What do your 7&9 year olds cook?

[SlavesToTheKitchen]

3 weeks of half term coming up and we're going to be limited to what we can do (my fault, had an accident!). I'm thinking about getting each DC to cook a meal with me once or twice a week as something we could do together.

Which meals do your similar aged DC prepare and cook?

Dd1 can do pasta with various sauces, scrambled egg, toast obvs, cheese on toast. She makes a mean salad actually and would have a punt at spag Bol. She's made bread a few times with me, pizza dough etc. And lots of cake

Dd2 can knock herself up a glass of squash and some yoghurt and granola. If we're lucky.

My boys are 6 and 9. They can cook pretty much anything if given the right direction! They help me with everything from cutting soft veg e.g. tomatoes, courgettes and aubergine (carrots and squash are a bit risky as they need a lot of pressure). They peel prawns and other seafood, will make meatballs or koftas with mince. They are happy to stir and sautee things in frying pans with supervision. They enjoy making things with puff pastry like open tarts or empanadas or 'pizzas'. They are not quite tall enough for our oven though and not strong enough to lift pans. We do a lot of cakes and bakes together and they do the weighing and prep!

It really depends on your limitations. Can you lift pans or things out of the oven? Why not get a simple recipe book and go through it together?

My dds are 8 and 6. Their speciality (other than fairy cakes, which they are adept at) is chicken noodle soup - boil a chicken breast in stock for 20 mins, then take it out of the water, shred with 2 girls and put it back in the pan. Add noodles and boil for 10 more mins. Easy and delicious! You can add a bag of stir fry veg in at the beginning if you want too.

Shred it with 2 forks! Not girls.

8 year old DD can put things in the toaster and butter them, she makes cakes from a packet mix. I keep talking about letting her choose a recipe and make it for dinner with supervision/ limited help from me, maybe half-term is the time to actually do it.

A lot of people are missing that the OP says she’d do it with them.

Where has 3 weeks of half term?

pancakes
shake&bake chicken pieces
oven pizza
microwave porridge
microwave ready meals

everything very closely supervised!

Curry and pizza from scratch. No premade stuff here!. Veg prep for any meal if we ask her albeit with supervision as she has her own very sharp knives.

mine 10 and 8 cook:

lasagne
spag bol
shapards pie
chicken fajitas
chicken in general
pancakes
pizza
pasta various things in it (love making their own sauce)

At 7 and 9 they can probably do most things with you.

I'd try:
Meatballs/bolognese and meatballs
Roast veg and feta with pitta
Bread
Home made pizza
Pies
Kebabs
Home made burgers

All the cakes/biscuits etc!

anything that uses shark knives and pans- mine love (which makes it very stressful)

oh and my dc makes really nice cakes

At 9 DS2 makes bread dough and cakes though I do take them out of the oven for him as it's too high for him to lift hot dishes.

He can also fry breakfast with minimal supervision and eat pancakes. He's a fussy eater so doesn't like to cut up most vegetables. (Perfectly capable though - he can cut chips)

DS1 is less interested in cooking, but did do his cubs cooking badge at that age. I think we did toad in the hole.

So long as you are supervising any chopping or hot things, you could cook anything with them. There are a couple of wonderful books we had. One was learning about dinosaurs and fossils through cooking (primordial soup, cheesey bones) and the other one was traditional Jewish tales with accompanying recipes (chicken soup, honey cakes). Sorry I can't remember titles - on the bus at the moment.

Another food activity that worked really well at that age was apple tasting - get lots of different varieties and set up a blind taste test. If you spend some time devising a score system, it can take up lots of time.

There are some great cooking channels on YouTube that can really help build an interest. DS2 likes one where they compare amateur and professional versions of different recipes (search for 4 levels of chocolate brownie etc). I like Brothers Green Eat and there is also Crazy Boris who is a comedy Russian who makes his sandwiches with an axe etc but he does demonstrate some cooking. We made his kvass which was great fun (not all his videos are child friendly though so supervise closely)

plus it was an easy way to occupy a large chunk of time
This. This is what I need!

Thanks for the recipe ChocolateBread (which also sounds like something they'd like to make!

Mine cook nothing with me and same ages! Neither interested mine have had to get interested as it was that or nothing to eat 😂. They've been doing easy food for the past few weeks. Packet pasta/sauce which you boil water, add contents and stir. Baked potatoes and chopped salad type veg plus cold meat or scrambled eggs. As we have time and I'm more mobile now, I thought we could try "proper" food!

bbc I can cook

my dc (slightly older) have been cooking dinner once a month for a while now.
they do everything from finding recipe to buying what we don't have in the cupboard.
I think it's an important skill to have.