My first experience with formal culinary instruction was in the mid-nineties when I was eight. I joined a group of about a dozen other bored kids whose parents saw the public library as a great alternative to summer camp. In a multipurpose room, I attended a session called “Microwave Cooking for Kids.” The instructor burned into my brain the dangers of microwaving aluminum foil, but whatever recipes she taught weren’t appetizing enough to leave an impression.
I grew up with an anxious mother who had little patience for mess and waste and thought the best way for me to learn was to just watch her. The recipes that appeared in Highlights magazine or the kids’ cookbooks I got from the library were more assembly than cooking: ants on a log, English muffin mini pizzas, ice cube tray popsicles. Cooking held no opportunities for creativity or discovery.
Little me could not have fathomed that 30 years later, I’d be picking up sushi rice, nori and a salmon fillet for my own six-year-old, who was keen to prepare onigiri, Japanese rice balls, following instructions from a kids’ cookbook unlike any I grew up with.
The recipe is from New York Times food writer Priya Krishna’s Priya’s Kitchen Adventures, released this year alongside other kids’ cookbooks that challenge pint-sized cooks to handle raw fish, make ravioli from scratch, prepare stews from South Africa and rice porridges from Vietnam.
These recent titles are refreshingly free of the infantilizing tone present in so many kids’ cookbooks. They don’t assume children have unsophisticated palates or limited abilities just because they’re young. The recipes are also thoroughly tested by kids and are written in language that breaks down techniques to make Dutch baby pancakes or stir-fries easy enough for a nine-year-old to execute.
“We wanted it to be a real cookbook, not Play-Doh 2.0″ says Mark Bittman, author of Kids Cook Everything, whose 1998 title How to Cook Everything became a massive bestseller.
The book is more than 300 pages, but contains only a fraction of the recipes he’d usually include in a book of that length because the guide is filled with cartoons, suggestions for variations, trivia and illustrated instructions for everything from chopping carrots and grating hard cheeses.
There are also lengthy descriptions of basic processes, like the 59 words devoted to cracking an egg: “Put a small bowl on the counter, with a small plate right next to it. Smack the side of an egg on the plate hard enough to hear it crack but gently enough that the shell doesn’t break into pieces. Use both hands to carefully hold the egg over the bowl and open it so the insides slide out.”
My daughter prepared Bittman’s recipe for tuna sandwiches for us recently, and aside from opening the tuna can, I offered little assistance. She learned to read last year and got through the clear instructions on her own, without asking me any questions. She took nibbles as she went, learning to trust her senses – something Bittman emphasizes repeatedly in the book – to judge whether it looked, smelled and tasted right. When she read through the suggestions of ways to “spike” the recipe, she decided to add in a little sweet relish and some lemon juice.
When we sat down to eat, I noticed her pausing from her own chewing to study my husband and me as we took our first bites. When we shared our enthusiastic approval, she beamed. She has a three-tiered rating system for food, clothes, movies and books: a thumbs down, a sideways thumb or a thumbs up. With mayo dotting the corners of her smile, she flashed two thumbs up when I asked what she thought – a review not just of the taste, but the process.
As Krishna learned, you can trust feedback from kids because it’s so honest – sometimes brutally so.
Instead of offering the gentle “compliment sandwiches” she got from the adult testers of her previous cookbook Indian-ish, the 29 kid testers of Priya’s Kitchen Adventures cut to the chase in that way children do. Some said a recipe was a lot of work and they didn’t like the end result. A noodle recipe was nixed after testers complained it was too rich and heavy.
“After I got over the initial ego hit, I was actually like, ‘This is super helpful,’” Krishna said.
The process of writing a kids’ cookbook also revealed to her how much the industry relies on jargon.
“I almost feel like every recipe should be written as if you are telling a kid how to do it, because it really leads to an immense amount of clarity that you really don’t get in adult cookbooks,” she says.
When Krishna wanted to include a recipe for profiteroles in her book, her publisher, Harvest, initially pushed back: Was it reasonable to expect kids to make choux pastry – which involves handling very hot dough cooked on a stove? One of Krishna’s testers, her 14-year-old cousin Radhika Singhal (who was 11 at the time), confirmed the hunch that it was too difficult for a child, even one who was plenty experienced in the kitchen. The recipe was overhauled to instead work with store-bought sweet rolls.
Radhika was initially unimpressed with the dahi bhalla, an Indian street food of yogurt-soaked fritters topped with various chutneys and garnishes, until she ate the leftovers the next day. The flavours had a chance to mingle, the potatoes had absorbed the sweet and tart notes of the tamarind chutney. “When I tried the dish today, after it sat overnight, it tasted really delicious,” she wrote in the feedback document Krishna sent her, and that comment appeared verbatim alongside the printed recipe.
Testing the recipes wasn’t just a favour or summer diversion for Radhika; some dishes have made it into regular rotation at her home. She’s made the book’s penne arrabbiata 10 times since she finished the testing, and her family often requests the panzanella salad for dinner.
The recipes also expanded not just her own palate, but her family’s, she says. She’d never heard of the Mexican stew pozole verde con pollo, let alone tried it, before she saw Krishna’s recipe. After tracking down all the ingredients, she made it, loved it and has since prepared it a few more times.
The book is divided into chapters by countries Krishna has visited, the recipes developed by or adapted from friends and family. There are recipes for ful medames, a bean-based breakfast staple in Egyptian homes, and Moroccan zaalouk, made with eggplants, tomatoes and fried halloumi.
“I wanted to challenge what I think is a very harmful assumption that kid food is bland food, white food, unseasoned food. That Moroccan food is not kid food,” says Krishna.
Rebel Girls Cook, published this fall, also ventures beyond the grilled cheese sandwiches and pigs in a blanket that dominated kids’ cookbooks for decades.
The compilation of 100 recipes spanning Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Italian, South African and Greek cuisine was authored by renowned chefs and recipe developers, including Asma Khan of the acclaimed London restaurant Darjeeling Express and the award-winning author of Tenderheart, Hetty Lui McKinnon.
When I let my daughter flip through it, she bookmarked the yogurt parfait, but also the pork and napa cabbage dumplings, developed by Eva Chin, the chef of Toronto’s Yan Dining Room.
When she began showing interest in some of the more complex, hands-on kitchen projects she watched me tackle, I was hesitant to let her help, worried about the same things as my mother: the mess, the imprecision, the lack of efficiency. But when I finally unclenched and allowed her to assist, I saw how much she loved tactile experiences. Her tiny, nimble fingers quickly figured out how to seal dumpling with six pleats and how to tightly roll up grape leaves filled with rice, ground meat and lentils to make Persian dolmeh.
Krishna’s young testers felt the same way. They raved about the recipes that allowed them to fold and shape and “kind of choose their own adventure in a way,” she says. Their parents mentioned another perk: These more elaborate recipes engaged both hands, which made it harder to be pulled away by a screen.
If the idea of your kid making dumplings or chicken souvlaki seems inconceivable now, know that those dishes don’t have to be their entry point. Rebel Girls Cook teaches kids the basic skill of roasting veggies; Kids Cook Everything offers a recipe for three-ingredient quesadillas with clear instructions on how to maximize crispiness.
“This isn’t like how to teach kids how to cook so they’ll be chefs; this is how to teach kids how to cook so that they’ll wind up making dinner like you and I,” Bittman says. “At the beginning and the end of the day, it is how we feed ourselves.”
