Don't Leave the Kitchen When Your Kid Cooks Dinner

A woman I test recipes with on Wednesdays told me last week that the way to teach a kid to cook is to hand him the recipe and leave the room. She said children perform when you watch them and learn when you don't, and she said it while sliding a sheet of oat cookies off the rack, like a person whose son has already made it to twelve in one piece. I don't buy it. Maybe by the fortieth dinner, but not for the first few, and the Thursday Caleb made quesadillas is most of the reason.

He picked them himself, which I took as a good sign. A tortilla, cheese, a pan. I sat at the table with the mail and my mouth shut, and when he turned the burner to high I saw it and had a sentence ready about medium and swallowed it, because I'd read somewhere that you let them find the edge. The butter went brown and then black and then the hall alarm started up. Ben put both hands over his ears and walked into the pantry. David came down the stairs with his headphones around his neck, Lily called from the couch that something was on fire (it wasn't), and Caleb stood on a chair fanning the ceiling with a dish towel. The quesadillas were black on the outside and the cheese in the middle hadn't moved. We ate them. Lily said they tasted like a campfire and had two.

Why I stay in the room

Somebody has to be there to take the pan off the burner. An eleven-year-old can read a recipe fine. What he can't judge yet is heat, or how fast a kitchen goes from fine to not fine, or the order things have to happen in, and you can't hand him that in writing. If the parent is upstairs, the pan stays on high a good deal longer, with a boy standing over it who has never watched oil turn.

So sit down with the mail and decide before he starts what you're allowed to say. Fire, knives and raw chicken, you speak up about every time. Everything else you leave alone, and that covers more than you'd think: how much salt, whether the onions are cut in pieces of the same size, the way an eleven-year-old cracks an egg as if it owes him money. He'll learn the salt on his own by the third week. He won't learn to fix a mistake if you fixed it before he saw it.

The cost lands on you. A quesadilla takes a grown cook about eight minutes, and taking a boy through one takes closer to forty, most of it spent sitting on your hands, which I mean fairly literally. If you're the sort of parent who redoes the onions the minute he leaves the room, tell yourself now that he'll know.

You can start staying a little farther from the stove once you've seen him turn a burner down without being asked. How long that takes depends on the kid, and I'd rather not guess at yours.

The planning happens at the table

Most people start a child at the stove. The hard thinking happens the night before, and it's quieter.

He picks the meal off a short list of things he already eats, and then he reads the entire recipe out loud, start to finish, before anything gets bought. Recipes love to say "while the onions cook, grate the cheese" at step six, when the onions are already cooking and the cheese is a block in the fridge. Read once through, the same recipe is a different recipe. After that he writes the shopping list, checks it against the cupboard and carries it in the store.

Pick a night that isn't already somebody's fixed job. A Friday pizza routine like the one I wrote out here is too tied to the clock to hand over.

Who the dinner is for

The scripture that gets me here has nothing to do with kitchens. It's King Benjamin at the end of his reign, speaking to a crowd so big he had to have a tower built so they could hear him. He reminds them that he'd worked with his own hands so they wouldn't be taxed, and then he says this:

And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.

Mosiah 2:17

The next verse asks "then ought not ye to labor to serve one another?" (Mosiah 2:18). Benjamin is talking about every kind of service, and I'm borrowing him for a plate of food. That application is mine and not his, but a dinner is about as small and as daily a piece of service as there is.

A boy who cooks only to hear "good job" is cooking for the applause. Put a plate in front of a little sister who announces she doesn't like onions, and in front of a father who says "this is great" through a mouthful of something that plainly isn't yet, and he finds out in about thirty seconds what it is to make a thing for someone else. He'll hold on to that much longer than he holds on to the recipe.

Cleanup

By the time the plates are cleared Caleb is worn out and the kitchen looks like somebody emptied the pantry onto every surface. A parent can wipe the stove in four minutes and be done, and will want to. Go on, I'll get it. It sounds like kindness.

The Church's materials on teaching children to work say to work alongside them and give them jobs that fit what they can do. None of what I've read names an age for cooking a family meal. They don't need to. The pull is at the sink around eight o'clock, when doing it yourself is faster, and a child who sees that happen enough times draws his own conclusion about who gets to the dishes.

So the cook is done when the pan is washed, the stove is wiped, the leftovers are in containers and the counter is clear. A streak left on the burner stays there until next week, and he'll see it. Say all of this before dinner. It doesn't work to make up the rule at nine o'clock over a full sink with a child who wants to go upstairs.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good first dinner for a kid to cook?

Something he already eats, with two or three steps. Quesadillas, tacos from a kit, pasta with jarred sauce. Pick a meal the family will eat even if it comes out wrong, because it might.

What age should a child start cooking a family dinner?

I wouldn't give you a number. Little ones can stir and tear lettuce for years first. A whole dinner from the list to the dishes is something I'd try around ten or eleven with a parent in the room, and later for a kid who's careless around the stove.

How much should I help?

Take the hot and sharp parts alongside him for the first several dinners and give him the planning and the cleanup. Beyond that, close your mouth.

Does the Church have a rule about kids cooking?

Not that I've found. What I've read on children and work is general: match the job to what they can do. Nothing sets an age.

What if the dinner is bad?

Eat it. Say one true good thing about it and, if you have to, one thing for next time. If the kitchen smells like a campfire, open a window.

The bulb over the front step has been out since Sunday, and I keep walking past the new one in its box on the hall shelf.

with love, Melissa