Teen cooking lessons

[squashedalmondcroissant]

DS is nearly 18 and hoping to go to uni next year. In preparation for this, I want to try and give him some cooking lessons so he can prepare at least a few things cheaper and vaguely more nutritious than the usual junk food he likes eating!

To anyone else with almost uni aged teens, what are their go-tos?

He loves pizza
Hates mash and jacket potatoes

Will eat most other things but loves sugar and isn't keen on vegetables (as with most teenage boys) 😂

My son loves curries and it turns out they're really easy to make too. I booked the two of us onto 3 hr cookery course and it was a complete revelation for him. He realised it's easy to follow a recipe plus he worked out himself how he could use the same ingredients to make lots of other things. Plus it was a lovely Mother son bonding moment and I was able to send him off to Uni with his very own spice box.

Chicken and noodle stir fry...quick and easy to make for one person.

Mexican food is good too....fajitas

Pasta eg bolognaise or meatballs, as well as simpler oil/chilli/garlic an some green beans tossed in
Omelettes
Fajitas
Simple Thai curry using paste

Can he get a student cookbook or a simple recipe book from a style of food he enjoys and start with that? By that age I was responsible for selecting a recipe for the family each week, and adding and required items to the shopping list. If he’s totally new to cooking, maybe a Gousto subscription or similar might help him find his feet. It’s a far more limited selection of recipes than everything on the internet (so less overwhelming to choose a dish), everything is pre measured and the recipes are generally tasty, not too complex, balanced and work reliably. He can keep the cards too.

The most important thing to have is good knife skills. That makes a massive difference to cooking being a huge slog, and cooking being neutral or enjoyable. If there’s a course focussing on that, it might be good for him and you to do together. Then that’s a foundation to cook almost anything.

We got Gousto boxes for a few weeks. He chose the recipes, and at first we cooked them together but he gradually took over. He now has the recipe cards and will cook the same meals from supermarket ingredients.

We’re going to try the same thing with the CherryPick app over the summer (it’s like Gousto, but from the supermarket of your choice).

My DS has mastered a tomato sauce which can then be used for a number of meals e.g. spag bol, meatballs, tomato sauce with anything you like thrown in (e.g. tuna, sausages, peppers, veg ...)

What food does he like eating?
What can he already cook (start there and build on that)?

My DC cook regularly and they tend to just pick recipes they like the look of and make those (there are often follow along videos on YouTube). You could suggest that if he objects to you "dictating"?

Oh and if he can find a TV/influencer type chef whose style he likes, he could watch loads of videos on YouTube to get a feel for cooking. I was really into Nigella as a student so picked up a lot of tips from just watching her programmes (no YouTube in those days!).

Teach him to make a basic tomato sauce, plus a cheese bechamel, and that gives him a start for lots of recipes. A simple curry and chilli are good to have under your belt as well as refried beans.

What's his name from Top Gear.. James May ...brought out a really good cookery book for beginners. Get him that and say "you're doing dinner tonight!"

I'd be wary of buying books unless your DC will use them (mine consider using actual cookery books rather than internet recipes to be a weird peculiarity of old people i.e. me).

Eggs

Poached, boiled (soft and hard, and mashed for a sandwich), scrambled, omlettes (with lots of different fillings). An easy quiche with premade pastry.

Pasta

ds's current favourite is cajun chicken pasta - just cajun spices, philly, mozzarella , milk with cooked chicken and pasta
alfredo - eggs, cream, parmesan, spinach
carbonara

Rice

Egg fried rice
stir fries

Roast chicken

Teens love their protein and ds can easily eat two chicken a week! How to roast, how to cool remove all meat for one meal and then how to store rest for sandwiches/salads. Good way to introduce kitchen hygiene.

Simply Cook are quite good. Similar to Hello Fresh etc but they only supply you with the herbs and spices (so a lot cheaper). The recipes are fairly simple, and very tasty.

I agree , don’t buy books as they probably won’t use them, and probably will just google recipes. However, if you do want to get one, something like Jamie Oliver’s five ingredient book could be good.

we used to get our teen to cook once a week for the family.

Sam Stern does a student cookbook with recipes that work if you follow them. Might be worth a punt? He could cook some with you.

If you are in London, I've heard great things about the Waitrose cooking school. Regular classes are for over 16yrs, but they also have teen specific classes. https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/content/waitrose-cookery-school

Maybe not to start with, but for a birthday/Christmas gift, a sushi rolling class is fun and its easier than I expected. https://yosushi.com/sushi-school

You could also ask on your local nextdoor.com. Some restaurants and community bases organisations offer classes.

Student cooking is about speed as well as price: in halls they don't like you to leave things cooking for a long time, plus once you are in a shared house you may be responsible for the bills so fuel cost is an issue.
Have a look at FullTimeMeals on instagram: it's the recipe website set up by Marcus Rashford and Tom Kerridge. Lots of quick and inexpensive meals aimed at people who haven't cooked much or have relied on processed food.
Everything is measured in spoons or mugs, so he won't need a full kitchen kit when he's in halls.

Those cookery lessons look great... following with interest for my own DC

Work on one pan/quick dishes. Shared kitchens mean that anything that takes multiple pots and pans delay others and just create more washing up.
Things that can be adapted to be served with different sides are a bonus so that they can eat the same thing for a couple of nights without getting bored. I.e a chilli served with rice on night one and over tortilla chips as nachos night 2, with cheese as quaesidilla on night 3.
Garlic chicken with cous cous and veg night one, in a stir fry night two.
Also things like fritata that can be eaten cold for lunch the next day are great.
Instead of teaching dishes teach skills. Cooking pasta, rice, making a tomato sauce, marinading meat or fish, the base of a curry etc etc

Came to say what others have said..it's great for them to be able to roast a chicken or make sauces etc but the reality will probably be that they have a kettle, toaster, microwave and maybe one ring of a cooker if they're in 1st year halls. Later down the line in shared flats they might have better facilities.

Base:
Onion,
chicken,
tin of chopped tomatoes
tin of cream of mushroom soup
cheese
pasta

garlic herbs and veg added as you wish

Spaghetti bolognaise, noodle stir fry with veg/protein he likes, spam and pineapple fried rice, and a roast dinner.

Dh and housemates often used to cook a roast together in uni, which was a nice touch from home, but also relatively economical way to feed a crowd.