Seeking ideas and recipes to use in an after-school cooking club

October 10, 2014 11:55 AM

What things can I cook with children in an after-school club setting? Difficulty: no actual cooking possible.

I am a teacher and am thinking about running an after-school cooking club next term, for children aged between 9 and 11. The curriculum doesn't allow us to do much cooking in school hours and I want to give children the opportunity to cook 'real' food and to learn about preparing complete, balanced meals.

However, I am wondering about the feasibility of the club due to the following restrictions:
- We will not be working in a kitchen, rather in a classroom with access to a sink and a decent range of equipment (including all utensils, knives, blenders etc).
- No access to an oven or hob! There is actually a small kitchen in school with an oven, but it would not be practical to work with a group of children in there. So, I could quickly pre-cook something for children to use, but they would not be involved. So, no cooking onions, making a tomato sauce, etc etc.
- Because of the above, it is unlikely that whatever we prepare would not be able to be cooked at school (lack of oven space and cooking time). So, I am thinking of complete meals that can be pre-prepared by children and then cooked when they get home, to be enjoyed by the whole family.
- The club would run after school for an hour. All chopping, preparation and clean-up should be doable in that time!
- I would prefer complete, healthy(ish) meals, rather than the usual cupcakes / fruit kebabs / bread rolls that children normally make in schools. It would be nice if children could make enough to feed a family, rather than just one portion.
- I would really really like to introduce children to new flavours and foods, but obviously the children need to want to make the dishes!
- Group size: about 8 children, one adult. In the UK, so ingredients that could be sourced easily here, please.

So....if you have any ideas, I would love to hear them! (Also, if you have any bright ideas about how I could work around the above restrictions in ways I perhaps have not thought of, great!)

posted by schmoo to Food & Drink (24 answers total)

Summer rolls! Pre-cook the noodles, and you can eliminate shrimp to make it even simpler. It's primarily cold assembly, full of exciting flavors, and easily customizable.
posted by saladin at 12:04 PM on October 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

I love the idea of them preparing a meal to take home and cook there, to be eaten by the whole family. But that does add the complication of safely transporting the food home without spills. It might be more practical to prepare and cook a single meal during the class, for the students to eat right then (its after school so they will be hungry) and then they take a scaled-up recipe home to prep and cook for the family if they want.

Can you get a microwave oven in the classroom? How about a cheap rice cooker, so you can set rice cooking at the start of the class, and by the end its ready to eat, alongside whatever your students cooked as an accompaniment?

Camping recipes might be a fun way to find practical recipes. You could even buy a small propane stove and hold the class outdoors (weather allowing) to cook on that.
posted by Joh at 12:07 PM on October 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

Can you use a portable electric hotplate?
posted by juliapangolin at 12:08 PM on October 10, 2014 [6 favorites]

Best answer: If you have a food processor, that opens up pesto, hummus, cheese dips, slaws of all kinds, etc.
posted by jetlagaddict at 12:09 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Best answer: My mom makes this really good black bean salsa stuff. I made it with my Girl Scouts in a similar we-have-no-kitchen setting and they all LOVED it. Loved making it, loved eating it. It was a really good time. Super easy.

-2 16 oz cans of black beans rinsed and drained
-1 17 oz can white shoepeg corn rinsed and drained
-2 large tomatoes peeled seeded and chopped ( I don't bother to peel them)
-1 large avocado chopped
-1 purple onion chopped
-1/4 cup fresh cilantro
-1/4 cup lime juice
-2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
-1 teaspoon salt
-1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Basically just mix, let it sit a bit, then eat it with tortilla chips.

Things I did with the girls:
-make them promise to taste it, they don't have to like it but they do have to taste it
-taste each ingredient separately
-talk about sour and salty and sweet and bitter
-talk about each ingredient, how the plants grow, etc
-let each kid chop one thing and mix in one ingredient, then they all took turns mixing it up

Several of the girls went home and made it with their families. Lots of successful reports.
posted by phunniemee at 12:10 PM on October 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

Salad in a Jar, which includes the genius tip of letting kids use scissors instead of knives to cut things.
posted by Room 641-A at 12:20 PM on October 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

Maybe I'm mis-estimating the motor skills of 9-year-olds, but what about a big salad? The point of this would be not as much to eat salad (although that would check off your healthy and non-heated requirements) but actually a sneaky way of learning knife skills.

