Ready to start cooking with toddlers?
I started cooking with my toddler when she was about a year old. The benefits of cooking with your kids are immense! But sometimes the cleanup afterwards feels just as big.
How can you engage meaningfully with your toddler in the kitchen, and with big joy, while also keeping your cool about the inevitable mess?
Start with the 7 simple tips below.
7 Simple Tips for Cooking with Toddlers
Here are 7 tips to help make kitchen time with your toddler more enjoyable and honestly, more doable.
1. Create a Safe Environment
Creating a safe environment is paramount when working with your little in the kitchen. It ensures their well-being and will also make you want to cook with your toddler again. Activities are always more fun when no one gets hurt, right?!
You know your kitchen and how to make it safe but here’s a small mental checklist I run through before opening the kitchen door to my child:
✅ Handles on all pots and pans – on the stove or not – face inward and away.
✅ All knives and other sharp objects are out of reach.
✅ The learning tower’s back is secure to prevent falls (this is mainly for younger toddlers).
✅ My toddler’s cooking space is set up away from hot stoves, crockpots, and any other appliances that are in use.
Many of these are checks I consistently do anyway, but it’s nice to double check and ensure the kitchen is safe before cooking with my curious explorer.
2. Take Your Time and Don’t Rush
Have you ever tried to learn a new skill while being rushed? How did that go?
Now imagine that happening to your toddler. Think of your toddler learning to exist in the kitchen, navigate it safely, accomplish the cooking tasks they’ve been given – all on a time crunch. I guarantee you that it’s as uncomfortable and as sad as it sounds.
Consider setting aside kitchen time with your toddler for days when you know you won’t be in a rush to get to the next, non-kitchen to-do! Everyone will be happier and have more fun because of it.
3. Set Up Your Space
Setting up your space includes gathering your ingredients ahead of time as well as any other cooking tools you might need.
I used to do this entirely on my own but now, since my daughter is 2 and does pretty well with instructions, I involve her in the set up process.
The way I’ve done this is by assigning her a bin in a cabinet that she can reach. We have safety locks in place on all of the other cabinets but we allow her to reach inside this one since it’s set up for her.
The bin contains all of the kitchen supplies I’ve purchased for her. When we’re about to cook or bake together I let her know what we’ll need. Sometimes it’s just her cutting board, other times it’s her mixing spoon and whisk.
She takes a lot of pride in gathering the items needed before we start and it also gives me some breathing room while I prep the other items.
👉 Click here for the blog post with toddler tools I’ve purchased
4. Find Your Comfort Tasks
This tip is the tip that keeps me going and has my toddler and I coming back for more kitchen time together.
It’s this: Find your comfort tasks when cooking with your toddler. That is, what are the tasks you’re genuinely comfortable doing with your child in the kitchen? What won’t stress you out? Is it washing potatoes? Slicing bananas? Maybe just peeling bananas or boiled eggs? Great! Do those things!!
Considering what you are ready to handle and not just what your toddler wants to do – which likely includes a lot of sharp objects – is the key to making cooking together fun.
It’s also a great way to step out of the comparison trap. Have you seen that 3 year old who can swiftly cook up an egg sandwich and also clean up afterwards? Yea, me too. And for a moment after watching I think – okay how do I make this a reality for my kiddo?!
Thankfully, when that happens now, I take a deep breath and ask myself:
💬 Am I comfortable doing what I need to do to make that a reality? Like teaching my 2 or 3 year old to use a hot stove of any kind?
💬 What’s so bad about learning to use a stove at 5, 10, or 15 years old instead?
💬 Is my little girl even interested in cooking to that degree yet?
Moral of the story – take a step back and consider what you want and need from your kitchen time with your toddler. How you feel matters and your toddler’s mood is dependent on that too!
5. Pick Easy Recipes to Start
If you’re ready to tackle a recipe with your toddler, remember – it doesn’t have to be complicated.
Though it’s tempting to choose an elaborate recipe from the get-go, there’s so much joy in simplicity when starting out.
Try a banana peanut butter toast, or pinwheel sandwiches with hummus and cucumbers.
If you’re not feeling up to a full-on ‘recipe’, there are a lot of simple tasks you can assign to your toddler. Below are some ideas that will still expose your little to the kitchen but in a more incremental way:
Low-lift Tasks:
- Rinsing rice
- Breaking the stems off of asparagus
- Pouring ingredients into a bowl
- Spreading hummus on cucumbers
6. Unleash the Sensory Experience: Let Your Kid Smell, Taste, and Feel Along the Way!
If your little ones are anything like mine – they’ll be eager to get their hands and taste buds into every ingredient. To that I say, why not let them?
Young children absorb so much information through their senses and cooking is the perfect way for them to sharpen them.
You’ll also share plenty of funny and adorable moments through this process! Just wait until they try a lemon slice or pizza sauce straight from the spoon. Tasting while cooking hits different.
7. Have a Plan for the Mess
Even if you’re easygoing when it comes to a mess in the kitchen, it could help to have a dedicated clean-up time.
