Easy cooking with Children

I teach middle school children in South Korea. During the Summer and Winter, we have an "English Camp" which is a week or 2 week long series of 3 hour classes with the students. The idea during this time is to have the students interact with and have fun using English. I always try to cook something with them.

These are the recipes we used for one particular camp cooking day.

The students loved the Garlic bread, they said they would have preferred beef in the bolognese (personally I would have too, but cost restraints told us we weren't allowed to do that), and they LOVED the Spiders/Cokefloats. The Coke-float was a new experience for them, and they were a little unsure to begin with, but once they tasted them, they were lining up for 2nds and 3rds. It was fun to see them experiment with the different flavors of soft drink - we had coke, lemonade, pineapple, grape, strawberry and orange. They mixed some of the flavors together to try and get the best combinations too. It was fun to watch.

The most important thing to remember when cooking with children, is to keep things simple so they can do as much as possible, and they can have fun with it. If they don't get to do much in the cooking of the food, and they just eat it, they aren't learning a useful life skill. I always encourage EVERY student/child I am teaching to cook, to get involved. I make sure everyone in the group gets a turn to do something. That way, the meal is more rewarding for them.

Garlic Bread

 

You need:

1/2 cup butter

1 tsp garlic (crushed)

1 slice bread per person

 

Mix crushed garlic and butter together in a bowl until combined.

 

Spread butter mix on both sides of the bread.

 

Place bread in frying-pan and cook for 1-2 minutes each side, until golden brown.

 

Cut bread diagonally to serve.

 

 

Spaghetti Bolognese

 

You need:

800gm ground pork/ ground beef

1 bottle Spaghetti sauce

1 packet Spaghetti

 

Fill pot with water and bring to a boil.

 

Put spaghetti into boiling water.

 

In frying pan, cook ground pork until no pink can be seen.

 

Add spaghetti sauce to ground pork in frying pan.

 

Stir until combined.

 

When spaghetti is finished cooking, it will change color and be soft to the bite, remove from heat and remove water.

 

Wash the spaghetti and put back in the pot. Add the spaghetti sauce and stir.

 

Serve on a plate.

 

 

Spiders

 

You need:

2 scoops ice cream

250ml soda

 

Put 2 scoops of ice cream into a cup

 

Pour soda over ice cream

 

Use a spoon to help you drink