Why You Should Let Your Children Help in the Kitchen
Cooking with children can be a lot of fun for them and helpful for you! When you let your children help with the cooking they learn a lot about the food they eat. They can see the recipe right through from the raw ingredients stage right up to the result. They will also love eating their creations, even if they contain vegetables!
Benefits of Cooking with Children
Cooking might be a chore for us but the kitchen is a fun place for kids. Cooking is educational for kids and a very good bonding experience between you and them. Children can learn new skills without noticing, which include weighing, measuring, understanding, fractions and time.
Schools do not tend to spend a lot of time teaching cooking skills to children so you might like to try teaching them yourself.
Getting your child involved in cooking will prepare them for self-sufficiency and an independent life. It is also a good way to handle fussy eaters because most children will eagerly eat something they have helped to make. The benefits of cooking with children include teaching your child an extremely useful skill.
Some Tips for Cooking with Children
You can involve children as young as four in your cooking. Before starting, you need to consider a few things. Make sure you read the recipe through with your child, so you know what to do and what you need. Clear some space and get all the ingredients and utensils ready on a low surface, which your little angels can see.
Think about which parts of the recipe your child can do. Older children might be able to strain a bowl of boiling noodles or take something hot out of the oven. But you have to be more careful with younger kids. Your child should already know not to touch sharp knives but might forget in the excitement of cooking. So, keep them out of reach.
In order for your child to learn about cooking, you should explain what you are doing each step of the way. Telling your child to mix a batter does not let them know why they need to mix those particular ingredients or what is going to happen next. Kids are naturally inquisitive and you will probably find that they do not stop asking questions the whole time anyway!
Teach your child to wash their hands before handling any food. If your child is young, tell them what you are doing as you prepare the food. An older child can measure the ingredients by themselves.
Recipes to Make with Children
Children love to knead and roll out dough, mix batters and crack eggs so you could make a cake together or some cookies. Pizza is a fun food and your child can decide on the toppings and arrange them himself.
Icing a cake can also be fun for a child. If it is someone’s birthday, they can try to pipe a birthday message on the cake or arrange fruit on top. You might not get a particularly professional result but it will be fun for them and certainly appreciated by the recipient.
Whatever recipe you decide to make with your child, the most important thing with children cooking is to have fun. Cooking with children is an excellent bonding experience. Kids love to learn and it is always great to teach them something useful.
As I’ve noticed, most of the children don’t like vegetables. So, vegetable recipes can be a good choice to start with em’. My four years old Aurora also doesn’t like it. So I was curious about this fact and on her 4th birthday, I took her to our backyard kitchen.
She becomes very cheerful assuming that chicken wings are going to be smoked. She is just crazy about smoky chicken wings. She also loves these smoky recipes described here -
But, I told her that we are going to cook something new today to celebrate your birthday. She became happier as well as curious. I asked her — How about to grill some vegetables today? She replied that it’s not possible to grill vegetables, but it’ll be fun to have a try.
I thought she won’t agree with me. But, she became curious to cook a new recipe. I showed her the recipe first on YouTube, then started following the process. It was the first day I took her to the grilling place. So, I didn’t let her do anything. I just asked her to sit and hold the tab and watch the video, then to tell me the process.
She was doing her job carefully. I never seen her to be so excited. She was looking at the video, watching a steps then explaining to me what to do now. It took us nearly 45 minutes to grill a pair of Eggplant. And the result was surprising. Since then, she’s enjoying vegetables.
So, I thought it was about time to share some of my grilling tips for vegetables. Not only is it easy but it’s a delicious way to get even the most picky kids to eat em’.
If you have never tasted grilled vegetables…You are missing out on a treat for your taste buds, and guess what? It’s easy to do! Here are some hints and tips and techniques for preparing and grilling vegetables.
What vegetables are best for grilling?
