The Kitchen Life Skills Teens REALLY Need

Kitchen life skills like how to use a knife & how to double a recipe are important. But there are some even more important kitchen skills!

Knife skills are important. You gotta’ know how to read a recipe. Learning what words like saute & mince mean is essential. Being able to double or halve a recipe is important, too.

I wish I had been taught all of those things. These kitchen skills are obvious ones to teach & learn.

But the skills in this blog post have a much bigger impact on the way a kitchen runs and how quickly you can get a meal onto the table. And they aren’t as easy to learn from a quick YouTube video!

Plan Meals the RIGHT Way

How many times have you looked at tonight’s dinner plan only to realize that you can’t possibly spend an hour prior cooking it because you need to run Little Johnny to soccer? Or, when you’re cleaning out the fridge, you find several ingredients that would have made a great meal…if only you had remembered they were in there.

Cleaning out the fridge & pantry prior to menu planning, as well as taking a written inventory, is a skill that took me a ridiculously long time to understand and master. That visual or written inventory I can take after I’ve done that is a huge step in reducing food waste and, thus, reducing our food budget.

The same benefits are there when we look at the calendar as we plan the menu. The temptation to run through the drive-thru after piano practice goes down when I know that dinner is already in the slow cooker, ready to throw on the grill, or, even better, the other teen is at home making it. Why is this a skill that took me so long to master, too?!

Keep the Kitchen ‘Humming’

There are so many invisible aspects of keeping a kitchen that’s ready to use. These skills aren’t ones that may affect today’s cooking, but they’re the ones that set the next person up for success or make the next mealtime run smoothly.

Does your teen know how to do these? And reliably do them, as applicable?

• Add items to the shopping list before the container is empty
• How to clean the stove and oven
• If you keep a stock of extras, check the stock for backup items
• Clean out the fridge (what to toss, how to best wipe it down, etc.)
• Know when to pull out the fridge & oven to clean behind them
• Which cleaning products to use and how

Adapting Recipes

Increasing or decreasing a recipe’s ingredients is pretty easy, especially if they actually write down those doubled amounts. (She says, having learned the hard way…) But do they know to look ahead in a recipe to consider the pan size they’ll need for their new amount?

Can they swap ingredients with ease? We’ve all had the experience of discovering we forgot to purchase an ingredient or that someone ate the last orange you had squirreled away in the back of the fridge. So then what? Learning how to swap out proteins, using a lemon’s juice in place of that orange, or using basil instead of oregano…essential skills most of us didn’t learn when we were younger.

On the fly isn’t the only time we need this skill. If one dinner only calls for 1/2 of a green bell pepper, can the other half be swapped for a red bell pepper on another night? Could that extra shallot be used in place of the garlic in tomorrow night’s pasta sauce? These swaps reduce food waste and save money — but they take practice to notice.

Kitchen skills like these — knowing what can be replaced, how to find the best swap, and the confidence not to let it spiral the dinner hour — aren’t quick mastery skills, but they are so worth it.

Using Kitchen Apps

Love ’em or hate ’em, apps are here to stay. So, teaching our kids to use them and use them well is necessary. Digital natives learn them pretty quickly, so this should be an easy one to mark off.

Can your teen…

• place an order on Instacart? (Choose the correct location, add & adjust items, choose replacements, etc.)
• choose & add a meal plan on a planning app like Plan to Eat?
• navigate cashback apps like Ibotta, including redeeming their savings?

Learn more about Plan to Eat, my favorite meal-planning app!

Best Time to Grocery Shop

Monday mornings, about 30 minutes after the store opens, you’ll often find me following the meat man around the meat department. That’s when he’s marking down all the meat left after the weekend, making it the best time to stock up.

There’s a good chance you’ll see me there late on Friday mornings, especially during the warmer months. Why? The best meat for grilling is going out. I won’t be saving money, but I will get fresh meat that we can pop on the grill.

While the deals abound in the meat section on Monday mornings, you won’t see me in the produce department. Wilted lettuce, a picked-over selection of other veggies, and no berries are all I can find.

And forget grocery shopping at Wal-mart on a Sunday — every aisle is packed with pick-up-order shopping.

Learning the best time to shop at your stores — and what things to look out for to know the best timing — makes grocery shopping a better experience.

After Dinner Clean Up

When we first got married, the only things I knew to do after dinner were to clear the table, load the dishwasher, and wash any other dishes. I didn’t know that the floor would be easier to clean if we swept it each night. Or that dinner prep would go more quickly if I didn’t have to thaw the meat at the last minute. My mom struggled in the kitchen, so I didn’t see her doing all of those extras.

When the kids were young, those basic skills of learning the table and loading/unloading the dishwasher were the only ones I required. But as I’ve gotten better at understanding what makes a kitchen run more smoothly, I’ve also understood the importance of teaching my kids those things, too.

As teens, they know that our after-dinner routine also includes:

• Putting away leftovers — and doing a quick glance in the fridge for leftovers that need to be tossed.
• Sweeping the floor — and moving the rug first.
• Wiping down the counters and the stove — and putting that cloth away to be washed and getting out a new one.
• Checking tomorrow’s menu — and grabbing out any frozen items.

It took a while (and a detailed list hanging inside one of our cabinets), but they can easily do it all.

What skill did I miss? Let me know in the comments.