What should kids be taught to cook?

[toggle]

Week 1: "Here's how you cook pizza"
Week 2: "You know, you really don't want to eat too much pizza, here's how to cook a healthy meal."

Why not just start out with teaching tasty healthy meals from scratch?

or perhaps:

week 1: here's how a pizza should taste like. This will show you the difference between foods that come out of a packet and how good homemade stuff can taste. This is why it is worth learning to cook for yourself. I can tell you until I'm blue in the face, but you won't understand it until you try it.

week 2: you can't eat pizza every day. lets add some variety. YOu can do a stew with homemade bread. What do you mean you can't make bread, you learnt most of what you needed to know last week.

 

[Stobart Stopper]

Cannabis cakes.

 

[madzone]

I don't really think *what* they cook is of the most importance here (but what they do should be on the side of healthy)

surely they need to learn HOW to use things, what things in a kitchen are for, being able to taste things

learning a recipe won't develop a generation of people who can cook, they will be able to do one thing and that one thing only

we did the pizza making thing, it was great fun, and even then a damn site less fatty than takeaway pizza is/was

we made lasagne, but was told throughout how to adapt it to make other dishes too - it's that flexibility thats important, not a prescriptive menu of meals

Surely learning how to use things is inbuilt in the actual cooking? You can't do one without the other. We were told what to cook each time. From that platform of compulsory dishes came the skills to branch out and adapt others

 

[aqua]

no i don't think it is - there is a difference between "do this" and "we're using this because"

 

[skyscraper101]

I think its good to start kids off with easy AND healthy.

Even making pizzas from scratch turned me off a bit at school because it was too much faffing around with flower and rolling pins and stuff. Even these days, I don't have the space or inclination to spend time making a pizza base. They're too cheap to buy in the shop ready made to make it worth it.

Ditto any puddings like brownies/cakes etc....way too much hassle for something you can get for £1.50 in the shop.

If I were going to introduce kids to easy cooking I'd probably start with something like:
Spaghetti Bolognese with homemade tomato sauce - dead easy
Veggie Chilli - ditto
Frozen pie (baked), boiled veg, gravy - 20 mins tops.
Shepherds Pie
Pasta Bake, side salad, salad dressing - dead easy
Omeletes, Stir Frys, any kind of throw it all together meal.

Most meals I make are pretty healthy, not fried or heated in microwave but take less than 30 mins to make. I think its also good to teach kids about food budgeting. Show them how much they can live on and what things cost from an early age. When they learn that you can live on £20 food a week - they'll know how much ready-meals and takeaways dent the wallet.

 

[madzone]

no i don't think it is - there is a difference between "do this" and "we're using this because"

I disagree Say they need to whisk something - any decent teacher will explain why. What sort of things are you thinking about?

 

[madzone]

I think its good to start kids off with easy AND healthy.

Even making pizzas from scratch turned me off a bit at school because it was too much faffing around with flower and rolling pins and stuff. Even these days, I don't have the space or inclination to spend time making a pizza base. They're too cheap to buy in the shop ready made to make it worth it.

Ditto any puddings like brownies/cakes etc....way too much hassle for something you can get for £1.50 in the shop.

If I were going to introduce kids to easy cooking I'd probably start with something like:
Spaghetti Bolognese with homemade tomato sauce - dead easy
Veggie Chilli - ditto
Frozen pie (baked), boiled veg, gravy - 20 mins tops.
Shepherds Pie
Pasta Bake, side salad, salad dressing - dead easy
Omeletes, Stir Frys, any kind of throw it all together meal.

Most meals I make are pretty healthy, not fried or heated in microwave but take less than 30 mins to make. I think its also good to teach kids about food budgeting. Show them how much they can live on and what things cost from an early age. When they learn that you can live on £20 food a week - they'll know how much ready-meals and takeaways dent the wallet.

Frozen pie?

 

[Thora]

The only things I remember cooking in Food Tech at school was spag bol (useful to learn) and some kind of godawful savoury bread and butter pudding.

The rest of the time wasn't so much cooking as investigating ingredients, designing packing and thinking about health and safety regulations.

 

[toggle]

I disagree What sort of things are you thinking about?

it's about being spoon fed the minimum amount of info and getting enough that you can understand why you are learning the skill.

i'ts the difference between just telling someone to leave a dough somewhere warm for half an hour and telling them why they are doing it. the point is that a lot of people didn't have teachers that bothered explaining the why.

 

[madzone]

The only things I remember cooking in Food Tech at school was spag bol (useful to learn) and some kind of godawful savoury bread and butter pudding.

The rest of the time wasn't so much cooking as investigating ingredients, designing packing and thinking about health and safety regulations.

How old are you?

When I was alive it was about raw ingredients, budgetting for a family and we cooked something new most weeks.

 

[felixthecat]

Something my kids had to do was an evaluation of what they'd cooked, how they could adapt it to be veggie, lower in fat, different types of ingredients etc.

 

[skyscraper101]

Frozen pie?

