Is all school cookery a bit crap?

[notatwork]

..or is it just the schools my brood have been to?

Youngest now doing cookery. Year 9.
They make a single dish for one person, so we have to provide part packets of stuff we wouldn't normally use/with a short shelf life (eg single sheet filo, or 100ml cream when the smallest tub you can buy is 150ml, or 2 mushrooms). They make it immediately before lunch but aren't allowed to eat it then, so I provide pack up/lunch money while a meal for one congeals in a fridge and then gets carried home on the bus. The recipes are a bit crap: one chicken breast, a stock cube, an onion, 2 mushrooms, 2 tbs curry paste from a jar containing 4 tbs, aforementioned cream and a bounty bar (wtf) to make something described as 'creamy curry' (half-arsed pseudo korma more like).
Part of me wants them to allow us to scale up to a family sized meal (we provide all the ingredients anyway) like when I was at school, but as some of the food is pretty grim I don't think we'd eat it. It's such a faff and a waste. They don't teach them the techniques to make pastry or what spices go in a curry, and frankly the bounty bar curry has tipped me over the edge.
I know it's a rant but I'm tired of trying to use up stuff to avoid waste (3 sheets of filo and 50mL single cream for example), when the stuff produced isn't nice by the time it makes it home anyway. It's hardly inspiring DC to engage with cookery is it?
Is it me? Or is it just round here (5 DC through 3 schools all similar), or is it the same where you are?

Bounty bar!!!!! Grrr!!

When I did Food Tech we learnt how to make tea, then coffee, and worked our way up from there 😂 I'm not even that old! Bounty in curry sounds rank though

implants at her school they all work individually rather than in groups, but the classes are small so that’s maybe why
Dd won’t go anywhere near raw meat so if she hadn’t been allowed to adapt the recipes she wouldn’t have been able to cook at all. Her teacher didn’t have a problem with it and said she looked forward to see what dd was making - it was all about technique so as long as she was learning that it was fine.

My eldest has one food tech lesson each week, I paid £12 at the start of term and school supplies all ingredients.

He makes it alone or in pairs and then brings it home. It's all been really nice, apart from the tomato soup which he put in his back pack in a pot with an iffy lid 😂

We did that too MotherOfTheNoise, followed by toast and I think blancmange.

OP I think you should point out this situation to the Head, and highlight more sensible systems used at other schools, like the one Implants suggested. I doubt the Head has a detailed working knowledge of how the ingredients are arranged and organised in these lessons and how non-sensical it actually is.

I used to work in secondary and I completely agree with your view. As a form tutor I was forever helping out my tutees who had forgotten, or who couldn't afford to buy some key ingredient, and then looking after ridiculous meals which imo weren't particularly useful cookery skills for life. Eg making pizzas using ready made base, or making chocolate cornflake cakes
I could never understand why the students weren't being educated about in-season ingredients and how to economise whilst eating healthily. I think it's a tragedy and no wonder we are such an unhealthy junk food obsessed nation.

drama that is what they do at DD’s school
They learn about starch and themn learn how to make a cheese/white sauce or about something else and then make a dish around that
As I said before the cooking is a practical follow up to their classroom learning and they never use ready made ingredients
Dd has picked up some really good techniques and dishes. It’s a shame it’s not the same everywhere but I suppose time and budgets can make it difficult

It was crap in my day. All the "DT" subjects were a bit crap, because they were all trying to pretend we were making stuff for a business, but we really weren't, and it ended up being light on useful practical skills. But the food was particularly bad, expensive ingredients and often disgusting. I got good marks, because the teacher never had to taste the food!

The most egregious example being that the people who took cookery for GCSE had to design a ready meal.

And it was crap in DM's day too. I don't think anything ever changes.

I'm so glad my youngest finished cookery lessons for good before Easter. Most of the stuff she took home was unusable because it wasn't kept in the fridge and a couple of things she made were taken home by other students!
Waste of time and money. Would rather teach them at home to cook the things we actually like!

