Teaching a teenager to cook is a bit like teaching them how to ride a bicycle ten years before – there are skinned knees, emotional outbursts, and numerous falls – and that’s on the parent’s end. If you persevere, however, you will find this to be a double-sided blessing: your teenager learns a new skill, and you are relieved from being the primary person responsible for completing a daily chore.
The first step to teaching your teen to cook is to have a willing participant, namely, the teen. Sometimes, to sweeten the deal, you can offer a choice, say, between mowing the lawn or cooking dinner. Or cleaning out the garbage can or cooking dinner. Or vacuuming the entire house, including the stairs, or cooking dinner. I always like to make the second option something that I’d be happy to have done in case the teen in point is adamant about not wanting to cook dinner.
Once you have a willing teen, give them a decent cookbook from which to work – I like the Reiman publications Taste of Home series because they give clear directions, use ingredients you have on hand, and give good results. Sit down with your teen and go over the logistics of following a recipe, emphasizing the importance of reviewing all of the ingredients to make sure that they are on hand and reading the directions over at least twice before starting so that there are no unwelcome surprises midway through.
If this is the very first foray into cooking, choose something simple, and work through it together – tuna casserole comes to mind as something relatively fail proof, fairly inexpensive, quick to assemble, and palatable. If you are out of an ingredient and substitutions need to be made, work this out now; most times, you don’t have to run to the store but can toss in peas instead of green beans, mushroom soup instead of cream of celery, regular mustard instead of Dijon. You know this; your teen, new to the experience, may initially panic at any variation in the program.
Let your teen lead regarding how much participation he/she wants from you, with the preferred situation being that the teen takes control. You can wash dishes while your teen chops ingredients; set the table while he puts the water on for the noodles; prepare a beverage while she mixes everything together in one bowl. You’re there to answer questions and give advice, but by keeping busy at a nearby job you avoid hovering.
Your goal is to eventually leave the teen in the kitchen while you go someplace else and pretend to be busy online banking or writing letters. The first few times, the result may not be what any of you were hoping for, but keep criticism to a minimum – generally one comment regarding improvement for every three compliments. It’s not important that the first casserole turn out perfectly so much as that your teen feels successful and wants to repeat the experience.