How To Teach Your Children To Cook (Guest Post)

Although cooking with children can be a lot of fun, it can also be quite a challenging experience. You need to watch them constantly, keep them interested and make sure they’re being safe. Here are some tips on teaching your children to cook.

Fun recipe ideas

All children love cooking treats like fairy cakes, rainbow cookies and chocolate brownies, but it can be harder to get them involved with cooking main meals. Focus on the foods they love and practice making them from scratch. Research children cooking recipes to get some fun ideas.

You could teach them to make mini burgers, to which they can add cheese, bacon and salad, or you can show them how to make home-made fish fingers and mash. One of the easiest and best loved children meals are personal pizzas. Get them to roll out the dough, favour the sauce and grate the cheese. They can then choose all their favourite toppings to sprinkle on top.

Safety tips

It’s important to teach your children all the safety rules for cooking in the kitchen. While they are learning, keep them away from sharp knives and hot pans. Never leave them cooking alone and make sure you explain thoroughly how they should be using each utensil.

Put them in aprons to protect their clothing and teach them to clean up spills as they go, so that foods don’t become contaminated and they are less likely to slip over.

Explain fire safety and the difference between a normal fire and a grease fire. Make sure they don’t wear long sleeves which could catch fire. Also, tell them to use oven mitts instead of a tea towel to move hot pans off the stove, so that it doesn’t trail in the flames.

Dos and Don’ts

• Do be patient. If you rush your children or criticise them they’re likely to lose confidence and give up.
• Don’t get stressed. Accidents will happen – stay calm and show them how to do things properly.
• Do make it fun. Take a leaf out of Mary Poppins’ book and turn household chores into games! If they’re enjoying themselves they are more likely to want to help out again.
• Don’t push them too hard if they aren’t interested. Forcing your child to do something that they don’t want to can put them off for life! Let it go and try again at a later date.
• Do cook foods that they are enthusiastic about. If they’re making a fuss about cooking healthy food then start off with baking a cake and, when they become interested, you can move on to other things.

After a long day teaching your child to cook, you may feel like you never want to cook again! If you want to eat well, enjoying delicious and balanced meals, food hampers can be a solution.

Forman and Field, specialised in food hampers which range from everyday meal options, for those with busy lifestyles, to gourmet gift hampers for special occasions. Hampers can also be sent as presents – you can put together your own hamper with your children to get them involved in making a unique gift for someone.

Keep things light and fun and you’re bound to inspire your children to get cooking!