Learn to cook book ideas for teen boy with dyspraxia please

[Afterideas]

My ds (13) has just decided that he wants to learn to cook.

But I’ve recently returned to work full time and our schedules don’t allow me
to cook with him. So I thought I’d get him a simple cookery book for Christmas.

He has dyspraxia, which means he struggles with a lot of things (chopping, etc and generally “cack-handed - he is left-handed too, which doesn’t help).

He also has a low attention span, so the recipes need to be quick, easy and using no special ingredients.

Can anyone recommend any recipe
books which may fit the bill please?

Thanks for any recommendations.

What about the James May Oh Cook book. There's also a short, relatively entertaining series on Prime TV.

Mob Kitchen is also good. Nice recipes, the premise is that it's aimed at students in a house share taking it in turns to cook and you can get all ingredients in convenience store type places, was under a tenner for a meal for 4 when the first book came out, but they might have had to drop that now due to rising prices.

There's a few different books and a selection (all?) of the recipes on their website:

www.mob.co.uk/shop

A student cookbook might be a good idea. Or if there’s a style of food he enjoys, it might be worth trying that, as he’s more likely to engage with it. I’d also recommend getting him a decent knife (nothing too expensive, but the Victorinox Fibrox is a very good knife for the price). A good sharp knife is essential, everything is so much easier to do, and a sharp knife is much safer than a blunt one.I really resented every onion I had to dice as a student, until I got a decent knife!

Sam Stern's books are brilliant, especially Cooking Up a Storm. My 3 DSs all used his books when they were starting to cook and I still use some of his recipes. He wrote them as a teenager (quite a few years ago now) so they are very much geared towards young people.

@BarbaraofSeville i did look at the James May book. I guess I want as many photos of each stage as possible and as few stages as possible! I’ll take a look and at the Mob books.

@toastofthetown excellent advice on the sharp knife. I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s true, my knives are blunt.

@Boiledeggandtoast I’ve not seen those. Thanks, off for a look.

Cooking up a Storm is quite basic but a good one to start with. Get Cooking and the Student cookbook are also very good and a bit more ambitious, but still straight forward and easy to follow (a few of the recipes in the student book are also in his other books). Good luck and hope your DS enjoys cooking.

Not cooking related, but there's a really good book written for dyspraxic teens called Caged in Chaos.

@Boiledeggandtoast just bought Cooking Up a Storm, thanks. Reading the reviews it will be easy enough for him to give things a go without me having to be there all the time.

@Underanothersky thanks. It looks good. Might download to kindle now and start reading.