One of the key ways that you can make cooking with kids more fun and carefree is to teach kitchen safety for kids early and often. Building a baseline of safety skills will help you to feel confident that your kids can be trusted with new tasks and ever-increasing independence.
In order to find out the key “must know” tips for kitchen safety, kids and parents need look no further than the professional kitchen. Since chefs and cooks spend all their time cooking in crowded spaces with sharp and hot materials, they’ve developed great kitchen safety skills that kids and parent alike to learn from. Here are the most important ones:
5 Essential Lessons in Kitchen Safety for Kids
1. Wash your hands
The start of every kitchen session should start with washing your hands, but did you know that you may need to wash them even more than you think? Some key times to wash them are before you start, after you touch raw meat, and wash basically any other time that you think of it.
But don’t stop with just washing! This is also a great chance to teach kids about proper hand washing. Proper hand washing is made up of a few steps:
- Use soap and warm water
- Wash for at least 20 seconds. This is the equivalent of singing happy birthday twice!
- Wipe with a paper towel – not a dirty kitchen towel
2. Set up a safe and efficient work station
Kids and parents will work fastest and most efficiently with the help of a standardized and optimized work station. Since kids do well with routine, this standard setup is a great thing to teach them when you first start cooking together.
Here’s what our work station looks like (as inspired by my time working in professional kitchen settings):
These are the things we always have laid out:
- Large cutting board
- Garbage bowl
- Bowls for what you’re chopping
- Knife
- Kitchen cloth
Curious about the best equipment to have on hand for this setup? This post has all of our favorites.
3. Never catch a falling knife and other essential knife skills
Of course, this applies to anyone in the kitchen, but seriously, don’t do it. While most kids won’t be using big knives right away, this is one of many important knife safety lessons kids need to learn right away as they work with and around knives.
Here are some others:
- Keep your fingertips curled under
- Place your knife at the top of your board with the blade facing away when you’re not using it
- Never put a dirty knife in the sink – this is dangerous for whoever goes to wash the dishes and may not know it’s there
4. Communicate (loudly) especially when working and walking with something hot of sharp
Use your voice to let everyone know you’re coming through with something that could be potentially dangerous.
In professional kitchens, they use words like “hot”, “sharp”, and “behind” as they move through crowded kitchens. These practices and words are perfect to teach kids as they move about the kitchen (especially if there’s more than one kid) to keep everyone safe.
5. Cool things as quickly as possible and then store
Kids won’t understand all the intricacies of food safety but there are some basics that they can start learning right away including:
- Use shallow bowls or containers to cool hot food more quickly
- Leave hot items on the counter for a bit while they’re cooking
- Don’t place covered in fridge hot (if you have to cover it, leave it slightly cracked open)
- Don’t keep cooked food out of the fridge for more than 2 hours
In Conclusion: The 5 Things You Need to Know About Kitchen Safety for Kids
Kitchen safety for kids is a key skill to teach right away as you start to cook with your kids in the kitchen. Some of the key things they should learn right away are:
- Wash your hands
- Set up a safe and efficient work station
- Never catch a falling knife and other essential knife skills
- Communicate (loudly) especially when working and walking with something hot of sharp
- Cool things as quickly as possible and then store
Feeling inspired to get cooking with your kids? Here are some more useful articles:
- The Best Kid’s Cooking Utensils and How to Use them to Teach Kids to Cook
- Cooking Activities for Preschoolers and Beyond
- The 4 Types of Kid’s Kitchen Tools You Need
