Cooking with Kids

Cooking with kids requires lots and lots of patience. You have to get yourself mentally prepared:
  • all will not go according to plan
  • there will be a big mess that you yourself will be cleaning up
  • the final product will not look great, but it still may taste okay
  • your “helpers” may quit on you part of the way through
All of this does improve as you cook with your kids more and also find out if they like it. If you don’t think you will have the patience to cook with your kids, hold off until you do. This way you will both enjoy the experience. However, if the kids are still pestering you to do something, let them play with play-dough or keep a tube of pop and bake biscuits, crescent rolls or cookie dough handy and let them be in charge of that. I use to keep some leftover pastry or bread dough in the freezer and bring it out whenever I was baking and let the kids roll it out, cut it and put it on a sheet.

If you are looking for some ideas of what to do with your kids here are some of the ones we have done around here. You will have to make a judgement call on how well your kids do in the kitchen and which ones they can handle.  My 10 year old can scramble eggs, my 8 year makes sandwiches, my 6 and 4 year olds can add ingredients to a bowl and cut out cookies.  Every child is different.

Recipes to do with kids: