Home before everyone
You are hungry and home first. There is bread, cheese, fruit, and things that need the hob.
What do you make?
Step 1: What Would You Do?
There is often more than one good answer. Pick one and see what happens.
A small pan fire
Something in a pan has caught fire. There are flames.
What do you do?
Step 2: What That Was
The name for what you just worked out.
Wash your hands before you start. Not because you are told to — because whatever is on them ends up in the food.
Raw meat is separate
Anything that touched raw meat — board, knife, hands — gets washed before it touches anything else.
Sharp and hot
Knives and heat need a grown-up until they say otherwise. When you do use a knife, cut away from your hand, on a flat board.
Clearing up is part of cooking
Cooking is not finished when the food is ready. It is finished when the kitchen looks like it did before.
Step 3: Try It
These ones do have right answers.
On Your Own, or Ask?
Sort each kitchen job.
Which of these need a grown-up first?
Tap something to move it.
- Empty
- Empty
Step 4: Quick Check
Two questions, then you are done.
Question 1 of 1
You have chopped raw chicken. What do you do before cutting the salad?
Step 5: Your Life Mission
Something to do away from the screen. Nobody is checking.
Make one thing, start to finish
- Choose something you can make on your own.
- Get everything out first, make it, and eat it.
- Leave the kitchen exactly as you found it.
Why: The last step is the one that makes people let you do it again.
Step 6: What You Learned
- Wash hands first.
- Anything that touched raw meat gets washed before anything else.
- Sharp and hot need permission. Clearing up is part of it.
For the grown-up
Cooking is the highest-value practical skill in this chapter and the one most often postponed. Children who cook eat better as adults, by a wide margin.
Expand permissions deliberately rather than by drift: name the day they may use the hob or a sharp knife supervised, so it is a step rather than something that happens when you are not looking.
Insisting that clearing up is part of cooking from the start avoids the very common outcome of an enthusiastic cook who leaves a destroyed kitchen.