At What Age Did You Start Cooking?

Just for fun. DFCS did not sign-off on this activity. [cheers.gif]

I cooked my first dinner for my family when I was about 12. My. mom left me the recipe for Hamburger Stroganoff. I added all the ingredients to the pan at the same time. For some reason the meat never cooked right. :wink:

The first time I started cooking creatively was at about 20 yo. Creative cooking became far more regular around the age of 25.

But first time I started cooking meals for the family was probably in middle school; I don’t think I was yet cooking for the family when I was in 5th grade, but I might have been.

My Mom worked for a neighbor doing school pictures. Usually spent three days or more a week in SLO or surrounding area. I am the youngest of 5 children. She’d shop for the week and each sibling had cooking duty one night a week.

Nice! Many hands …

I was oldest of 2, and my younger brother – for a variety of reasons – never made dinner for the family, so that task fell to me a lot; I didn’t mind.

When I was 14-15, dad worked and mom had passed a few years before this, so regularly started dinners. The days of shake and bake pork chops, cook till shoe leather then serve.

I started helping my mother in the kitchen when I was pretty young, maybe 7 or 8. I could make simple things myself soon thereafter. I am pretty sure I made my first real meal for the family around 11 or 12.

We try and involve my stepson (10) in cooking from time to time, but he is hopelessly uncoordinated. His fingers go right under the knife every time - he doesn’t seem to see the upcoming consequences, and places them directly in danger to get a firm grip on whatever the thing is he wants to chop. We tried one of those knife guards, but he seemed unable to do anything at all with that on his fingers. I’d think he was just trying to get out of helping, except that he’s almost equally hopeless cutting his own food at meals.

Here’s that kid grown up.

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Microwave fudge when I was 7. Mac and cheese when I was 8. Coincidentally also visited the emergency room when I was 8 after spilling a pot of boiling water on myself. Started getting competent by 10 and cooking complicated stuff after Boy Scout camping trips. My 10 year old daughter has been cooking and baking with my wife and I for at least 3 years. My 7 year old son just started with peeling and cutting carrots. We love cooking.

I was helping in the kitchen by age 3 but my first full meal was for visiting relatives and was from the Betsy Crocker Cookbook for Boys and Girls - I made the Swedish Meatballs (which included two varieties of Campbells soup).

My daughter and her husband are both chefs and my three year old grandson often decides to make scrambled eggs himself - he’s not allowed to turn on the stove so my dtr goes into the kitchen and does that and watches as he completes the eggs. He also can put together most of a batch of chocolate chip cookies. (On the playground he routinely prepares pretend food and then serves any child he sees sitting nearby … he has FOH down)

7 or 8. I cover meals while my mom taught and worked on lesson plans. The meals were pretty simple

Child labor starts early in China and Chinatown. DCFS knows to stay out of our kitchen, especially because the Health Department and Animal Control inspectors already leave no elbow room there. Always underfoot and in the way, when we try to push dishes out of the kitchen.

Fun thread, I wasn’t actually looking for answers, just thought the video was cute! And kind of crazy!

Oh, in that case I retract my previous statements. [snort.gif]

wasn’t interested until i was grown, but my 6 year old daughter has a starter knife and is interested. we put her in a week of cooking camp this summer which was really just to get her interested in the process and she’s going to take a class once a week. we’ll see how she progresses, but solid at course dicing and cracking eggs…

I started cooking with my mother very young I would guess around 5 or 6.
She was an amazing cook.

The opposite of Suzanne, my mother was one of the world’s worst cooks. My brothers and learned to cook at a young age in self defense.

My mom was a horrible cook too. I discovered Swanson TV dinners. After that it was Hunt’s Skillet Dinners. From scratch, 24 years old making Western Meal in One, a favorite our maid cooked for us in Japan. Not that it means anything but I am not allowed to cook in our home commercial kitchen. Something about kitchen challenged.

Baked cookies with my grandma when I was real young, first time I cooked I was around 10 or 11, simple things like hot dogs or mac and cheese that grew into a love for cooking, flavors and the failures and success that come with trial.

I was helping my mom cook when I was very young. I was so small that I would sit on the counter. I’d help measure things. It’s possible that’s my earliest memory. I started making eggs by myself when I was five or six. Cookies shortly after that.