Teaching Your Children How To Cook With a Skillet

It is a fact, in my humble opinion, that the best foods are a result of using a skillet to cook. Fried egg, fried bacon, fried sausage, fried chicken – you get the idea. In fact, you can put “fried” in front of almost anything and it would taste delicious.

Here are some simple guidelines for this most versatile marvel of modern culinary delight. Your children don’t just wake up one morning knowing how to cook safely using a skillet. If you happen to be using a cast iron skillet as we do then there is definitely a learning curve. I ate a lot of burned food while my kids learned this skill. It was totally worth it.

Teaching Your Child How To Cook With A Skillet

Select the food to cook in the skillet. You want to discuss what you can and can’t cook in a skillet. You can’t boil pasta in a skillet. You shouldn’t make acidic foods like tomatoes in cast iron. Things like that need to be learned by beginners.

Heat up that skillet. Teach them not to just dump what they are cooking straight in there. They don’t know to give the skillet a chance to get hot first. Parental supervision is a must.

Add some oil as it is heating, don’t flood it, just enough to cover the pan with a film of oil. Tip the pan around to coat it. It is the oil that stops the food from sticking to the pan and also helps transfer heat to the food. Show your child how to safely do this and not burn themselves. I like to do this as soon as the pan starts heating so it’s not super hot. The oil also tells you when you should add the food.

Now it is time to add some yummy food. Show your child what utensils to use in what skillet. In cast iron, it doesn’t matter. In non stick, it most certainly does matter. Don’t sacrifice a pan like I have before.

Show your child how to inspect the food to make sure it is fully cooked and safely remove it from the pan onto a plate.

Don’t forget to turn the heat off. When the pan has cooled, wash it thoroughly; a job is not done until everything is clean and put away. Make this a habit from the beginning.

Have your child cook two magnificent fry-ups for your family to earn their nugget.

This skill has been featured as Skill of the Week.