I think that knife skills, or the lack thereof, are a big part of a successful and speedy cook. Knowing how to butcher a butternut squash, or ribbon rainbow chard, or mince garlic can be a building block of future cooking skills. Even slicing an apple requires a couple skills that they can use, as well as knife safety.

And then a couple of the students could be tasked to make a couple different easy dressings, which would demonstrate how dressing can change the taste of the food.
posted by Liesl at 12:38 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Best answer: What about making the ingredients for a slow-cooker dish, and you send it home with them in gallon ziploc bags to be emptied into a cooker (or large stovetop pot) at home?

Or maybe your club meets and dumps everything into a slow-cooker one afternoon, and then they come in early the next morning for breakfast.
posted by aimedwander at 1:03 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

If you're interested in having children take home a prepped meal to cook at home and serve to the family, you might think of doing something like prepping vegetables for vegetable soup. Once they learn basic knife skills/safety, they can chop up things like onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, celery, etc., and portion them out into gallon-sized baggies. Add a bouillon cube or two to the bag and send them off with directions to add a liter of water and cook for 30 (or however many) minutes on the stovetop. This would also work for things like ratatouille, or heartier soups that include pasta or rice.

You might show them how to make tuna, egg, or chicken salad using canned and/or precooked ingredients, chopped celery, mayo, etc., served with lettuce and tomatoes on bread or with crackers.

A blender can be used to make dips from canned beans (pinto, black beans, garbanzo beans), a bit of oil, and various spices. The dips can be served with veggies, chips, or crackers.

With a hot plate, microwave, rice cooker, hot-air popcorn popper, and/or toaster oven, you can do a lot. You might also have children prep something for the oven, then have an adult take it to the kitchen to put it in. This would open up a lot more possibilities. You can also ask children to bring home a jar or container (even a baggie) to carry home leftovers to share with family members.
posted by GoLikeHellMachine at 1:05 PM on October 10, 2014

Best answer: You could make sushi. Cook the rice in a rice cooker while they chop the ingredients, then assemble and roll!

Also, a thought: have all of the knives professionally sharpened. A dull knife is a lot more dangerous than a sharp knife.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:06 PM on October 10, 2014

Salad is absolutely a thing. My 9 and 10 year olds have been making salad and using knives to do so for a couple of years. They are allowed to use whatever seems good to them, so long as it's fruit/veggie. They also make the dressing!

I helped run a cooking club where I used to teach, and we did salads, but also open-faced sandwiches (hummus and raisins, cream cheese and veggies, etc etc). Also becomes somewhat artistic. The kids can cut up their own ingredients, spread the spread, arrange the fixings. Also, if they can pour their own water from a pitcher into a cup, another skill many kids don't have!

You could probably do the same with pre-cooked pasta. Make sauces and veggies for a cold dish.

The kids prepped and ate together at school. It was one of the draws of the club. Our club was about nutrition, but also basic food prep, healthy eating, and social skills.

5 minute instruction, 10 minute prepare the surfaces (clean those yucky desks!), 15 minute prep of food, 15 minute eating together, 10 minute clean up, 5 minute debrief (this was healthy and fun, yay!)?

(Sushi is an excellent idea, on preview!)
posted by mamabear at 1:10 PM on October 10, 2014

Sushi is fun, and in the same family is sushi's often more casual cousin, the Korean kimbap (or gimbap.) It's very make-your-own freeform with little amounts of many things you can prep and bring in, or you can use leftovers and encourage kids to use leftovers from home. Here's a detailed recipe. The biggest difference between kimbap and sushi is the rice has sesame oil worked into it, not vinegar.
posted by Mizu at 1:31 PM on October 10, 2014

This might be an opportunity to show them what they could do with various small cooking appliances. Go to the thrift store and see what you can find? Or if you already have a toaster oven, a rice cooker, a crock pot, an electric skillet - all of these would work in a small classroom environment.
posted by lemniskate at 2:05 PM on October 10, 2014

I ran an afternoon cooking club at a daycamp/drop-in centre for low-income (read: often hungry) kids. I knew for some of these kids, what they ate in cooking club would be the biggest meal they had that day, so I tried to choose recipes that were nutritious but also tasty and filling.To the best of my recollection the participants were usually between 6 and 12 years old. We had access to a full kitchen, but it wasn't feasible to use stove etc. with the kids so I didn't. We had a sink, fridge, and a couple of small appliances (e.g. blender, toaster oven), but that was it.