You know like chicken and mushroom pies, mince beef and onion, or my favorite - Linda McCartney veggie pies.

4 for £1.50 or 8 for £2 in Morrisons - bargain and 20 mins to cook in the oven

ETA: Fray Bentos Pies are also very nice. Nomnomnom

 

[madzone]

it's about being spoon fed the minimum amount of info and getting enough that you can understand why you are learning the skill.

i'ts the difference between just telling someone to leave a dough somewhere warm for half an hour and telling them why they are doing it.

Which surely any teacher worth their salt (fnar) would do anyway?

 

[madzone]

You know like chicken and mushroom pies, mince beef and onion, or my favorite - Linda McCartney veggie pies.

4 for £1.50 or 8 for £2 in Morrisons - bargain and 20 mins to cook in the oven

And you call that a) healthy and b) cooking?

 

[madzone]

Something my kids had to do was an evaluation of what they'd cooked, how they could adapt it to be veggie, lower in fat, different types of ingredients etc.

That sounds frighteningly useful

 

[skyscraper101]

And you call that a) healthy and b) cooking?

Its not un-healthy. In fact I think the veggie ones are very good if the cheap meat bothers you.

And its also about what you make with it. Lovely new potatoes, boiled carrots with peas and a bit of gravy. All costs less than two pounds a meal too.

Point is - when kids see how easy something like THIS is..then you can start introducing harder stuff.

 

[Thora]

How old are you?

When I was alive it was about raw ingredients, budgetting for a family and we cooked something new most weeks.

23.

Nothing about budgetting or raw ingredients in my day! My brother took food tech for GCSE and his project was supposed to be about adapting meals for people with special diets (gluten free, vegan etc). He opted to do diabectics and his solution was "Candarel"

 

[toggle]

Which surely any teacher worth their salt (fnar) would do anyway?

actually, what has come out of a lot of the discussions on food ec that i have seen here is that very few people had teachers that did anything to explain the why, or considered any skill other than being able to present something perfect looking to them was of any use. What they taught was pretty much the equivalent of judging an essay on the beauty of the handwriting instead of on the content.

 

[aqua]

I disagree Say they need to whisk something - any decent teacher will explain why. What sort of things are you thinking about?

I'm remembering one of our Home Ec teachers who never for the life of her gave things their proper name, just barked at us to do things

 

[aqua]

How old are you?

When I was alive it was about raw ingredients, budgetting for a family and we cooked something new most weeks.

nope, lots of it now is about packaging, marketing, design etc

 

[madzone]

Its not un-healthy. In fact I think the veggie ones are very good if the cheap meat bothers you.

And its also about what you make with it. Lovely new potatoes, boiled carrots with peas and a bit of gravy. All costs less than two pounds a meal too.

Bought pies are high in fat and shitty meat. And it's hardly cooking is it? Peeling some veg and sticking something in the oven ? Hopefully the classes will be teaching them something slightly more complicated than how to cook a ready made frozen pie.

 

[felixthecat]

That sounds frighteningly useful

Its only by hearing about other people's school/kid's school I realise just how good my kid's school is!

 

[aqua]

it's about being spoon fed the minimum amount of info and getting enough that you can understand why you are learning the skill.

i'ts the difference between just telling someone to leave a dough somewhere warm for half an hour and telling them why they are doing it. the point is that a lot of people didn't have teachers that bothered explaining the why.

yup this

 

[madzone]

nope, lots of it now is about packaging, marketing, design etc

Ridikooolus
Do you think it's because schools don't have classroom kitchens any more?

 

[aqua]

Ditto any puddings like brownies/cakes etc....way too much hassle for something you can get for £1.50 in the shop.

utter clap trap

for £1.50 and all of about 10mins of my time I can make some amazing stuff - where I know whats gone in them, I know that there aren't loads of preservatives and crap in them

 

[madzone]

Its only by hearing about other people's school/kid's school I realise just how good my kid's school is!

My youngests school is quite good. My middle boy is about to start food tech at secondary school but from reading this thread it sounds as if he might be sorely disappointed - he loves cooking.

 

[aqua]

Ridikooolus
Do you think it's because schools don't have classroom kitchens any more?

yep, and who in their right minds would be a Home Ec teacher we covered ours in fliour many a time

 

[chooch]

Which surely any teacher worth their salt (fnar) would do anyway?

Mine didn't, IIRC. Just shouted at you for doing it wrong and muttered Polish insults. Her repertoire: mushroom risotto, apple crumble, toad in the hole, something else

 

[skyscraper101]

utter clap trap

for £1.50 and all of about 10mins of my time I can make some amazing stuff - where I know whats gone in them, I know that there aren't loads of preservatives and crap in them

You can make a cake in 10 mins?

 

[madzone]

yup this

But my point is that as part of cooking lessons pupils will be told why they have to let dough rise, there doesn't seem to be much point in the excercise otherwise It'd be a bit like just adding stuff together in chemistry and not being told why they react.
Reading other replies I think I should retrain as a cooking teacher