058: Kids Cooking Dinner? Teach Your Kids To Cook an Entire Meal...By Themselves!

Imagine with me…your kids can take over a whole dinner meal and cook it themselves while you get something else done!

It’s a dream that has become reality times three for me here at the Kids Cook Real Food™ household.

I realized I’ve shared the process we used to gradually release cooking responsibility and teach our kids to cook a whole dinner by themselves many times on other podcasts when I’m the guest. It’s about time I share it with you as well!

It’s a multi-step process:

• Let the kids watch you make a recipe.
• Watch them make the recipe while you’re there with reminders.
• Let them make the same recipe while you’re available in the house for questions.
• Then they can make that recipe with zero help from you.
• For 3-9 months, the kids should make the same recipe weekly to learn it to a mastery level.
• Then in the second year of kid's cooking night (or second phase), you can let them make their old favorite every other week. In the interim weeks, they need to try other recipes.

This allows them to take on the physical labor of cooking first, then gradually ease into the mental load portion as you help them meal plan side-by-side.

We’ve used this process with three kids so far, and the fourth won’t be far behind!

You can watch Paul and Leah’s “old favorite recipe” for pizza right here. This is a great one to watch with your kids as it has Paul’s early teenage creativity stamped all over it.

Resources We Mention for Kids Cooking Dinner

• Get started teaching your kids to cook
• Some of Paul's favorite recipes to make: cheeseburger soup or pinto gallo
• You can see Paul and Leah's pizza recipe here along with their entire process. (They filmed and edited the entire video themselves!)
• Teach kids skills in the kitchen instead of just teaching recipes

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