Caroline Chambers is a recipe developer and writer of the Substack What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking, as well as of her first recently released cookbook of the same name. She’s also a mom to three boys: a 5-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 2-year-old.
Soon after having my son Mattis, who’s my first, I finally understood all the people who were always saying, “I never feel like cooking. How do you always want to cook?” I never got it before. I was like, “Cooking’s the best release, the best way to unravel at the end of the day.” Suddenly I was like, “Oh, it’s exhausting and you have to do it every single day. And there’s a little child screaming and demanding your attention.”
But I very quickly realized that if I got him involved, it solved a lot of this. Parents are always looking for activities with their kids — just things to do with their kids after school, or if they’re not in school yet, how do you pass the time during the day? Cooking can be that. I got Mattis his first knife when he was 1 year old. I would just have him sit and play with the knife and with celery. At that age, he loved the gratification of chopping it and turning it into two pieces. And now he’s such a great cook.
It’s all basically a way for me to cook dinner while giving my kids some skills, and to play and hang out with them at the same time. I work full time, so I’m only seeing my kids at dinner, and I want them to cook with me. I want them to be involved — but they have to have a job that makes them feel useful and like they’re having fun.
A toddler tower allows them to get totally up there with you and be involved. For older kids, a chair turned around does work. But with this, it holds them in so they can’t fall off and allows them to be at your level. It truly does make a huge difference. It’s like they have their own little control tower in the kitchen. They’re secure, not wobbly, safe, and it has really helped foster a love of cooking in all my boys.
You can start your kids with just a plain butter knife to get them interested. But having these special kid knives helps them feel like, “That’s my knife, and I have a job to do.” I think the most important thing with cutting with kids is knowing that it doesn’t actually have to be a productive part of the recipe. Often I’m giving them a piece of celery and I’m saying, “Chop this as tiny as you possibly can.” And they’re so into it. It takes them 30 minutes, and if they want to throw it into the soup or the stir-fry or whatever I’m cooking for dinner, fine. That’s how to start when they’re 18 months, 2, 3, 4. And then with my 5-year-old — he’s almost 6 — we’re starting to get into, “Okay, this is a chop, this is a dice.” He’s also been asking to use my knife more and more recently, so I’m planning to get him this one from Zwilling.
Once we get into the sharper knives — and again, he’s already starting to use my knives — it’s not a bad idea to have these. While they’re learning, it’s just good armor.
My mother-in-law gave Mattis this exact chef’s jacket when he was 3, and he still fits into it because it was huge. It just makes him so excited to cook. With kids, it’s all about creating a little bit of excitement around it. Nobody’s excited to cook dinner. That’s the whole point of my book. So getting reasons to feel pumped about it is what a chef jacket helps with. They think it’s so fun to wear.
I swear, these are the most delicious baking mixes — and they have less sugar. I love any baking mixes though. I love the Simple Mills ones. I love the Trader Joe’s ones. These are for when you really just need an activity with your kids. Baking especially really can stress people out because it involves so many powdery, messy substances in your kitchen. Mixes are more streamlined. And they’re faster, because the thing about kids’ attention is that it does wane. We’ll do one after school probably twice a week because it’s so easy. They can do the whole thing themselves at this point. It gives them confidence.
My great aunt had one of these apple peelers permanently affixed to her kitchen counter while I was growing up, and I have such fond memories of absolutely crushing apples so that we could play with it. And 30 years later, my kids are completely obsessed with it, just like I was. It peels it and it slices in a really fun way. Again, we’re just getting them involved in the kitchen and showing them that it’s fun.
Food processors are big, and they can be clunky and hard to wash. The mini food processor is one of my own favorite kitchen tools. It can chop ten garlic cloves in three seconds. And my kids are similarly obsessed. It’ll be out. It’ll be dirty. And then I’ll say to them, “Make a potion, do your thing.” They love getting to load it up and press the button to chop things, and I also let them fill it with kitchen scraps — like carrot tops, butternut squash skin, onion peels — while they’re cooking with me to make their own special concoctions.
A salad spinner is the best toy ever. My baby will scream and point to the drawer that it lives in, and I’m like, “What are you on about?” And it’s because he just wants to play with it. When it comes time to actually wash lettuce, the boys will hear it and run in and be like, “I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” And just like with the food processor, once we’ve actually washed the lettuce, it stays out and is a toy. They’ll put Hot Wheels in it and race them around the circle.
The mess of cooking with kids can really get to people. But a stick vacuum — I have a Dyson — and Folex really takes the stress off for me. Folex is a carpet-spot remover, and it is the best. It gets everything out of kid clothes. I got it for our carpet or our couch originally, and then I was like, “Wait, why am I not using this on my clothes?” Spritz, rub the fabric together, and then just leave it in the laundry bin until wash day. I subscribe to it.
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