Cooking skills are so important! When it comes to cooking, there are so many wonderful ingredients, equipment, cultures and techniques to use that one will find they never will get bored.
Chefsville provides all kinds of teaching venues throughout the Dallas Metroplex. After working with over 250,000 students (both kids and adults) we decided to drop this online as a great read. Teaching cooking skills is wonderful fun for us.
Did you know that chefs who are worth their salt are always learning?
Every day they are learning new things. They could be learning new skills, meeting new people, or working with ingredients that they never used before. All learning is exciting especially if you get to eat it when you are done.
The skills we agree on were absolutely found in an article that was already written. So instead of creating a whole new article, we thought we would summarize and list it in the event that you want to check it out.
Coming in at #1 was “Reading a Recipe” – Chefsville covers this in its Kids Cooking Club programs and Camps.
#2 Properly slice and dice an onion. Absolutely! Did you know that most allergy medications are extracts of onion and garlic. Imagine how good this is if you learn to eat fresh onions and garlic. One will need to be able to break these down for any application. Easily done!
#3 Learning how to season food. Using the proper amount of salt and pepper can make food taste wonderful. Also there are all kinds of delicious herbs and spices. Many countries celebrate food through seasoning such as Jamaican Jerk, Indian Curry, and hundreds of others. It is exciting to learn the relationships between the incredible and endless combinations of food enhancing seasoning – unless bland food works for you.
#4 How to scramble eggs. Did you know that a chef’s hat is pleated in a special way. One pleat is for each method a chef knows when working with eggs. In America, people are used to large curd cooked eggs. In other countries, they make small curd eggs which are cheesy and creamy, however, there is no cream and cheese in them. Please check out our recipe on the Worlds Best Scrambled Eggs.
#5 Learn to cook at least 5 different grains. This could be rice, or quinoa, or beans. There is a relationship between the amount of water to the grain. Some grains need twice the amount of water to grain. Other grains need 3 or even 4 times the water. This is an easy cooking skill to learn giving you many choices.
#6 Learn to sear proteins. One of the fun skills in cooking is making food taste spectacular. When it comes to cooking it means developing chemical reactions that will create flavor, texture, color and aroma. Searing proteins can allow for a nice crust to develop as well as keeping the juices inside of the protein being cooked.
#7 Roasting Vegetables. A great cooking skill since there are so many vegetables that actually get the same chemical reactions to build flavor as described in the paragraph above. Learning to roast vegetables allows the starches to break down and become sweet. Developing a beautiful golden brown coating with out burning adds a richness to vegetables. We have found kids love their vegetables when using this method.
#8 Serving a whole roasted bird. This is a real confidence builder which is pretty easy to do. Imagine bringing a whole roasted bird or roasted beef perfectly cooked to your table with some trimmings. Everyone will be gasping and wanting to dig in.
#9 Learn how to make delicious warm cheesy sandwiches. Who doesn’t love a great grilled cheese sandwich? Think how many different kinds of breads and cheeses and other ingredients you can experiment with. Come up with at least 3 favorites and add them to your recipe collection.
#10 Cooking pasta. OMG most of us love a great pasta dish. Did you know there are over 650 shapes and sizes of pasta. I have counted over 4,000 recipes for pasta. Our Chefsville Kids learn 10 of them beyond spaghetti. Its kind of fun when they can’t spell spaghetti. But they learn how to cook it several ways.
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