How To Teach Kids To Cook Their Third Meal
The big world will arrive for your kids and you want them to have the skills to feed themselves. Teaching your kids how to cook, will bring them one step closer to independence. Having older kids that know how to cook will also give the parents some freedom. They can cook a meal for you every once in a while. I would suggest once a month so they do not lose what you have taught them.
Whatever they make you have to like it. A lot of effort and passion can go into cooking, the last thing they would need is criticism.
One of the easier foods children can make is pizza. Making pizza from scratch including the dough can be a task that is two great for them. Most kids will enjoy a simple pepperoni and cheese pizza. The fun for them comes from learning how to assemble a basic pizza.
Once they understand and have mastered making a basic pizza they may want to go on to make more exotic pizzas that can be found in many restaurants. I find kids will want to make a copy of their favorite restaurant pizza that they always order when then go out to eat.
The first time you make pizzas with the kids use something small. I would suggest they start with mini pizzas. They see them on the store shelves. They can imagine small pizzas in their mind which will help with the building of mini pizzas. The English muffin makes a perfect pizza crust. They absorb sauce and will cook up nice and crisp like thin crust and when split in half you can make 12 mini pizzas. The English muffin will also fit nicely in your toaster oven. The first time I taught my kids how to make mini pizzas I used pasta sauce to spread over each English muffin half. They added the shredded cheese and place the four pepperoni slices on top and we put four in the toaster oven. The first time I had them make just enough mini pizzas for themselves as I did not want them to be over loaded with work. Mini pizzas sound simple but the first time they do this you want it to be simple, quick and without a lot of work.
Success is the reward here. Have your children make foods they like to eat. Start small and then work on having them build bigger better pizzas. Eventually they will want to cook for you as well as their friends. These basics will eventually lead to some surprise meals that will be extremely awesome.
By Rick Henderson