Can My Kid Make This Recipe

If you are wanting your children to start cooking with you or on their own, you have probably asked this question many times – Can my kid make this recipe?  If your child has shown that they can stir and mix and season along with you, then you can start looking for recipes they can make on their own.

I suggest your child first work with you for a while on these tasks:

1. Make a salad – Even very young children can tear and wash salad.  What child doesn’t like water and squishy things.  Show them how to drain the water and you’re all set with your little salad maker.

2. Stir – This sounds too simple, but that is the way my children started cooking.  They just stirred whatever was on the stove.  How fun to stir and mix and mix and stir

3. Season – Fairly soon after your children start stirring, they will want to start adding ingredients to their pot.  You can start with a salt shaker and move on to giving them a measuring spoon of season to dump into the pot.  Then they can start using the measuring spoon after they are pretty good about their ingredients making it into the pot.

4. Chopping – Some children enjoy chopping too.  Pampered Chef makes a nice Food Chopper your child can use by just hitting the top over and over again.  It’s a great tool for Mom to use too!:))  Or your child can also use the Childrens My Safe Cutter Knife that Pampered Chef makes.  They can use this knife until they become more proficient at cutting and can graduate to a better knife.  I wouldn’t recommend cutting carrots with this knife, but there are still plenty of things children can cut for their recipe.

Above all make sure you are enjoying the time you are spending with your child.  Teach them what they need to know and let their creativity go from there.  If your child can read and has the skills listed above, then they should be able to use recipes that require those skills.  If you’re not sure whether the recipe is kid friendly, then just hang around in the kitchen and be available for your budding chef.