I used Mollie Katzen's kids' cookbook Pretend Soup--she has since released a couple of others. They're great because they're illustrated and even if you don't read, you can follow the directions. The recipes are simple and taste surprisingly good. My favourites:

Chocolate Banana milkshakes: necessary ingredients: milk (skim, 2%, whole milk all OK), sweetened cocoa powder, bananas, ice cubes. You put it all in a blender and pulverize it. It tastes like there is ice cream in it!

Pizza Faces: uses pizza sauce, English muffins, and cut up veggies and other toppings (e.g. pepperoni disks, cheese). Kids assemble their pizzas so the toppings look like faces and then you toast them in the toaster oven.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 2:25 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Could you get a small toaster oven to plug in? When I volunteered to help with cooking in my kids' Montessori classroom, crescent roll apple turnovers were a hit.

Hummus and Guacamole are both easy to make and don't require cooking.

Peanut Butter Apple Sandwhiches

It's kind of the wrong time of year, but in warmer months you could have the kids make a solar cooker out of a pizza box and then you could make s'mores!

Peanut butter and Jelly Bites - these need to be refrigerated, but the kids could take them home and do that. My kids would probably replace the jelly with Nutella because they are sneaky like that.

You could also make wraps, sandwiches and even pickles! If you can find a crock pot, you could have the kids make crock pot apple butter!
posted by Ostara at 2:32 PM on October 10, 2014

I think aimedwander is on to something with the slow cooker meals idea. Here is a site with 101 freezable slow cooker recipes. Because most of them are packed into freezer bags, that solves the kids getting stuff home in one piece problem. And then the family could freeze them for later if they didn't want to eat that meal right away.
posted by Weeping_angel at 3:00 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

As an alternative to a hot plate, you could get an induction burner. It needs the right kind of pot and pan but it is quicker, cleaner, and safer.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 3:41 PM on October 10, 2014

Response by poster: Thank you everyone for the ideas (keep them coming, if anyone has any more!)

To answer some questions, we don't have a microwave nor an electric hotplate, and funds are limited so we can't purchase anything more sadly!
posted by schmoo at 2:37 AM on October 11, 2014

In backpacking circles, there's a thing called Freezer Bag Cooking. The premise is that you make great meals by combining dry ingredients into a bag and then just add water (usually hot water) and letting it sit for 5-15 to cook the meal. You could probably modify a lot of the One Pot Meals recipes (scroll down about 2/3 of the way to see full meals), use a mix of dried and fresh ingredients, and send the mixes home with the students to cook them in a pot just by adding hot water. You'll probably want to try the recipes first, especially to deal with portion sizes (they vary quite a bit depending on who wrote the recipe) and converting the measurements.

The foundation of most recipes like this is some sort of quick-cooking carb (instant rice, couscous, dehydrated lentils, instant mashed potatoes, etc.), spices, dried vegetables, and shelf-stable protein (canned chicken, tuna, beans, nuts, etc.). If you can get them to think about most meals as Carb + Veg + Protein = Dinner, they'll be well on their way to making healthy choices in the long run.

If they're interested in US culture, one of my favorite meals like this is Thanksgiving in a Bag: instant mashed potatoes, dried cranberries, canned chicken, corn, and some gravy powder for seasoning. Another of my favorites is couscous, curry, veggies, and nuts. You can add coconut powder for a little more sweetness or other spices depending on what flavors they like. If they prefer cheese over other spices, you can do a lot of variations on cheesy rice or cheesy couscous.
posted by BlooPen at 5:15 AM on October 11, 2014

You could do a whole lot with different types of sandwiches.

One of my daughter's favorites was a pita bread opened to the pocket, the stuffed with a slice of cheese, a spread of hummus, and vegetables that you might use in salad : thin spears of colored bell peppers, cucumbers, purple cabbage, tomato slices (these make it soggy), green onions, etc. We sometimes put some herbs from the garden in there too.

