Getting involved in the kitchen: How to make your children interested in meal preparation

Good food is not only important in order to meet nutritional needs, but it also holds profound social power and importance, being a way to express your identity, bond with the community, and even communicate different needs and feelings. Many celebrations and social events end with people gathering around the table, and while cuisines differ across the world, sharing food can be a great way to help people from different backgrounds connect. On a smaller scale, food and cooking can help family members bond and spend more time together.

While there’s a stereotype that children and parents rarely enjoy the same foods, with many lamenting the fact that the young ones don’t enjoy anything healthy and scoff at home-cooked meals, the truth is that the root of this issue often comes from a general disconnect with food and what it means to prepare it. By the time your children become teenagers, it is usually too late to get them to enjoy cooking with you, as they’re much more likely to see it as a chore. This is why it’s important to get children involved when they’re young, as that’s the age when they’re most likely to want to help you simply because they find it fun.

If your own children want to get involved, here’s how to get them started.

Have a safe kitchen

Before letting your children move freely around the kitchen, it is important to ensure that everything is safe for them. All appliances and knives should be kept away in their respective storage spaces, so that they can’t be easily accessed. Kitchen Warehouse Ltd provides access to a wide range of units in many different styles. If you like something more classic and traditional, you can go for the Shaker style, but there’s also the ultra-modern option of handleless gloss cabinets. If you don’t have enough storage space and have been thinking about starting a renovation project, you should definitely browse through their selection.

Everything sharp should be kept out of reach, the stove should be off limits, and you can have a kids-free zone as well if you’d like, especially if the children are very young. Children must be taught about basic kitchen safety as well. Handwashing is a must; they should know to avoid running (especially if anything was spilled on the floor or if there are pots and pans on the stove or in the oven), and be ready to ask for help from an adult if anything confuses them or if they’re about to handle any sharp utensils.

Initially, you will want to monitor things as closely as possible, but as your children grow older and you become confident in their ability to handle more complex tasks independently, you can gradually reduce supervision or even eliminate it altogether. This is a choice you must make on your own, as a parent. All children are different, and this means that there are no set rules for this approach.

Let them choose

Giving your children more options to choose from can help tremendously, as it gives them a sense of independence and empowerment. Just because the initial tasks are simple doesn’t mean that they won’t be impactful in your child’s mind. Seeing recipes come to life and having ingredients gradually turn into something that can be eaten will make them much more confident in their own skills as well as pleased with what they’ve managed to do (especially if it’s a dish that they enjoy eating).

So, whether you ask them to crack eggs, add the finishing touches to a soup or salad, or mix a sauce, you can be certain that they’ll like feeling responsible for it. After they’ve succeeded in completing a task, they might want to move on to something else, which you should allow. If you want to get them even more involved (and they’re old enough for it), you can ask them to create a meal plan for the entire family. This is a stellar opportunity to guide them through the process and help them understand the importance of healthy food choices.

Make them feel helpful

Many children feel apprehensive when doing something new, and even if that’s not the case, dealing with too much criticism right away can deter them from trying again in the future. If possible, you should let them be involved in dishes they can point to later and say, “I made that!” Having this confidence will help children in their lives overall, not just when it comes to culinary pursuits. There are several recipes that can assist you quite a lot. Mash is one of them, as all children would definitely find crushing the potatoes to be quite amusing (some might even turn it into a competition).

Mixing pancake or cake batter, adding toppings to pizza, spreading garlic butter on bread, and scrambling eggs are all amusing and reminiscent of play, so they’ll definitely be very appealing.

A helping role

Children are much more capable than most adults give them credit for, and if you create the proper environment, you’ll get the chance to see this yourself. Aside from helping with the cooking and baking, your child can help in several different ways when it comes to food. One of them is to make your own little garden. If you don’t have the space for it, you should know that you can grow many vegetables and herbs in pots as well. Basil, cilantro, oregano, rosemary, sage, dill, mint, chives, aubergines, cherry tomatoes, peppers, green beans, strawberries, peas, and spinach can all be grown this way, and children will most definitely like to help with them, as it gives them an opportunity to play around in the dirt.

You should also bring them to the grocery store or the farmer’s market to show them the process of selecting food for your meals. If they’ve observed what you’ve chosen a few times, ask them to choose the next time you go shopping. Children can also help you pick (or even create) healthy dishes. When they’re involved and help with the cooking themselves, it is much more likely that they’ll want to give vegetables a try.

Getting your children involved with cooking and meal preparation is actually not difficult at all. All you need to do is make things fun and appealing for them, and the rest will just fall into place.