Teaching your kids to cook is probably one of the most useful things that a parent can do for their children. There are lots of great resources that parents can use to help their kids learn about food and cooking. We have rounded up the best cookbooks, cooking shows, websites, and apps that are perfect for kids to help them learn all about cooking.
The Best Cookbooks for Kids
There are too many wonderful cookbooks for kids to choose from, so we decided to find the best cookbook for kids ages 3-7 and the best cookbook for kids ages 7+.
The Best Cookbook for Kids Ages 3-7
Our favorite cookbook for kids ages 3-7 is Pretend Soup and Other Real Recipes: A Cookbook for Preschoolers and Up. This is a fantastic cookbook for kids. One of the authors of this book, Mollie Katzen, is well known for involvement with the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York.
The Best cookbook for kids ages 7+
For older kids ages 7+, there is a bit more selection, so it was much harder picking our favorite cookbook for kids. The book we ended up choosing is The Silver Spoon for Children: Favorite Italian Recipes.
People who know food and cooking love this cookbook. This book is mentioned on posts or articles about the best cookbooks for kids on The Chicago Tribune, Grandparents.com, The Independent, TheKitchn, Babyology, Forkandbottle, and many others.
The best thing about this book seems to be that it gives children recipes to cook and eat that are ‘adult’ food, so although they’re presented in a fun and colorful way, the recipes themselves don’t pander to the notion that there is specific ‘child’ food.
*** As a side note, if your kids need a little bit more of a push to get them into cooking, you can try one of the many niche cookbooks that are available for kids. Here is a brief list of some of the ones that look good to us: The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook: From Cauldron Cakes to Knickerbocker Glory, Fancy Nancy: Tea Parties, Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook, Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes and some of the Star Wars cookbooks including Wookiee Cookies: A Star Wars Cookbook and The Star Wars Cookbook II -Darth Malt and More Galactic Recipes.
Best Cooking Websites for Kids
If cookbooks aren’t your thing, there are some great websites around that give wonderful video demos or ideas for cooking with kids, here are just a few of our favorites:
- Weelicious is one of our favorite sites that has some satisfying recipes and great videos with kids helping out in the kitchen.
- Kitchen Monsters is a very kid-friendly site that has a nice option that groups recipes by difficulty level, and the recipes look delicious.
Cooking Shows and Webisodes for Kids
One of the easiest ways to get inspired to cook or learn about cooking is by watching a cooking show, and luckily there are lots of great online cooking series or videos for kids or featuring kids to choose from:
- Kids Who Love to Cook has excellent videos featuring kids that show various recipes, cooking tips, and also cooking trips to find out where the food comes from(such as how to make cheese and how urban honey is made).
- Hey Kids Lets Cook This is the website for the PBS kids show.
- Telmo and Tula –Little Cooks Short cooking shows with the animated character Telmo and Tula – Little Cooks
For older kids/teens try:
- Kickin Kitchen is a fun show for preteens that “brings kids and cooking together.”
- Tastebuds TV has video games and recipes based on the terrific TVO cooking show for kids.
Cooking Apps for Kids
As most people know, cooking apps are super handy when you are in the kitchen and looking for a recipe. A few that are fun for kids to try are:
- Cooking With Kids has over 90 child-friendly recipes and is designed to show kids just how much fun cooking for themselves can be. Easy-to-follow, and nicely illustrated, it will help teach children cooking skills to help them learn to love cooking.
- Kung Fu Panda 2 Interactive Cookbook is a fun cookbook for kids that has Kung Fu Panda recipes, cooking demonstration videos, clips from the movie, cool animations, and much more.