Do you have an herb garden? at least some pots along a windowsill.

You could do a whole smorgasbord of things to put on a peanut butter sandwich: jelly, honey, bananas, raisins, bacon, etc. Google around for ideas. Or things to dip in peanut butter: apples, bananas, etc.
posted by CathyG at 9:26 AM on October 11, 2014

Best answer: If you have the means to boil water, you could teach them how to make oatmeal with added toppings (dried fruit, nuts, etc). You could even send them home with homemade "instant" oatmeal packets to share with their families.

Cous-cous can also be rehydrated with boiling water. If you add things like bouillon and/or spices, dried fruit, etc., you can make a pilaf-like dish or a grain-based salad (by adding chopped veggies and a dressing).

Are you trying to move past things like instant noodles and puddings or jell-o/jelly? If not, kids love these things and you can teach them to add vegetables (to noodles) or fruit (to puddings and jell-o) to up the healthy quotient. (Rice noodles, if they are available, are easily soaked in hot water to soften and can be used as the basis for cold noodle salads.) Jell-o won't have time to set, but there are some lovely (tasty but disturbing, but not to kids maybe) "salads" made with cottage cheese, jello, and pineapple bits mixed together.

You could also make things like no-bake cookies. Peanut butter and dried milk powder mixed together and rolled in granola or coconut or even crushed pretzel bits is fun to do and tastes great. You can teach them about making "complete proteins" from legumes and grains/dairy this way, too.

You can make GORP or trail mix using dried fruit and nuts, chocolate chips, pretzel sticks, etc. Kids can learn to follow a written recipe and measure out things from it, if nothing else, and they'll have a baggie of long-lasting food to carry with them the way hikers and backpackers do.

Chia pudding is easily made from chia seeds, milk (or juice), sugar, cocoa, etc. It has to sit for a bit for the chia seeds to soak up the liquids and get pudding-like, so if kids mix it up in a baggie during the hour, they can carry it home to share. You can also mix this up as a dry mix and send home directions to add milk or juice.

Along with smoothies, you can introduce kids to lassi made with yogurt and fruit. Mango lassi is the classic, but you can try others. If you want to stick with the drinks-from-other-cultures theme, horchata (made with rice, water, sugar, and cinnamon) or agua fresca (fruit, water, a bit of sweetener) might be fun to try.

A pint of heavy cream, a jar, and some kid-jar-shaking power will net you butter in less than an hour. Have some bread or crackers on hand to taste your final product.

When I was a kid, I thought growing and eating sprouts was awesome. (This was the 70s, so ymmv.) After showing us the process or soaking and rinsing, my 1st grade teacher sent us home with a packet of seeds to sprout and a jar with a lid and some netting. Growing your own food ftw!
posted by GoLikeHellMachine at 10:21 AM on October 11, 2014

Oh, how about make your own instant noodles! Healthier than actual instant noodles, and kids can make a few jars of noodles, eat one at the end of class and take the others home ready to be cooked later. One of my co-workers recommended this recipe set to me recently, you could probably adapt the recipes slightly to kid tastes.
posted by Joh at 12:18 PM on October 11, 2014

Response by poster: Thank you everyone! Yes, I am trying to move away from simpler recipes / foods like sandwiches, jellies, noodles, although I do know that the endless variations on these can make them anything but simple! I just want to broaden the kids' culinary horizons with some things they might not have tried before, at the same time as giving them the skills to make healthy, complete meals for the whole family.

I have marked some best answers for people who have suggested or led me into thinking of ideas I am quite likely to do (variety of dips and make our own pita, sushi (great idea!), rice noodle salad. Also the idea about slow cookers led me into researching slow cooker recipes, which are easily pre-made into ziploc bags and taken home to cook, which I wouldn't have thought of before.
posted by schmoo at 10:25 AM on October 12, 2014

Maybe it's obvious, but I'd make sure that all your kids' families actually have a slow cooker before sending home food that's supposed to go in one. I'm the primary audience for a slow cooker (working mom, interested in delicious and healthful food), but I don't have one. Yes, I know that you can replicate a slow cooker by simmering a pot on the stove on very low, but I doubt many low-income families have the time to babysit a simmering pot, either.
posted by Liesl at 8:40 AM on October 14, 2014