Food tech... help

[Sweetheart1990]

Hi I've been struggling to find stuff to send my son to school with for food tech, it's when they need say 50ml milk, 5ml oil etc I don't wanna be sending him with full bottles and wasting every week so just wondered if any of you had any suggestions for specific sets for school cooking. Any help appreciated 🙂

Save small bottles from anything and everything. Make sure you label them with whatever you put into them and tell DC to bring them home again.

In addition to the above, also read through the recipe to see if the ingredients can be mixed in together in advance or need to be carried separately.

You could get the small travel toiletries bottles that Boots or similar sell and use those for small quantities of liquids. I use some small Sistema food pots from lunch box sets that do up tightly, then I put them in a ziplock bag. Or the smallest Lock n Lock containers would work too.

Wouldn't it be much simpler if schools just had a charge for food tech paid at start of year and then THEY brought in the ingredients?

It seems a complete nightmare for parents, staff and students having to bring in faffy amounts from home and probably a lot more expensive for parents.

I used to save the little pots you can get at a deli with tight lids for things like this. Also milk needs to be kept refrigerated it can't be left in a school bag until cooking lesson or it will sour. DS's school used to let parents pay £2 per term to cover milk, seasoning, oil, tablespoon of flour, teaspoon of mustard etc. Maybe you could suggest this to his cooking teacher.

It doesn't get paid, unfortunately.

Gosh that’s ridiculous! DD’s school charged a small fee per year for food tech ingredients so that we didn’t have to faff around with bringing anything into school - makes so much more sense in my opinion and means that all DC are on an even playing field

Thankyou everyone, I totally agree that it would be so much easier for the teacher to bring in and charge us all, said it so many times 😂 thanks for all your ideas I will give them a go, can't imagine they will all come back every week, you know what teenage boys are like 🙄

It took me a while to work put that some things, like oil, are actually provided. Milk sometimes as well if its a small amount.

I think they get the children to bring stuff on as they don't have time in the lesson to weigh stuff out, and the teachers won't have time to weigh out everyone's ingredients. Some stuff is also prepped at home, like chopping and grating.

Buy small travel size bottles and save any plastic bottles you have (drinks, etc).

Measure liquids into these.

Last week I had to send in 2tbsp of oil and 2tbsp of soy sauce, definitely not provided by the school. But other recipes the school has provided some of the smaller quantities. Depends on the recipe, the teacher and the school I suppose.

Buy a small ice pack to pack with milk.

That would be a pain in the arse for the teacher to do.
It would be the technicians job to do.

Check to see if you can buy these things from school. We paid £20 for the year to cover all the little things and eggs

I’m a food teacher and usually keep oil as it is always needed and easy to refill from the canteen. Have lots of herbs and spices in store too. But me actually buying and storing the ingredients would be absolute chaos for all groups all week. Anything bought needs to be cleared through finance etc and we aren’t allowed to buy from certain places.
The best solutions are just old single use bottles for these types of things. I’d also put extra in as I often like the pupils to learn how to measure and weigh successfully!

Mini Jam pots are great for oil.

My DD has taken small amounts of liquid in small clip lock containers and they never leak. I think they are 100ml ones so perfect for a bit of oil or milk.

Luckily we had some old tommy tippee weaning pots with lids - small ones that hold about 50ml milk. And we keep little chutney takeaway pots with lids from our local Indian. And I do send in flour etc in plastic food bags as they take up less space. My husband had a ginger "shot" drink the other day and that was in a tiny bottle. But not sure how leakproof the cap is.

Thankfully we now just pay £2 per practical lesson and the school sort out all the ingredients. It's much better than trying to put 1 tbs oil in a tiny bottle and the child having to carry everything around with them.

We use screw top sistema pots quite a lot. Little "yoghurt pots" about the size of an apple and tiny salad dressing pots, all inside a bigger tupperware which then is used to carry the finished thing home.

For eggs tear a big chunk of the egg carton off, and get DC to pack it well with other things around to hold in place.

School has fridges outside the food tech room so if they are organised enough they can store their ingredients in there for the day, rather than having to carry it round.

We used the sistema pots too.
A bag of flour is good support for an egg.