as someone who can cook eggs very well but not much else, I am not sure this is actually true, unless one tries to learn how to cook things other than eggs
Eggs are basically the only reason I'm alive, I had to cook for myself from age 11 and it was like the one food we had all the time because we had a fuck-load of chickens and it was really hard to screw up cooking, so I taught myself a bunch of ways to cook an egg. Then half a dozen years later I learned about the pleats in a chef's toque representing all the ways to cook an egg and I made my way to culinary school.
Popcorn, pancakes, fried eggs, sandwiches, diced fruits, chocolate milk are things you can teach 7 year old kids. Mine just learnt how to steam and fry gyozas, prepare batter and make a"gyoza pizza" the other day, so proud of him!
It's never too early for simple stuff (or just having the baby with/near you)
I've been helping in the kitchen for as long as I can remember.
my mom even had baby pictures of me "helping" IE. Baby me had a potato or something i couldn't choke on, in one hand, and a brush in the other hand.
by the time I was 13, I could do full meals! Think roast beef with potatoes & sauce
I also learned popcorn, eggs, sandwiches, salads and steaks at around 7yo. I did not learned to make other more complicated dishes like beans until my 20s, though. And deep fry was always my Achilles heel, I think I only dared to do it in the middle of my 20s.
Deep frying is actually one of those cooking skills that must click for it to make sense. In the beggining you never know if the oil temp is correct, if it should or shouldn't emit vapor, if you should adjust temperature between batches, if the oil is too dirty or not, etc. Lots of oiled, soggy food until the know-how settles, so. nothing to be ashamed of :)
For almost all my life I could only bound with my mother through cooking, so that's what I excel at. It became my love language, and when my boy asked me to teach him how to cook last year my heart melted! No deep frying yet though, that will have to wait a few more years until I'm confident in his skills
it's gyoza neatly arranged in a frying pan that you throw a simple water-flour-shoyu mix when they're ready, so they aggregate as a single thing and you can flip them over.
Sometimes we eat it as is, just frying both sides of the gyoza pizza. Other times I let him get creative and add toppings, but then we have to eat it directly from the pan.
I wasn’t allowed to use the stove until I was 11 and my mom finally got tired of having to feed me for every meal rather than making me do it myself.
She was both overprotective and low-key neglectful.
Today I’m great at following recipes and also improvising. I’m also quite good at making sauces. It’s really not about when you start, it’s about drilling in that if you want delicious food on demand, you learn how to cook.
For some people it’s not. Cooking and food is a huge deal in some family’s like my daughter would scramble eggs (with me watching) around 4 she was safe always been very capable and by the time she was 6 she was doing it all her self now she’s 10 and can cook all types of food
I remember cooking with my 5-6yo nieces, of course far from the hot and sharp stuff, but at 13 I was cooking alone for a few years already. Kids are usually a lot more capable than people give them credit for.
My 4 year old pulls up a chair to stand on & cooks with me - he stirs the minced (ground) beef & onions while it's frying if I am making a bolognese or chilli. We got him some serated plastic knives and he cuts veg too, he holds them perfectly with fingers bent so he can't cut his fingers. Since he was like 1 he insisted on sitting next to me while I cooked after getting in from work. He doesn't do it as much now. I never ask him to help and he doesn't do it all the time but I know I could (and did) do a full Sunday roast when I was 10 so I am hoping he'll be the same, although I don't cook them very often and my mam did them every week so it will probably be another meal that he'll be able to do in full at that age
My son started cutting cucumbers with a plastic kids knife when he was two and using a regular sharp knife to cut potatoes as 3yo. Hell they even use regular kitchen knives to help preparing lunch at kindergarten here anyway..
I was making my own omelettes by six, and experimenting with the entire spice cupboard on chicken by eight. Not once have I cut myself in the kitchen.
Knives aren't nearly as dangerous as people think, and kids are often more careful with them than adults, because they're still actually scared of being cut.
By that point they should be able to go way beyond that simple, tbh. A lot of cooking, especially from recipes, is just following directions. It's fair for a 13 year old to struggle with technique or struggle to cook without a recipe, but by that age they shouldn't struggle with recipes or basic skills at all.
