Cooking with Kids

Learning to cook is an essential skill for survival. I want my girls to be able to take care of themselves when I can’t be with them. So far, my oldest shows signs of being able to survive college life on ramen noodles, mac and cheese and PBJs. My youngest will live well on omelettes, microwaved bacon and ham sandwiches.

But more important than learning to survive, I want my girls to learn to enjoy cooking and the art of hospitality. I have said before, if I love you, I cook for you and I would love to pass this on to my girls. I want them to feel they can cobble together a meal for friends, or even just a respectable snack to share.

For centuries, cultures all over the world have gathered together to make and enjoy meals.  Some cultures even share food from the same plate, like Chinese Hot Pot or Senegal’s traditional fish and rice dish. Sometimes these shared plates are even eaten with your hands. It doesn’t get more personal than that. However it is eaten, sharing food together builds community.

While it is not necessary for meals to be home-cooked, it sure makes people feel special. Knowing someone took the time to cook for you endears them to you.

Of course, to help my girls learn the skill of hospitality, I have to let them in my kitchen – my tiny kitchen. I have learned the hard way that this requires extreme patience on my part, and letting go of control. I am admittedly not always good at this. But it really is necessary. There will be messes – big messes. There will be accidents. I still remember the first time I tried to make my Mom’s spaghetti sauce by myself for the first time, all to try to impress a boy.  I nearly melted the cord off of her electric skillet. But there will also be memories made and traditions started.

We were recently confined to the house while we waited out Hurricane Florence. We maintained power the whole time and didn’t sustain any damage, but the rain would not stop for days. I cooked for my little family for much of it, but on the last day, I decided to enlist help to make dinner.

My oldest was my sous chef for this meal. (I have learned it is easier to have one teen/pre-teen in the kitchen at a time.). We made a variation on a recipe we found on Pinterest. I had some veggies that needed eating, and pasta is always a comfort food, so we made a pasta primavera with shrimp.

I had my sous chef prep our shrimp, thawing it and removing the tails while I cut the veggies. My girls have had some practice with a knife, though cutting correctly and safely still takes time. I have had many a close call with a carrot, even as an adult.

I also had her put the pot on to boil for the pasta. She sautéed our onions and veggies and added our shrimp and generally helped the dish come together quite nicely.

For this recipe, I kept the veggies a little larger, so that anyone can pick out what they don’t like. You can use any veggies you like, the secret is in cooking them for as long as they need, but not too long. We cooked our carrots first, as they take the longest. Then we added frozen broccoli florets, then the peppers and sugar snap peas.

We used already cooked shrimp, which simply needs to be heated through toward the end of the preparation.

This dish was a crowd-pleaser and the sous chef even had seconds. Everything tastes better when you have helped to make it.

It was fun to cook a healthy, satisfying meal together and I need to remember to ask for help more often.

Now, on to training them to clean up the kitchen….

AuthorMelissa JoyDifficultyIntermediate