Cooking With Your Kids: Why You Should Do It And How To Survive It

Involving your kids in the kitchen can have a lot of benefits! Kids who participate in cooking tend to have healthier diets and develop important, lifelong skills. Children (even picky eaters) are often more willing to eat foods that they helped prepare. Here are some tips to make your life easier as a parent cooking with kids.

Disclaimer: All children are different. These are general suggestions for working with your kids in the kitchen, but you know your child best, so please use your best judgement about which cooking tasks they can handle. Before getting started, let's review some general tips and kitchen safety.

Get Prepared

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Assigning specific tasks to your child early on in the cooking process will help make sure everything gets done and prevent you from having to do all of the work.

Washing Hands

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Make sure you and your kids both wash your hands before handling any food.

Hot Items

Be very mindful of hot items and warn your children of things they should not touch.

Using the Stove or Oven

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If you allow your child to use appliances like the stove or oven supervise them and help as necessary. Always keep a fire extinguisher on hand just in case!

No Tasting Until the Food Is Cooked

Don't allow kids to taste food until it's finished. This ensures that kids don't eat any uncooked foods and helps avoid the spread of germs.

Don't Sweat the Mess

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Things may get messy, so try to let go and don't worry if cooking with your kids results in a little more of a mess. Have your kids help clean up -- cleaning is part of the cooking process too -- plus, they may be less likely to make a mess next time if they know they will have to clean it up.

Take Your Time

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Cooking with kids may take a little longer than making a meal by yourself, but the benefits are well worth it. Time flies when you're having fun.

Now let's get into some cooking tips.

3 - 5 Year Olds: Mix or Stir

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Find ways to involve kids at this age even if they don't have the skills to cook independently. For example, if you want them involved, but don't have any recipe tasks they can do on their own, young kids can stir something that has already been mixed. This will let them feel like they are a part of the cooking process.

3 - 5 Year Olds: Hands-On Experience With Ingredients

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Introduce them to different ingredients so they become familiar with the cooking process. For example, you might let them add ingredients that you've already measured to a recipe. Remember, children tend to be more willing to eat something that they've been able to help prepare.

3 - 5 Year Olds: Washing Produce

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A great simple task for your younger kids to do is having them wash the fruits and vegetables before using them in a recipe.

6 - 8 Year Olds: Measure, Measure, Measure

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Teach older children how to measure accurately and let them measure out ingredients for recipes.

6 - 8 Year Olds: Gathering Ingredients

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They can gather, count, and separate the ingredients for you to use in the recipe. Send them on a "shopping" trip to the pantry to look for the ingredients you need.

6 - 8 Year Olds: Prepping Ingredients

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Kids this age can prep ingredients, like shucking the corn or snapping the ends of green beans, with supervision.

6 - 8 Year Olds: Crack Some Eggs

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Cracking eggs is another skill you can teach to involve your kids in food prep. Just know that they may not do it perfectly the first time and be ready for clean up!

9 - 12 Year Olds: Introduce Knife Skills

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Children are usually mature enough to use knives at this age. Just make sure to teach your kids safe knife handling skills and monitor them closely.

9 - 12 Year Olds: Plan a Meal

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Involve the kids in meal planning so they feel like they have a say. Kids who are involved in selecting foods for a meal will be more likely to eat it. Just be sure that you encourage them to pick healthy foods - you can do this by giving them several options to choose from that are all healthy choices.

9 - 12 Year Olds: Kitchen Appliances

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If you are comfortable, you can start to teach your kids how to use kitchen appliances like the stove or oven and other small appliances at this age.

Teenagers: More Responsibility

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Teenagers can handle more responsibility like going to the grocery store to buy ingredients.

Teenagers: Let Them Take the Lead

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Your kids are talented! Let them cook a meal from start to finish. Confidence in the kitchen has been shown to lead to healthier habits and diets.

Check out the Family Resiliency Center's Mealtime Minutes PSAs that offer great insights about sharing meals with your families.

Tips are courtesy of Jessica Metcalfe, a PhD student in Human Development and Family Studies, who focuses on the positive benefits of teaching children cooking skills and involving them in food preparation.

For some healthy recipes to cook with your kids, click here!