Cooking with Kids

As you can probably tell from the name of the website and some of my recipes, I am a dad to an amazing little boy. He absolutely LOVES getting to help in the kitchen, whether its cracking eggs or rolling out dough. I try to give him opportunities to help so he can experience and appreciate cooking just like I did growing up and still do! Lately now he asks to watch cooking shows with me on YouTube (#prouddad moment).

However, sometimes cooking with a kid can be…..exhausting and frustrating, especially if your kid or kids are young like mine. For that exact reason I have a few things I have my son help me with and then leave the others to more of him watching and not physically helping.

1- dough. When I make homemade bread, my son LOVES to be near the stand mixer watching it come together and helping me knead it. Sometimes I’ll break off a bit of the dough so he can go knead and form it himself. I even have him give the dough a poke to see if its springy and enough gluten has developed. Plus when it comes time to roll out dough, its always fun to get to throw some flour around! Just accept the fact this might make a bit of a mess, but it’s worth it to see how much fun kids have.

2- cracking eggs. This is another easy thing to let kids help with. Show them how to lightly tap the egg on a counter and then you can take it to finish off cracking it in the bowl (that way they don’t get raw egg on them).

3- whisking. For this, make sure you have a super large bowl! I will usually let my son whisk together flour or other dry ingredients when needed. He enjoys getting to use this whisk and do it himself. Sometimes this winds up with a mess, but if you use a large enough bowl, most of the time it’ll stay contained and ends with a happy kid!

Hopefully this helps give you some ideas on how to get your kids involved in the cooking process!