My 4th grade boy is a great chef - he makes the best scrambled eggs any of us have ever had. He also makes wonderful Mashed Cauliflower, Deviled Eggs, French Toast, Pancakes, Fish Tacos, Guacamole, and is an all around great help in the kitchen.
We are looking for a few new easy and healthy recipes he can add to his repertoire so he can continue to grow this important life skill that he has found a talent in.
Thanks for your suggestions.
pasta / potato salads - experimenting with dressings.
Experiment with marinating and dry rubs with chicken, meat.
Salsa
My daughter is also in 4th grade and loves to cook a lot of the same things your son enjoys! They would get along great. Some of the things my daughter has made recently... homemade pizza! Ours involves making the crust (a fun lesson in making bread, but if you're short on time, Boboli crust works too), and then we go to the cheese counter at Whole Foods and sample everything before choosing a few kinds. We usually get sausage to chop into pieces and sauté, she will chop and then caramelize onions, sauté mushrooms, squash, etc., we make our own pesto sauce... basically just get whatever interesting foods he likes and throw it all on the pizza. It's a tradition around here, and especially fun for the grade-school chef to get to make the ingredient choices. ;)
Aside from that, we have a midwestern-style chili recipe that she makes. It makes a TON of chili (you can eat a bunch and freeze a bunch) and is very tasty. We found the recipe on allrecipes.com and it's called "Boilermaker Chili."
What else? OH! The Barefoot Contessa's pasta bolognese is a favorite around here. The sauce is to die for, and simple enough for the young chef to make well.
Have fun with your young chef! Don't you love having a kid who likes to cook AND is good at it? DH teases me that I'm just training her so I can retire early. HA!
He can make enchilada's, especially if you buy the roasted already cooked chicken from Costco
Spaghetti
fajita's
egg salad sandwiches
tostada, you can buy the already made shells and apply beans and cheese and anything he wants
pizza, buy the pizza dough from Trader Joes and add any ingredient
Good luck, Im sure there are alot more, its great to hear he is interested! Have fun!
There is a website called spatulatta.com. It is a cooking show that features two girls. It has recipes and instructional videos for a young "CIT" chef in training.
YOU ARE SOOOOO LUCKY!! Definitely keep that boy in the kitchen he will make his future wife so proud and you will have a daughter in law who will love you to pieces!!!
My ideas would be chili, california rolls, green smoothies, pasta sauces, bbq'd chicken on a grill, buy him a panini press and he could go to town making you sandwhiches!, pizza, taco salads, lemon mirangue cupcakes, salsa, lasagna and sunday roast:)
We have a "kids cook" cookbook from Williams Sonoma, that has a lot of the basics, spaghetti, lasagne, chicken soup etc. With pictures and step-by-step instructions. It covers a lot of techniques, and also doesn't "kidify" it too much. It's a good first professional cookbook for a youngster.
lazania. The only thing I do is put it in the oven and train the fat out of the meat. Soft Taco's and sloppy joes.
I love it! My grandson has been interested in cooking since about the same age...he is 15 now and has decided the will be a chef and have his own restaurant!
Since your son already knows how to make pancakes, he can easily make crepes and then use his imagination to dream up tasty fillings from sweets, to meats, to veggies, to fruits to whatever! I'm sure you can find many recipes online and let him experiment with his own fillings and sauces.
Good luck to him...I think that is wonderful!
how bout desserts .. hes a chef so none of that fake stuff from a box.. id say start with something easy like a "from scratch" chocolate chip cookie recipe
Try familyfun.com. They have lots of kid friendly recipes.
My son is in 4th grade, and likes to cook. But he is really more interested in the process (kind of like a craft project). He likes to make dehydrated apples. Grinder spice mixes with ingredients from our garden. Bacon-swiss-spinach quesadillas. Chocolate covered pretzels. Spring rolls with rice noodles. Veggie sushi rolls. Marbled sugar cookies with plain and chocolate dough.
Check out Rachel Ray's Cooking Rocks cookbook for kids. There are a lot of great recipes that are healthy, delicious and geared for young kids to create themselves! You could go to Amazon or google children's cookbooks and find many resources to choose from. Good luck! I hope my kids develop a cooking talent some day!
HTH,
A.