I’m someone who can handle some mess but I get overwhelmed if I let things pile up. It helps me when I have a planned time and approach to clean up our space.
Though my ideal would be asking Alexa to play a Barney classic – “clean up, clean up”, anyone? – at which point my daughter and I would take care of the mess together, my current reality is taking on most of the load myself.
I can usually get my daughter to clean up a bit by assigning her a couple of very specific tasks. I say something like, ‘please use this towel to clean up that spill.’ I then explain how cleaning up is an important and necessary part of the cooking process.
Beyond the smaller tasks, clean up is on me. And I’m, of course, okay with that! I mean, she just turned 2.
For this reason, I usually do cooking adventures shortly before my husband comes home from work. My daughter and I do some dinner prep together and then I know at around 6 pm I’ll be able to get to the cleaning up part.
I understand that this isn’t an option for everyone (single parents, I see you) but I hope there’s at least one person in your village that you can count on to show up.
Cooking with your toddler does not have to be an everyday activity. You pick what works – once a week, once a month? That’s all amazing. Maybe a friend or family member can come over during that time or just afterwards to help support.
Easy Recipes to Try When Cooking with Toddlers
Below are some recipes to help you get started. These recipes satisfy toddlers’ “I do it myself” attitude and usually entail a more manageable mess:
Recipe #1. Berry peanut butter oats
Ingredients: Berries of choice, peanut butter, hot water, oats
Steps your toddler can do:
- Scoop and pour oats
- Rinse blueberries
- Slice strawberries
- Pour berries into oats
- Stir peanut butter into oats
Recipe #2: Avocado toast
Ingredients: Avocado, lemon slice, slice of your bread of choice, ghee/butter
Steps your toddler can do:
- Rinse avocado
- Cut avocado in half
- Scoop out avocado flesh, pick out seed
- Mash avocado onto bread with a fork
- Squeeze lemon slice over toast
Recipe #3: Veggie pizza
Ingredients: Ready-to-go crust, pizza sauce, cheese(s) of choice, vegetable(s) and other toppings of choice
Steps your toddler can do:
- Use a spoon to pour and spread the sauce over the crust
- Sprinkle vegetables (I usually have my daughter rip up spinach with her fingers and spread that over the pizza)
- Sprinkle cheese
- Lick the sauce spoon! 😀
Why do I Want to Cook with My Toddler?
If you need more encouragement to begin your cooking adventures, it’s helpful to reflect on why you want to cook with your little.
Here are my top four reasons:
1. Inclusion and Acceptance
I want my child to feel included. I want her to know that I trust her, I trust her learning style, and that it’s okay to mess up and make messes.
2. Foster Independence
Whether it’s as small as my child squeezing some lemon over her dinner or stirring peanut butter into her morning oats, taking the lead in these moments goes a long way.
3. Lessens Picky Eating
My daughter eats better when she helps to make the meal she’s enjoying.
4. Learning Opportunities
She is learning SO much – from a process, fine-motor skill, and sensory development perspective.
FAQ: Cooking with Your Toddler
Dive into the FAQ below for answers to questions about the right age to start cooking and what tools you need.
What age can you start cooking with a toddler?
Every child is different and the key is to begin when your child shows an interest. For us, 1 year felt right but you can bring your child into the kitchen even as a baby for periods of observation and sensory exposure.
Can you bake with a 2 year old?
You definitely can. Baking was the first time my daughter cracked eggs and she loved it. The whole process involves a lot of ingredient collecting, measuring, adding, and mixing – the perfect kitchen adventure for children of all ages.
What toddler kitchen tools are actually needed?
For the most part, your little can use what you use (aside from your knives) but having a few tools that fit their small size helps. A small cutting board and smaller mixing spoons are two items we found to be helpful for my daughter.
👉 Here’s a blog post of other items I would prioritize
Do I need a learning tower to help my toddler in the kitchen?
Yes! You could use a chair or another type of stool but I don’t think those measure up from a safety perspective. A learning tower is meant to support young children and also foster independence – they’ll be climbing up to their special spot at the counter in no time!
👉 Click here for the blog post with my learning tower recommendations
Final Thoughts on Cooking with Toddlers
Cooking with toddlers has many benefits – from fostering their independence to creating core memories together – it’s an ideal pastime.
With that said, it’s important to not pressure your little one and force them to join you in the kitchen. Maybe there’s another activity they’d rather be doing? If so, encourage that. They’re still building their concentration and focus by doing something that’s of interest to them.
For a long time after I started cooking with my daughter – she was really only interested in the tasting part. I would ask her to stir something and she would exclaim, “I want to eat it!” It’s possible she’s meant to be THE next food critic – why shut that down? Haha.
I tell myself that it’s my job to expose my daughter to as many positive experiences that I can. It’s her job in life (yes, even at this age) to choose what she likes to do and what interests she wants to cultivate.
One Last Thing…
And finally, the note that should go above all of the others – praise your children as they try new things and encourage them in the kitchen.
This will boost their confidence and give them the security they need to keep trying things that are new, things that are confusing, and things that are difficult – in the kitchen and outside of it.
Cooking with toddlers goes a long way!