Ideas for your children to learn in the kitchen

Food is usually one of the most complicated parts in the education and care of children, because they often feel rejected by certain foods and refuse to eat them no matter how hard you insist they are good for their growth. So today we’re going to look at some ideas that can help you get them more involved in cooking and food.

The little ones are used to sitting at the table and having their dish in front already prepared, and if they do not like it, they say they do not want to eat it and that’s it. A good way for them to better understand the importance of food and a varied diet is to involve them in the cooking process.

Cooking with children is not only good for them to know better what they are eating every day and how it is done, but also to give them a greater level of responsibility. This is something that must be developed step by step until they end up being perfectly self-sufficient in the kitchen and actively collaborate with the housework.

For these reasons, we are going to review today some recipes that can help introduce your children to the world of cooking, know better all the food and, in addition, have fun in the process.

Baked chicken fingers

Ingredients:

• 500 gr. of chicken breast
• Bread crumbs
• Beaten egg
• Salt and pepper

Recipe:

1. Leave the oven heating at about 180ºC for ten minutes. Meanwhile, we will use that time to prepare the chicken.
2. We take the chicken breasts and cut them into finger-shaped strips. It is necessary to ensure that they are all of the same size so that they are cooked at the same time.
3. We get pepper on the fingers and prepare the egg for the batter.
4. Beat the egg and prepare the bread crumbs to pass the chicken strips until they are completely covered. Then, we place them in the oven tray on a vegetable paper, ready to start cooking them.
5. We leave the fingers in the oven for about seven minutes, until they are crispy on the outside and tasty on the inside. The only thing that remains is to place them on the plate and prepare, if we want, some sauce to accompany, such as barbecue, or mayonnaise, for example.

Meat dumplings

Ingredients:

• 200 g minced pork
• 200 g of chopped onion
• 90 g of chopped red pepper
• 50 g of chopped green olives
• 2 hard boiled eggs
• 2 tablespoons fried tomato
• 1 egg
• Salt and pepper
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 2 tablespoons of thyme

Recipe:

1. The first thing is to preheat the oven to 200ºC while we prepare the rest of the ingredients.
2. Let’s start by frying the onion and pepper in the pan and then add the minced meat. Then add the tomato to saute for a few minutes while stirring the mixture.
3. We remove it from the fire and we throw the thyme, the olives and the hard eggs. We pepper and let it cool, and we already have the inside of the dumplings ready.
4. We paint with beaten egg the inside edges of the wafers to work as a natural glue. Place the dough inside, and bend them, using the back of the fork so that they are well closed.
5. Place the dumplings in the oven and let them cook for about 10 minutes, until they are golden brown. In case of not having an oven, they can also be made with boiling oil in a pan. We place absorbent kitchen paper on the plate to remove as much oil as possible.

These two recipes are a good way to start cooking with the little ones in the house, besides they are foods that they usually like. By doing this, they will learn to organize the ingredients they need, prepare them and follow the instructions in the recipe. Step by step, they will get used to it and learn new, more complex recipes. The important thing is that children have fun, learn and begin to acquire responsibilities.