Halfway through
You are cooking and you have just realized there is no onion, which the recipe says to start with.
What do you do?
Step 1: What Would You Do?
There is often more than one good answer. Pick one and see what happens.
Leftovers
There is a lot of food left. Everybody has finished eating and it is still sitting on the hob.
What do you do?
Step 2: What That Was
The name for what you just worked out.
Read the whole recipe before you touch anything. That is where you find out something needed to marinate for an hour.
Everything out first
Chop and measure before you turn on any heat. Once a pan is hot, the clock is running and you cannot stop to find things.
Work backwards
Start with when you want to eat. The thing that takes longest goes on first, not the thing you feel like doing first.
The safety parts
Chicken and pork cooked through, no pink and juices clear. Separate boards for raw meat. Leftovers cooled and in the fridge within two hours.
Step 3: Try It
These ones do have right answers.
What Goes On First?
Tap in the order you would actually do them.
Chicken (25 min), rice (12 min), vegetables (6 min). You want to eat at 6.30.
- 1Chicken on at 6.00
- 2Rice on at 6.15
- 3Vegetables on at 6.22
- 4Everything ready at 6.30
- 5Read it through and get everything out
Step 4: Quick Check
Two questions, then you are done.
Question 1 of 1
How do you know chicken is cooked?
Step 5: Your Life Mission
Something to do away from the screen. Nobody is checking.
One whole meal
- Pick a meal with three parts and plan the timings backwards.
- Get everything out before you start.
- Cook it, serve it, and clear up.
Why: Doing all of it, including the planning and the clearing, is what makes it a skill rather than a step you helped with.
Step 6: What You Learned
- Read the whole recipe first.
- Everything chopped and measured before heat.
- Time backwards from when you want to eat.
For the grown-up
Being able to cook three or four meals properly is one of the highest-value things a young person can leave home with, and it is almost never taught systematically.
Handing over the whole meal occasionally — planning, shopping list, cooking, clearing — teaches far more than assisting with a step.
The food safety points are the ones worth being firm about. Everything else is recoverable.