Creating good hygiene and safety in the kitchen for kids sets them up for a lifetime of culinary success. Cooking with kids ought to be fun and everyone will enjoy it more when the risk of injury or food poisoning have disappeared. Here a few safety tips for cooking with children.
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Use proper gear.
For best results, make sure your little chef has an apron to protect their clothes and properly sized oven mitts to protect their hands. Some of the thicker oven mitts, with silicone backings, are actually quite difficult for children to use. Be sure to find the more flexible, quilted cloth ones to make it easier for their smaller hands to grasp hot handles or pans.
Moreover, when it’s time to taste their yummy dishes after the cooking session, having a table prepared in the kitchen is also recommended. Jellymom baby seat is one of the best baby chairs to choose from.
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Demonstrate new techniques slowly.
Children are like sponges and are eager to learn as much as possible, as quickly as possible. However, when dealing with sharp knives and new ingredients, it is best to ask them to watch patiently while you demonstrate how to slice their apple or chiffonade their herbs.
Patience can be hard for little children sometimes, so try to make sure you are demonstrating tasks that are equal to their ability level. That will make the process more bearable for both you and your children.
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Teach respect for heat.
If a child is new to working in the kitchen, they may not understand how hot pans and cooktops can actually become. When cooking with LPG gas, children must be careful with flammable objects. This means making sure their apron is snug and that they do not leave dish towels laying around. If you use a gas cylinder for cooking at home, teach them the correct way to turn it on and off. Make sure they always do this under supervision until you are 100 per cent certain you can trust them.
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Keep the kitchen neat.
A clean and neat workspace makes the process of cooking so much more enjoyable. It ought to be fun to create new dishes that delight and fuel the family. This is easier to accomplish if children are taught to clean up their space as they go. Dirty dishes should be cleared off the counter and to the sink to make room for a fresh cutting board.
At the end of the cooking experience, children should also be taught how to clean up. It is all part of the process. Cleaning tasks can be matched to their abilities. They may be as simple as putting dirty utensils in the sink too as in-depth as wiping down the home gas bottles to keep any grease splatter from building upon them.
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Segregate your food.
Good food safety means using different cutting boards for different foods. Designate, and possibly colour code, your cutting boards for specific uses. For example, poultry and vegetables should never be cut on the same surface. This leads to cross-contamination and could make your family sick.
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Accommodate their size.
For maximum results, it is important that children can actually see into the pot they are stirring. That means providing them with a stool or chair to stand on while they are cooking. Many families prefer a small tower with a lean bar so the child is secure on their feet and is protected from falling. You can either make one or buy a premade one that matches your kitchen decor.
Conclusion
Ultimately, cooking in the kitchen with your kids is a wonderful bonding experience. You can create peaceful memories that will carry forward to their relationships with their own children. Kitchen memories are some of the strongest and by using patience to teach them how to be safe, you can be sure to have many happy memories.
