Cooking was a skill we taught our kids before they could drive. There is an amazing sweet spot between 9 – 15 years old where kids are totally capable of learning a lot of life skills, and they are still home often because they can not drive yet.
Adult skills were a core family competency that we focused on when raising our kids. If you have a senior in high school and have not focused on this yet, there is always time! Even when they come home to visit during college breaks is a great time to teach them how to cook.
I highly suggest picking a family favorite meal to use for your lesson. Even a holiday dish is a fun option!
Top 5 kitchen skills for your child to learn:
How to follow a recipe
One of my favorite things is to watch kids learn how to cook for the first time. It is like a lot of things that teens learn, and that is that things that seemed super easy are surprisingly more complicated than we originally thought.
When we are looking at a recipe, we are looking for a couple of key take aways.
How complicated is the recipe?
Do I have the kitchenware and appliances called for in this recipe?
Does the recipe have items in it that I do not like? For example, does it call for jalapenos when you do not like spicy food?
Does the recipe have too many ingredients? When you are young and just moving out on your own, buying spices and ingredients for the first time can be cost-prohibitive.
Does it require you to be too “in depth” with your cooking? Are we blanching, peeling and crushing tomatoes or are we buying a can of crushed tomatoes?
Check if you need something like “softened butter” and account for that in your prep time.
How to prep your kitchen and ingredients before cooking
Now that we have chosen our recipe and purchased our ingredients. Let’s prepare our kitchen.
As we all know, things get messy and hectic when the oven is beeping because it is pre-heated, the measuring spoons are dirty, but you need them to now measure a dry ingredient, and you just used it for oil.
By pre-measuring everything, the process of cooking will go smoothly, and your child will learn things like, “you have to rinse the measuring spoon off after you use it for a wet ingredient and before using it to measure something dry like flour.
Address how to measure things like flour or sugar versus a wet or liquid ingredient like water. Should you be leveling off the ingredient or packing it down?
How to use a knife properly
Chances are, you have several knives in the house, and the kids are familiar with them, but do they know how to properly use them and what they are designed for? Now is the time to learn which knife is best for raw meat and which cuts vegetables best. How do you hold a vegetable to chop, and what is the best way to filet and cut up raw chicken?
How to tell if meat and baked goods are completely cooked
There are several methods that people use, but my favorite is a food thermometer for checking meat temperatures and the fork test for baked goods.
Remember to test a few spots in the meat. The fork test is how I easily tell if a baked good is ready. If you put the tines of the fork in the middle of the baked item, and it comes out clean, the baked item is ready.
How to properly clean up the kitchen after working with raw meat.
Teach your child the importance of cleaning your area, the sink, and all appliances and items that came into contact with raw food. Teach them about your favorite cleaning item. Mine is Clorox Disinfecting Bleach-Free All Purpose Cleaner. I also love using Clorox wipes..
Bonus – How to properly wash your hands before and after cooking.
It never hurts to review proper hand washing techniques before, after, and during cooking.
I’d love to know what your top five skills would be!
