Top 10 cooking mistakes and how to avoid them
From under-seasoning to working with a dull knife, these kitchen mistakes are pretty easy to avoid, once you know what to look out for.
Tips to get kids involved in the kitchen
Cooking is a great way to teach your children important skills, not to mention encourage healthy eating and experimentation with new foods and flavours.
Start them young
According to Research from Sobeys, kids who cooked with their parents growing up are much more likely to love cooking as adults.
Cooking reinforces math skills such as fractions and unit conversions, while also helping with estimating, planning and problem solving. Children can also gain motor skills from stirring, chopping, pouring, and scooping.
Top tips
Try out a few of these tips to see how quickly you can turn your resistant eater into a budding chef!
- Assign age-appropriate cooking tasks
- 2-3 year olds: can take on scissor-free tasks. These could include picking herbs off stems, breaking broccoli and cauliflower florets into smaller pieces, or being in charge of the timer!
- 4-5 years olds: can practice chopping soft fruits and vegetables with a plastic knife, mixing, and measuring.
- 6-7 year olds: have the fine motor skills to practice tasks such as grating, peeling, and chopping semi-hard vegetables.
- 8 year-olds and up: can likely practice using a can opener and chopping firm vegetables. They may also be able to add items to a hot pan and take dishes out of the oven.
- Have your kids look through the menu with you when you’re selecting recipes for the week. They may pick something that surprises you!
- Look at the difficulty level of recipes in advance to select ones that may be easier for your kids to get involved in.
Remember, kids just want to have fun! Accept that learning involves making mistakes and don’t expect perfection from your little chefs.
Kid-friendly meals for Family Day
Get inspired this Family Day and teach your kids a thing or two about cooking with healthy Fresh Prep meal kits.
Here are four easy and fun recipes available on our menu in the coming weeks:
Sloppy Joes – You’ll need extra napkins for this vegetarian spin on a retro-classic. Kids can enjoy mixing together the mayonnaise and picking the cilantro leaves.
Fire-Roasted Tomato Tortilla Soup – One of our favourite crowd-pleasing recipes as it’s delicious and incredibly easy to prepare. Kids can have fun transferring the many different toppings onto the bowls.
Ricotta Ravioli in Bolognese Sauce – A kid-friendly Italian classic, made more interesting with green and white striped fresh ravioli. Kids can watch the ravioli while it cooks – it floats when it’s ready!
Feta & Corn Fritters – Kids will enjoy adding the batter ingredients together and stir them all up. The end result: salty and satisfying fritters little ones are sure to love.
Are meal kits healthy?
Using a meal kit delivery service to help with weekly meal planning can break the habit of ordering expensive, calorie-packed takeout.