Kids in the Kitchen
Cooking with Little Chefs 3+ How to make it Happen
What I suggest is that you plan a cooking day or a trip to the farmer’s market. Plan it as if you were making a trip to the park, the zoo, or the beach. Make it fun and make it an event. If you can do it more often – then go for it! Whatever you manage to do is worthwhile.
The Empowerment of a Little ChefKids often want to “do it themselves” – the “Let me do it” phase. The most amazing idea I’ve seen for allowing kids to cut up food is the use of a stainless steel table knife and regular cutting board. With just the barest hint of a serrated edge, a table knife becomes a useful cutting tool which is unlikely to cause injury and requires considerably less supervision. (I wouldn’t suggest giving table knives to a dozen pre-schoolers and leaving them alone for 20 minutes or even five, but table knives are pretty blunt and within reason quite safe.)
This way, little kids are empowered with a responsible task of chopping and they are often respectful that they are being given that privilege. A common table knife is an amazing learning tool and will cut soft vegetables, fruit, cheese and even (cooked) chicken. Another option is to use a plastic knife with a serrated edge although it is not as useful for harder foods it will do the job for fruit and soft cheese.
Note: Don't worry about form or beauty. Pieces cut by little chefs are likely to be haphazard in size and shape and that's fine. Cooking with a young chef is not an exact science and perfection can come later.
Cooking & Shopping or Cooking in-Season
Great cooking requires great ingredients. Learning where the food comes from, how to make a choice, where you go to shop or choose your food; be it farmer’s market, grocery store or backyard.
Learning to choose a ripe tomato, or a sweet melon or just knowing what produce is in-season, is part of the lesson. Take your child to the farmer’s market as a field trip if you don’t do it regularly, or just spend some time in the produce section of the grocery store. Talk about what vegetables are in season. Let children choose and buy something for a cooking project and integrate it into a meal. Let a child choose something to eat (an apple, berries, lettuce, something that strikes their fancy) and help them to make the best choice.
Stymied by a vegetable or fruit yourself?
Learn together - it’s okay not to know everything. Or look it up when you get home and share that moment of learning with your child. If you don’t know how to cook it, or choose it, or ripen it, then ask questions and learn about food together.
Talk About The Ingredients
You may still choose to make strawberry shortcake in February from grocery store strawberries which are grown in South America. Talk to your children about where the strawberries are grown and why there are no local strawberries you can buy right now. Tell them how strawberries taste different in June.
Tell a Story about the Ingredients
Talk to them, and tell them a story about the ingredients that they are using. Your little chef is listening. If you don't know the story off-hand, read the label or look it up later, and make it a research project. The flour is wheat sown in a sunny field and reaped by the farmer who threshes it and then takes to the mill to have it ground into flour. The apple comes from an orchard in the fall. The bees made the honey by visiting flowers and collecting the dusty pollen. Check your library, too. There are children's books written on cooking themes which tell stories. (Like How to Make an Apple Pie). Stories can inspire field trips. You might take a trip to a farm, grain mill, fish docks or an orchard.
