in the kitchen busy hands make life more fun come visit me at http://shopannies.blogspot.com
Yay for teaching the kids to cook! You are singing my song! I was never taught that by my momma… so I’ve had to learn the hard way!
I tought my son to cook the summer before 5th grade. He had two weeks of written tests (written by me) before I would let him into my kitchen. He also had to identify all kitchen items and know where they are properly stored! At the end of the summer, he made a 5 course meal for the family including shopping, cooking, and completely cleaning the kitchen. After 4 hours in the kitchen, everything was clean and we were all impressed. He turned to me and said, “I can’t believe you do this every day. Thank you so much Mom!” I said, “My work here is complete.” He is now 15 and a better cook than I am! I’ve also given my kids budgets and grocery lists that they’ve had to compile using coupons and price matching. We do this every summer. They go off with their own carts to do their weekly grocery shopping while I take my cart and do the rest of the family shopping. It is teaching them math, responsibility, and the cost of basic items. It has made them very cost conscious. Now my 11 year old doesn’t ask for things in the store unless she knows it is on a good sale and has a reason for getting it. I made my lists myself but I used chartjungle.com to help me.
Nony this is great!
Kids can really surprise you. I don’t bake because I can’t eat gluten and my kids don’t eat sugar (bad teeth), so I thought I’d have to wait until they were older to cook with them. Then one day I walked into my daughter’s preschool and the teacher was helping a three year old section oranges with a knife. After my heart started beating again I could see that the way she was doing it was really safe. Now my 5 1/2 year old has good knife skills (though I do have her use and old ginsu with a serated edge that’s hard to cut yourself with) and my three year old is developing, they can both crack eggs, and safely stir something cooking in a hot pan, and actually kind of drive me crazy wanting to help with dinner when I am trying to through together something quickly and they want to help.
Great ideas here! Thanks for sharing.