What is the first thing you learned to cook

[Anonymous]

I was cooking pancakes with supervision around 8 or 9. By 11 or 12, I was on to ramen or quesadillas after school.

For teenagers, though, I think I'd step it up a notch. They should learn the basics of planning a meal: food groups, what pairs well together, how to multi-task so that everything comes out warm at the same time. My 13yo can handle a few simple meals: spaghetti / jarred sauce / salad; sheet pan chicken thighs with broccoli and potatoes; skillet pork chops with steamed asparagus and crescent rolls from a can. We'll work on homemade sourdough later lol.

[Anonymous]

Bacon, eggs (scrambled and over easy), toast and tea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A simple Bolognese with jarred sauce.

Never. This is terrible. Sauce from a jar is a sin. It’s disgusting and filled with sugar.

[Anonymous]

For me:
Kraft mac and cheese
Ramen packets
Eggs fried in bread (cut circle in bread with a jar or glass)
English muffin pizzas

My elementary school kids do:
pancakes
French toast
Salads (green garden salad and some meal salads like hard boiled egg salad, tuna salad, black bean salad with canned beans and corn)
Quesadillas
Grilled cheese
Pasta with cheese (just mix in goat cheese or feta) or jarred sauce (we like Rao"s, no sugar added, but heavy on salt)
Hard boiled eggs
Fried eggs
Deviled eggs
Lots of baking

I don't closely supervise anymore, though we do have a rule that you need to set a timer when the gas stove is on and not leave the room.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A simple Bolognese with jarred sauce.

Never. This is terrible. Sauce from a jar is a sin. It’s disgusting and filled with sugar.

Let us know if you ever figure out how to read. It’s tough, but I’m sure you’ll get there eventually!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A simple Bolognese with jarred sauce.

Never. This is terrible. Sauce from a jar is a sin. It’s disgusting and filled with sugar.

Let us know if you ever figure out how to read. It’s tough, but I’m sure you’ll get there eventually!

And I really question the quality of the "meat" used in these jars of sauce.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A simple Bolognese with jarred sauce.

Never. This is terrible. Sauce from a jar is a sin. It’s disgusting and filled with sugar.

Let us know if you ever figure out how to read. It’s tough, but I’m sure you’ll get there eventually!

And I really question the quality of the "meat" used in these jars of sauce.

I'm the jarred sauce poster. I was 8 years old, and I browned some chopped onion and pepper (I used a chopped that was safe for kids), then ground meat, then added the sauce and let it simmer. My mom was disabled and she loved my help. I thought it was great back then!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A simple Bolognese with jarred sauce.

Never. This is terrible. Sauce from a jar is a sin. It’s disgusting and filled with sugar.

Let us know if you ever figure out how to read. It’s tough, but I’m sure you’ll get there eventually!

And I really question the quality of the "meat" used in these jars of sauce.

I'm the jarred sauce poster. I was 8 years old, and I browned some chopped onion and pepper (I used a chopped that was safe for kids), then ground meat, then added the sauce and let it simmer. My mom was disabled and she loved my help. I thought it was great back then!

*chopper

[Anonymous]

Try recipes that they will learn from. Scrambled eggs is great because it teaches you the importance of heat, how to handle eggs and how differently they will turn out depending on how you mess with them in the pan, how butter and milk and salt will change the dish and how you can take add ins and change it. They can apply that to lots of different dishes.

Teach them how to bake/ roast chicken. Many new cooks are skittish about raw meat/ bone in meat, particularly SALT and using a meat thermometer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not really cooking I guess but I was opening cans of soup for dinner for myself when I was about 2.5 or 3. My mom worked nights. Around age 4 I started cooking proper dinners- grilled chicken, steamed veggies, roasted potatoes etc.

I'm sorry your mom wasn't around to fix you dinner in the evenings, but it's pretty implausible to me that you were opening cans of soup by yourself at 2.5 years old. No child of that age has the fine motor skills or strength in their hands to do that, either with a manual or electric can opener. At 5 years old, possibly.

+1. PP was not grilling chicken at age 4. But I’m sure she mentions this to people a lot.

DP. I believe her. My cousin was doing the same and driving a tractor by 5. Country people are just raised more capable.

[Anonymous]

Eggs, macaroni & cheese, grilled cheese, fried bologna sandwiches (best thing ever after summer swim practice).

Home alone for the summer, I left the stove on one time and nearly had a disaster. I think I was 9. I think that's why I limit my younger kids to the microwave and toaster unless an adult is supervising. My middle schooler can make anything she wants to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was raised in India, 50 yrs ago. The first thing I learned to cook was how to use the electric toaster to make toasts.
Next I was taught how to light a matchstick safely and turn on the gas stove top which looked like the stove below.
On the gas stove top, I learned to boil milk, boil eggs, boil potatoes and make tea.
Next I learned how to make cake from scratch. We used to bake it in a table top plug in cake oven like below.

After that, I learned how to make scrambled eggs, omlettes, stuffed sandwiches etc. My mom taught me how to make lemonade, lassi etc. Anything to do with lifting a heavy pot, using a pressure cooker to make rice or daal or any sort of frying...probably in my late teens. Though I do remember making chicken curry once when my dad forced me to cook when I was 8. I was so mad at him. Mom had gone for a day somewhere. Such a clueless man. Of course I had no clue and whatever I made was inedible. My elder brothers used to cook quite well and thanks to them I could cruise by for a long time.

This is a great backstory! It's fantastic that your brothers could cook well too. Well done mom! So what happened with the curry? Did you use spices your mom had already prepped? Did your dad try to eat it?

My mom and dad were big into instilling adulting skills, especially cooking in my elder brothers. Those days, single young men often left parental home for employment purposes, and they were stuck without access to healthy home cooked food. Those days restaurants were few and far between. And people did not trust eating "hotel" food. So brothers knew "bachelor" kind of cooking.

I was 8, youngest, only daughter, baby of the family, so no one would let me do any chores. I think I put heaping spoons of all the familiar spices that I could find in the spice box and added a good amount of water. It was like the chicken was drowning in a pool of water and it took hours to make it edible. My brothers did not eat it and laughed at me. My dad ate it because he always encouraged me. He praised me for my "brave attempt". I was not attempting anything. He put me in that position.

[Anonymous]

Roast chicken. My mom never got home before 6:30pm so she would call every day around 5 and walk me through dinner prep which often meant putting something in the oven before she got home, like a roast chicken.

[Anonymous]

A long time ago when I was in my early 20's, my roommate and I were on a limited budget (meaning we spent all our money on beer). He introduced me to fettucine with a can of clam chowder. It was cheap and easy and we could both have a big meal for a little over a dollar a person. Not great cuisine, but tasty... and filling. Then my parents gave me a hand cranked pasta machine. That was a game changer. It took a bit to get it right, but then I was on to making my own chowder. Then red sauces.... then all day Bolognese. Then baking, then grilling, then braising and on and on. It was a downward spiral from there I've spent the past few decades learning and loving the process. I think cooking really helps with my ADHD. The more complicated the recipe the better. Working on five different things at once puts me in my zen spot.

[Anonymous]

TEENAGERS?

Hand them a recipe card, have all the ingredients out and let them have at it. They should be able to cook any basic recipe.