Cooking Ideas Kids Will Love

Where do you start, if your children are kitchen virgins? Cookies and cakes may not be healthiest, but they are fun to make and can give you a wonderful treat once in a while. Just yesterday, I invited a bunch of my kids' friends over to our house to make cookies together. We went the whole nine yards, with spices, decorations, frosting, and everything. Every kid was part of the process of figuring out the recipe, finding ingredients, measuring them out, and mixing the batter. Then, each child got to decorate their own cookies however they wanted. 

It was a huge hit. Some of these kids had never helped in the kitchen before. Today, one of them phoned me to tell me just how great a time she had. Cookies are easy for beginning cooks, and a lot of fun. 

Meal Planning

Are you a meal-planning family? Getting your kids involved in the process is a great way to prepare for some serious cooking. Sit down together once a week, and browse the web for things you'd like to eat. Brainstorm ideas first, and then Google. It's great if each person has the opportunity to choose at least one meal — which they can then help prepare to the fullest of their abilities. If your kids take packed lunches to school, this is an area where you can give them a lot of autonomy. Do talk about budgetary constraints, of course, and teach them to stay away from extraordinarily expensive ingredients.

Gathering Ingredients

Once you have your meal plan for the week ready, you can print or write down the recipes you'll be using. Asking your kids to gather the ingredients for you while you clean the kitchen or are engaged in some other task promotes organizational skills and gets them involved in the cooking process. Once you do this for a while, it can save you an awful lot of time.

Cutting And Peeling

Kids as young as four or five can safely use a Y peeler. These peelers have safety blades perpendicular to the handle, and are unlikely to cause injury. Very young kids can cut soft fruits like bananas and strawberries with plastic knives. Older kids can use table knives, while experienced cutters might be ready for real kitchen knives. Teach them about knife safety first, though: they should cut away from their bodies where relevant and not place their fingers in places where they may end up chopping them. Graters may seem benign, but watch out: grating your own skin is easy. 

Operating The Stove

Toddlers are usually taught that stoves are dangerous and they should keep their distance. My kids were afraid to get near our stove for a long time, but are now confident about using it. We have an electrical stove, however, and that is a bit less hazardous than gas stoves, which have an open flame. The main thing here is to supervise your kids all the time, until you are absolutely confident they won't cause a fire. That is more likely to be around age 12 than age five. However, with adequate supervision, many kids will be able to learn to use a stove and enjoy it. You will probably want to drain boiling water for your kids, because handling heavy saucepans with boiling water is dangerous. Likewise, you'll want to remove oven dishes from the oven.

Meals Kids Can Make Fairly Independently

Here are some meal ideas my kids have executed with supervision but little help:

• Pancakes, cookies, and cakes
• Pizza: making the dough, choosing the toppings, and decorating the pizza.
• Stir-fries: choosing and cutting vegetables, selecting either rice or noodles, stirring the stir-fry, and adding sauces.
• Bread: choosing a recipe, preparing the yeast, kneading the dough, shaping the bread (braids, other shapes), and turning on the oven to the right temperature. 
• Salads: Googling recipes, buying the ingredients, cutting, and making a dressing.
• Omelettes with vegetables.
• Juices, using a juicer. 

See Also: Music Training Promotes Brain Development In Kids

A Note About Safety

Only you know when your kids are ready to do serious kitchen work. There is no magic age at which a child is ready — skills like paying attention to detail and responsible behavior are more important than how old a child is. Accidents can always happen, however, and having a good first-aid kit in your kitchen is a good idea for anyone.