Cooking With Children

Cooking with children can be a great way to spend time together as well as teaching them valuable life skills.

If you are precious about your kitchen, then maybe outsource this task to a grandparent as things will get messy.

There are many benefits to encouraging your children to cook, not only does it create happy memories, but it can teach them important skills like using kitchen equipment, weighing, chopping and grating.

Cooking also encourages them to try new foods as well as giving them a huge sense of pride when they see the end results.

Even very young children can get involved in the kitchen, from decorating cakes to chopping up fruit - you can buy child safe knives if they are very young.

There are loads of things you can cook or bake with your children, including cakes, traybakes and bread to more adventurous meals which you can enjoy together as a family. Why not make an occasion of it and once a month agree on a menu and spend the day cooking.

You could take this even further and write down different countries and pop them into a hat, then once a month pull out a different country and plan a 3-course meal from that region together.

You could even make a menu, lay the table and make a special drink for the occasion too. And who knows, in years to come, all this could result in your child cooking for you once a week – one can dream! For some child friendly recipes, take a look at these links: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/category/all-family-kid.

https://www.jamieoliver.com/features/recipes-to-cook-with-kids.

https://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/collections/main-meal-recipes-for-kids.html

It can be a great way to spend time together as well as teaching them valuable life skills.