The benefits that being involved in the kitchen has for your child are countless. Not only are they learning skills for life (and who wouldn’t want to be cooked for at the weekend by their child once they’re old enough?!) but they are also being supported to learn to like new foods and eat better.  

But, cooking with them can feel overwhelming – the mess (so much mess), the extra time needed to make anything, the hazards, maybe even your own lack of confidence in the kitchen – and this can lead to us putting off the activity completely.  

So, I have pulled together my top tips for cooking with your child to help you get over this hurdle. 

1. Channel your inner Girl Guide and ‘Be prepared’!
2. Don’t promise or offer a cooking activity unless you’re sure you’ve got everything you need to go ahead.
3. Think: do we have time to cook? Cooking with a child will double or even triple the time it would normally take.
4. Are you and your child in the right frame of mind for cooking together? If you’re in a bad mood or stressed or emotional or if they’re tired and on the verge of a meltdown, it isn’t the time to cook together!
5. Cooking together doesn’t always have to involve baking, in fact, your child will benefit more from preparing fruits and vegetables or cooking a savoury dish with you.
6. Think about what you’re cooking and know which activities are suitable for the age and skill level of your child.
7. If there are going to be periods when they can’t be involved (e.g. you’re at the hob and it isn’t safe for them), prepare to give them some extra activities to do. I often just give Alexis scraps of veg to practice her chopping skills!
8. Have everything out and ready to go. They have limited attention spans and just want to do, so you need to be ready to do! This might be having all the ingredients and utensils out. It might also mean, for really young children, having ingredients weighed out in bowls ready to assemble.
9. Know that you don’t have to do it all at once – children’s attention spans can be small so how about doing short cooking activities throughout the day which will lead to having dinner on the table later (gathering ingredients then scrubbing carrots, later pulling apart some peppers, after snack grating some cheese and just before dinner squeezing some lemon, for example)?
10. Embrace the activity and see it as yet another very messy craft that’s going to require clean up time!