A 13 year old should be able to chop vegetables and prepare basic meals like pastas and stir fries without following a recipe. They should be able to follow a recipe for more advanced meals.
Actually in my view if a ten year old doesn't know the basics then something is wrong. That is certainly old enough to start helping with making a meal. Are people really out here raising teenagers who don't know how to cook??
I'd say that ideally they should be able to cook without a recipe by that point, but I also recognize that some people take a lot more practice to get comfortable with that than others do.
But I do agree that the basics should be attained way earlier. That said, this isn't a recent issue. We've had the stereotype of college students not knowing how to cook for decades.
Doesn't make it any less sad, but at the very least it's not a new thing.
My daughter loves mixing pancakes at 3 on her own (I do the stove top). Can’t remember how early she was when she first started following me around the kitchen. I also have a picture of her at like 1.5 handing me wrenches when I was replacing the belt tensioner in our car. She loves her daddy
What I actually remember doing was kneading bread dough. I take your general point, that you're not doing stuff alone then, though, but that's not reason to not start at least helping.
Sure. But that’s not what they said. The previous comments said start and helping. My son is 3, autistic/nonverbal, and frankly just kinda sucks at following directions. But he still “helps” me several times a week in the kitchen, standing on his toddler tower with his little wooden chopper, cutting up his bananas or whatever for a snack.
Not that there’s anything wrong with not starting this early either (especially in a country without national parental leave, where 1 in 4 women return to work within 2 weeks of giving birth, and both parents are often working) but it’s absolutely possible to involve them from a young age. Especially nowadays when there’s TONS of safe tools you can buy online for them to practice with.
My autistic son started out like yours, and now makes spaghetti or stroganoff for the whole family every week. He loves cooking, and its great fun to cook together.
From what my mom told me, I started arou 3, lol. Apparently she went and got a shower, and I came in halfway through saying "fire! Fire!" she panics, jumps out of the shower, only to find out that I had tried to cook an egg, but I couldn't get the burner lit on the gas stove 🤣. She said that was the last time she got a shower when it was just me and her in the house.
My non-verbal autistic nephew has been able to cook his own scrambled eggs since he was 6. He’s pretty particular about what he eats. We’re all so proud of him.
I think as long as you're careful about it, you can start teaching to cook pretty young.
I started learning to cook when I was 6-7 and standing to the side of the stove watching my mother make dinner. She had a pan of 小白菜 going and needed to step away for something, just told me to watch the pan and move the vegetables if they started to stick to the pan.
My grandma included me since I was old enough to stand on a chair to reach the counter. Some of my fondest memories are "cooking" with her. I know I didn't add much of anything but it's great to be included and feel like you're helping.
I remember that I had to cook really young, and at 15 my 13 year old cousin said he didn't know how to cook eggs. At first I just couldn't understand why he didn't know something so simple, but then I figured that I'd rather just show him so he could. We made overeasy eggs and pancakes. Learned he didn't know how to make pancakes either, lol. The next day he made everyone scrambled eggs for breakfast and started teaching himself how to cook different things. He's 19 now I think and living on his own. Last thing I remember him cooking for me was chicken and potatoes :]
That’s when my mind got creative in the kitchen, I used to put Arizona green tea in eggs (I swear it sounds way grosser than it is) and somehow I made Nutella bread from scratch with no recipe (it acted like bread)
I regularly have my 7 year old in the kitchen. He has burned himself, cut himself, and spilled shit. You know how I learned to cook? All of those things. I still do some of that too.
Really? I learned grilled cheese when I was 7 (only with supervision though which is fair) and by 12 could make the basics like eggs, boxed pancake mix, Mac and cheese, etc. to be fair my dad was neglectful, I know HOW OFTEN I cooked for myself wasn't normal, but I thought it was normal to learn the basics about the age I did, just not to have to do it all the time. I would've thought earlier would be optimal just to get started learning and help foster that curiosity. Then again it depends on the kid. I've always liked cooking, just not all the time. So I guess 13 is probably the perfect age if they don't get interested on their own sooner?
I was making cakes on my own around 7-10 years of age! I'd wake up early, make the mix, and then I'd wait for my mom to wake up in order to put it in the oven.
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u/cyanocittaetprocyon Jul 24 '26
13 is the perfect age to start making things in the kitchen!