Kids in the kitchen. The thought of it is exciting — sharing your love of certain recipes and food with those close to you, yet how does one even start the process of having a little helper in the kitchen, especially when they’re young. One Reddit user on the subreddit r/Cooking saw how much her 2 1/2-year-old son wanted to be in the kitchen and wanted to figure out how he could help out more.
Prep Away
“Have him help with prep. Wash the potatoes, shuck the corn, crush the chips for casseroles, peel bananas for pancakes, etc. Salad spinners are practically toys.” — Ajreil/r/Cooking
Story Telling Recipe
“I would suggest a pot of Stone Soup. My mom made this with my sisters and me years ago, and my sisters made it with their children as well. The story of Stone Soup is from a book (available on Amazon) by the same name. The book describes how the soup is made and as you read the story (about sharing) with the child, you make the soup. Essentially all you’re doing is making chicken noodle soup, but you need to find a good-size stone and wash & scrub the heck out of it, as that’s the first ingredient in the soup. There are numerous versions of the story dating back to as early as the 1500s.” — Position_Extreme/r/Cooking
Fun In Color
“Salads could be fun. All those colors. If you have or can acquire fun-shaped cookie cutters you could turn carrots etc. into fun shapes. Save the cutout scraps for broth enrichment or toss them into sauces.” — adronicuspark/r/Cooking
Picking Out The Problems
“Yeah, I remember helping my mom with really basic tasks, like flattening tortillas and going through dried beans to take the little pebbles out, etc. when I was about that age.” — Creative_Energy533/r/Cooking
Baking With Tasting
“Edible cookie dough. He’ll probably have a lot of fun mixing everything, or picking the add-ins (M&M’s, choc chips, dried fruit, nuts, cookie chunks, etc.). And since of the ingredients for edible cookie dough, he can have some during the process, unlike regular cookie dough which requires quite a lot of self-restraint not to eat it before it goes in the oven lol.” – luv_marachk/r/Cooking
Mini Chef Set
“Just about anything baking-related, he can knead, mix, stir to his heart’s content. I’ve also seen some wooden cutting sets for kids that he can use to cut up fruits and veggies and work on those skills and learn to be careful without an actual knife.” — allthecrazything/r/Cooking
A Gradual Build Up
“I started my sons off by just helping to add ingredients to recipes I was making. In the beginning, it was solid-type things (chocolate chips, nuts, cherry tomatoes, sticks of butter, and so on). Once they had the small motor control to be able to handle measuring cups of flour and sugar without spilling it all over themselves, they started adding that to bowls for me. And the last thing was learning to crack eggs and add them to a bowl. The egg cracking started at about the age of 4, and once the final ingredients were in, they started learning to stir properly. Whisking started at about age 5.” — GotTheTee/r/Cooking
Making Batters And Doughs
“Mine love to help with pancakes, I just let them add some ingredients and stir. Any sort of biscuits, cookies for example. They love to form the dough into balls or add chocolate chips.” — rifain/r/Cooking
Artistic Designs
“My kiddo’s favorite at that age was bagel faces. Let him spread his cream cheese or PB and arrange his toppings into a face. Bonus is that fruits and veg sneak in.” — Beth_Ro/r/Cooking