Personally, I don’t* but I was curious what others think.
*some sandwiches excluded like a Cubano or chicken parm; those do require cooking.
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I guess that it depends on context? Typically I wouldn’t call it cooking, as it doesn’t involve applying heat to the food. But if I were to teach a kid how to cook, then I’d consider it cooking - as teaching them how to prepare a sandwich would be a good start.
So… we started with waffles and baking. They get to mix the batter and dump things into the bowl, and such.
Though the first thing my nephew made without help was mac and cheese- everything was from scratch, the sauce and the pasta. It might have taken him… uh… hours… to roll out the pasta by hand, but eh, you are allowed to have fun with your food.
If anyone hasn’t, making pasta is not that difficult. I wouldn’t say there isn’t a place for dry pasta; and it’s certainly more convenient, but if you’re interested don’t feel intimidated. (though, if you don’t have a pasta machine, I’d suggest something like Orecchiette; but there’s plenty of other shapes that don’t require a machine or rolling out in the video,)
Mixing batter and preparing pasta seem like great starts, too. The general idea is to not let the kid handle anything with heat or sharp knives until they’re old enough to “respect” the danger behind those things.
My own initiation was whisking mayo (where I live it’s traditional to prepare a potato-mayo salad on Sundays). Then when my nephew was young I kind of tried to teach him how to prepare some onigiri (he already liked them better than sandwich), with already cooked rice and fillings, but he was a bit too lazy to do it, and a bit too eager to eat the ingredients.
Absolutely, on the safety. Another thing to look out for is mixers and other machines.
though, they’re big and scarry enough sometimes they don’t need a warning… but eh… yeah. Those things will take a finger without even noticing.