We used to have a ‘theme’ or a basic recipe and then could bring in our own recipe, or substitute ingredients from the recipe given. We certainly didn’t all make one portion of the same thing!

When DS did cookery (food tech) we supplied the bulk of the ingredients but anything where you only needed a small amount of something you weren't likely to have in stock, the teacher would supply - we paid 50p. It would state on the recipes whta would be supplied. Children on free school meals got all their ingredients supplied anyway.

I have just told DS about the curry with the bounty bar in and he was appalled - no such nonsense in his lessons.

depends on the school
depends on the teacher
depends on what your child eats
depends on what you have already done with your child
depends on what you eat at home
depends on allergies within the class
depends on whether the child can be bothered

Out school buy the stuff and we pay. Much easier. As to what is made - well, the ideas are nice, the results are iffy. Anything edible comes home picked at and half eaten - not palatable to anyone else, other things go straight in the bin. Usually single portions. Wasteful really. But at least they are learning a few basic skills. 🤷‍♀️

We are in NI - we pay between £10 and £20 per year in September (first year in secondary is cheaper as they make more basic meals, etc). We pay nothing else for the rest of the year. On special occasions, eg making cupcakes before the Easter holidays, they were told they could bring in mini chocolate eggs/flakes to decorate them but it wasn't compulsory. They make a proper Christmas cake in third year (including whisky) and all we provide is a cake board. It's far less hassle this way. They make a good selection of meals, eg spaghetti bolognese, chicken curry, lasagne, etc as well as cupcakes, cheesecake and trifle.

I remember being told we couldn't use boil in the bag rice for a cookery lesson. As it was expensive. We always used BIB rice at home so no way was my mum buying anything else!

Bounty bar and chicken curry was made today. DD loves a sweet mango curry or a korma. It tasted strongly of chocolate and the coconut wasn't softened so it went in the bin. . Chicken breast, cream, mushrooms, curry paste, chocolate bar, onion.
In. the. bin.

We're making a mild chicken and veg curry with a tomato base in half the time for half the cost for everyone's dinner.

Bounty curry sounds like a pregnancy craving to me.

It's rubbish in my DCs school. I get really pissed off about it, cooking is a basic life skill and sadly not all children learn at home or have the opportunities to do so.

DC1 has had one practical cooking class in 2 years. They made really basic cookies. Y'know the ones we've been making at home since she was 3 years old

Hopeless.

We paid for ingredients. The system worked well.

I took food tech for my GCSEs I think I spent a whole year making fucking bread and trying to think of different things to shove inside it. Also made the obligatory fruit salad during my first year of secondary school. Doesn't sound like cookery classes have changed much in the last 18 years

Sometimes we send in money, if they need lots of fiddly ingredients no-one will ever use again. Other times we supply the ingredients.
DS and I have been out to buy the stuff for “Caesar Salad inspired chicken kebabs” tonight. A recipe he’s created and will cook later in the week. Sounds reasonable enough.

My dd did food tech and I was really quite impressed. They had to take a full chicken in and they learned to portion it. So they removed the breasts, legs, wings etc then the bits were labelled and frozen for more lessons. They made simple stuff like chicken nuggets from scratch, curry, sweet and sour. They learned different kinds of pastry, how to make pasta from scratch, how to mince meat, fillet fish. For her assessment for her final exam she did chicken roulade, some kind of cheesy pasta dish with the pasta made from scratch and those chocolate cake things where the chocolate is runny in the middle. Cant remember what they're called. Shes always lecturing me on food hygiene and what temperatures I have to heat things to etc. She's learned loads.

We never had this even when I was at school. We always paid and they provided the ingredients. That included the containers to bring home said cooking. Spaghetti Bolognese, chicken fajitas, chilli, Swiss roll, scones, muffins. We had great variety. I miss those days.