Cooking fun for the whole family

Letting your children help with the cooking from time to time is not only fun for them, but also awakens their curiosity and openness to varied and diverse food. The following tips will give you an overview of what you should bear in mind:

• Food science: Choose a suitable recipe together with your child and explain the properties and origin of the individual ingredients.
• Time: Plan enough time. Rushing increases the risk of accidents and spoils your child's enjoyment of cooking.
• Preparation: Take your time to go through the recipe with your child and get all the ingredients and utensils ready together.
• Cleanliness: Practice the basic rules of hygiene: wash your hands before cooking, tie up your hair, put on an apron and use clean dishes and cutlery for cutting and processing.
• Risks: Explain possible dangers to your children and never allow younger children in particular to work alone.
• Distribution of tasks: Assign your child an age-appropriate task. Pre-school children can wash fruit and vegetables, knead dough, peel bananas, stir creams, top pizzas and wafers or decorate cakes. Later on, you can show them how to peel and cut fruit and vegetables. Start with soft ingredients such as pears and don't leave your child unsupervised.
• Keep at it: Take the opportunity to teach your child that even boring tasks need to be done and that they should finish any assigned work.
• Calmness: Not everything will work right away. Stay calm and take it with humor when something goes wrong. Instead, encourage your child to do better next time.
• Tidying up: Show your child that cleaning up is also part of cooking and eating and let them do small tidying up jobs.
• React correctly: If, despite all precautions, an accident occurs, act quickly. Burns must be cooled immediately and cuts must be disinfected. If in doubt, contact a doctor.

Health advice around the clock
If you have any questions about your health, the doctors and medical staff at sante24 are available free of charge and around the clock to give you expert advice. On request, sante24 will arrange a doctor's appointment. Tel. 044 404 86 86