Nearly any vegetables can be grilled, evidently some grill better than others. Here is a list of my favorites:
Corn on the cob, all types of peppers, zucchini and summer squash, asparagus, whole tomatoes, portobello mushrooms, potatoes, cauliflower, eggplant, green beans, and whole onions. I can on and on but let’s end there.
How to prepare your vegetables for grilling
For corn on the cob, peel the husks back a little over half way. Do not pull them off completely. Try to get most of the corn silk off, then pull the husks back up and tie them to the cob, then soak the whole ear in water for about an hour before setting over a hot fire on the grill.
You can also do this. When you take the cobs out of the water, untie them and brush them with a mixture of melted butter and chili pepper sauce, salt and pepper, then tie them back up and then put them on the grill. They are really good!
Zucchini should be washed thoroughly, ends trimmed off, then slice the Zucchini lengthwise in one-quarter inch thick slices. Brush with olive oil and place over a hot grill. They will not take long so keep and eye on them. Do not overcook.
Asparagus can be rolled in olive oil, salt and pepper and placed across the grill and turned occasionally. They are great and again, do not over cook.
Eggplant should be sliced about half an inch thick, salted and placed in a strainer to drain. After about half an hour, dry the slices with a clean paper towel and brush with olive oil and grill.
Artichokes should be halved lengthwise and placed in boiling salted water for about 15–20 minutes, then drained thoroughly. Brush the cut sides liberally with olive oil, salt and pepper and place cut side down over hot fire.
Whole bell peppers can be grilled till the skins blister and turn black. Then scrape or pull the blackened skin off, toss with olive oil and salt and pepper and enjoy. You can also do this with Anaheim chilies and Chiles Poblanos, also known as Ancho or Pasilla chiles.
Russet potatoes should have their skins cleaned thoroughly and dried. Then cook the potatoes in boiling salted water until only half cooked. Let them cool and cut into triangles lengthwise and spray with olive oil, place on a hot grill, turning occasionally until brown and crispy.
You will notice that we have used olive oil in all the examples above but you can use peanut oil, walnut oil, or hazelnut oil if you wish. Canola or sunflower oils are just too bland for grilling.
Also, we have been grilling our vegetables directly on the grill but you can also use foil to construct a package for your vegetables. For example, slice a bell pepper and onion, place in the middle of a large piece of foil, enclose the vegetables after dousing with olive oil and salt and pepper. Seal the package and place on the hot grill. It should be done in about 15 minutes.
You can also prepare a whole onion this way. Skin the onion, cut a cross from the top down three-quarters of the way through the onion, pour on some olive oil and wrap with foil, salt and pepper and put on the grill. You’ll have a few examples of the marvelous world of vegetable grilling on YouTube. Now here are some more tips on grilling in general.
Common Tips on Vegetable Grilling
If you are going to buy a gas grill, be sure to get one with at least 40,000 to 50,000 BTU’s (British Thermal Units) as this will give you enough heat to make those attractive grill marks on your steaks, burgers and vegetables.
Vegetables more often than not are grilled over high heat, so when grilling with charcoal, build a 3-zone fire with the coals piled in a double layer on one side of the grill, then in a single layer in the center of the grill and then with no coals on the other side.
This lets you sear over the high heat of the double layer, cook over the moderate heat of the single layer, and keep your vegetables warm over the coal free zone.
You may want to invest in a vegetable tray. That is a tray with small holes that you can place onto the grill which will hold smaller vegetables like cherry tomatoes, garlic cloves or various sliced vegetables.
Another valuable accessory would be a fish basket. This eliminates the fish from sticking to the grill and flaking-up and falling through the grills.
Stock up with some bamboo skewers for small kebabs and chicken sate (Thai style chicken). To keep the skewers from burning just soak them in water for about an hour before using.
So there you are. This information should give you the confidence to begin grilling those vegetables for your children as well as to enjoy any backyard bbq party. You’ll get it as an easy way to get the rug rats to eat their veggies. Try it and please let me know what you think….
