Getting kids cooking

Planning can be fun

It can be really fun to plan and prepare recipes and meals together. Looking through online recipes or through the many cookbooks you may have can be a great way of working together with the children and allowing them to make positive choices. Ensure that the recipes you plan are easy to do and to obtain the ingredients. You may want to look at what you have in the store cupboards or the fridge and challenge the older kids to create a recipe or bake something using only five ingredients. BBC Good Food has some great recipes that you could use. 

Observing safety is important 

• Try to avoid deep-frying as this is potentially the most dangerous of all cooking
• Check the heat of the oven door when it is at full blast. Some oven doors get very hot and children could be burned if they touch the door
• Use the back burners if you have small children and try to get into the habit of turning saucepan handles towards the back of the cooker rather than the front
• Don’t keep dangerous substances under the sink, but rather in a high cupboard unless you have child-proof lock
• Avoid tripping or your children pulling themselves up on loose wires or dangling flexes

Get creative 

• Cut root vegetables into chunks and carve out a pattern or decoration on of the sides. This can be dipped into ink or paint and then printed on to paper
• Pastry is fun as an edible play-dough. When you are making a pastry children can help you to shape, roll and decorate a pie, with leaves, apple shapes or balls
• Your children can also help you to make biscuits – they can mix the dough, roll it out, cut it into shapes and finally decorate it at the end
• Let all your children participate – if you make them feel they can do it, they will acquire confidence. Smaller children could, for instance, sieve flour and sugar into a bowl for a cake and then help you to mix it into a liquid. Your older children could help you with chopping grating or slicing or they could also help you with weighing ingredients
• You could also get your children to top their own homemade pizzas with a variety of toppings

Growing together 

• Children could also help with laying the table and helping you with the washing up afterwards
• Growing things are fun – mustard and cress are the easiest to grow. Let your children sow the seeds on a damp base (blotting or kitchen paper) in a container and sprinkle water on it daily. Do this for about a week and growth should be visible
• Beansprouts can be used in salads once they have sprouted. To grow sprouts, put a couple of tablespoons of dried beans, (not red kidney beans though) peas or lentils into an empty jam jar, rinse with water and put a piece of J-cloth over the top securing with an elastic band. Store in a warm dark place and rinse the beans daily. After about five days the beans will have germinated and sprouted
• Avocado stones can be set over water until they shoot. Children can also put parsnip or pineapple tops in a saucer with water and see how they develop roots and shoots
• If you have a garden, children can grow some vegetables by themselves. Radishes are easy and they grow fast

Watch this video for more inspiration