Teaching Boys to Cook with Kids Cook Real Food

Teaching boys to cook is just as important as teaching girls! Let’s look at the benefits and some tips for teaching boys to cook.

In our family, we have more boys than girls. Leah, number two in birth order, sobbed for 10 minutes when she found out baby number four wasn’t going to even the score.

Now at age 13, she’s quite delighted she will never have to share her room. So I guess it all worked out in the end.

I’ve been talking with my husband lately about how doggone grateful I am on a daily basis that my kids have such great sibling relationships. Someone asked me recently if Leah is treated any differently because she’s the only girl and how she gets along with her brothers.

I didn’t have to think very long at all before answering that they are all very close as a unit and on a one-to-one level. It’s a beautiful thing.

They all know their way around the kitchen very competently, starting from a young age, but Leah definitely enjoys it the most. She’s most likely to take initiative and make a homemade snack or dessert. The boys are grateful and under duress will sometimes do dishes. I always say to them, “Boys, don’t take this girl for granted!”

I want to make sure that we build great respect for others, especially those of the opposite gender, and I don’t want to raise boys who assume that their future wives will cook for them. That’s why I wrote a whole post about how I’m training up my boys for the benefit of my future daughters-in-law. 

My husband barely knew how to cook an egg when we got married, but he’s been a great example of old dogs learning new tricks, as he is quite good in the kitchen now. He prepares eggs with lots of veggies for me almost every morning and makes dinner twice a week.

RELATED: Here are some Instant Pot recipes we started him with as he was building skills.

Boys Cooking in a Gender-Neutral World

Our culture has made some good strides in treating women better than other generations. However, as with many pendulums, I personally believe this one has swung too far.

Yes, anyone can do anything. No, everyone is not cut out for every position sometimes because of their gender or personality.

And that’s okay.

Different is good and uniqueness is something to be celebrated.

I think if we mush all the genders together, we lose the beauty of how we were created differently and gifted with special talents. I’m glad my husband and I aren’t exactly the same, and I’m glad that I feel like he can take care of me. However, we don’t need to swing that pendulum all the way back to having “traditional women’s roles.”

Anyone can cook, anyone can clean, anyone can care for children. Sometimes we just do it differently, and that is something to be celebrated.

As I’ve always done since I started my teaching online at Kitchen Stewardship, I prefer to seek out balance. I hope we can agree that boys and girls both need to learn to cook for so many reasons and I hope we also can agree that many boys are different from many girls. This means we may want to approach the process of teaching them to cook a little differently.

Teaching Boys to Cook, Build Independence

My son Paul, now 16, became a published cookbook author at age 14. During interviews for Chef Jr., people often asked him what he appreciates about knowing how to cook.

He told the story similarly each time:

I don’t want to be the kid who goes off to college and doesn’t know how to feed himself anything but frozen pizzas. I have this story in my head, that when I’m in an apartment, I’ll be able to cook meals for my roommates. That will totally impress them all. And we can sit down at the table and enjoy time together.

We all want our kids of all genders to be independent, both when they leave our houses and hopefully, while they are still under our roof.

Sonia H., one of our members, and a team member here at Kids Cook Real Food^™, is raising three boys who are still quite a bit younger than mine. She describes her motivation to teach them to cook this way:

Going off to college is never easy for anyone and I especially didn’t want my boys to go off not knowing how to cook anything besides what came from a box. Through the process we’ve been very blessed to be able to grow together as a family, and also make dinner time true family time. I’ve gained helpers in the kitchen and lifelong memories.

Boys Build Confidence While Cooking in the Kitchen

Independence and confidence almost always go hand in hand. It feels good to be able to do things by yourself. That’s what Lenore Skenazy told us in our excellent interview about why we need to expand our boundaries for our kids.

This is what we do in the kitchen when we give boys (and girls), sharp knives and let them work with fire. Even without knives and fire for those parents whose hearts started beating quickly upon reading those words, anything kids can do independently builds confidence.

I’ve already written all about confidence, why it’s so important, and why working in the kitchen is the best place to build confidence for kids. You’ve also read Lori Rose’s story of how confident her two girls became in the kitchen, but confidence is for everyone, boys and girls (and grownups too!)

Watch these three boys from the Jenkins family telling me about their cooking skills:

Can’t see the video? Watch here on YouTube!

It makes my day to get to talk to some of our members since it’s kind of rare as we are all virtual!

I got to hop on a call with Aiden, a seven-year-old from Canada. And here’s what he has to say about building confidence and independence in the kitchen:

We also learn confidence through failure. Ironically, as Jessica Lahey explains in her interview.

One of our members told the story about her teenage son being in charge of putting dinner in the oven. The whole family went out to do some yard work, and when they came back in for a hot dinner, the teenager had forgotten to turn the oven on.

It seems like examples like this would knock confidence down, but in reality, we know that we can only build confidence when we achieve something that is worth doing. That means we have to do things that are a bit difficult and if we don’t fail, they probably aren’t hard enough.

Boys Can Express Their Creativity While Learning to Cook

Here’s where we should probably tackle the question: Do we teach boys to cook differently than we approach girls? Sometimes the answer is no.

But other times, we do need to use a bit of a different flair. In fact, this applies not just to gender, but to personality and learning style as well. Many boys tend to like to work with their hands and be a little more active than girls. That’s where the stereotype of a hyperactive boy working on cars and building things with wood comes from.

Some stereotypes are rooted in an element of truth. Many boys do find that they can be more focused when their hands are busy creating, but this absolutely doesn’t have to be a traditional male pursuit out in the garage or woodshop.

I always recommend to parents that they should get their boys in the kitchen and get those hands busy creating a recipe, chopping up vegetables, or even just stirring the pot. Paul often says that he likes chopping vegetables because he finds it cathartic and almost like therapy.

There you have it, folks, that’s straight from a teenage boy’s mouth! I love that there are many male cooks and chefs to look up to and it’s my hope that both genders in the house set a good example of being involved in the kitchen.

Bill Schindler is one of my favorite “tough guys” who loves food and making things from scratch. He makes homemade sourdough pasta and pretty much all the meat of the Schindler household is caught dressed and cooked by the members of the family.

Bill is a professor at Washington College who specializes in primitive technologies. He alarmingly found most of his college students didn’t even know how to crack an egg. He’s on a mission to change this and I am definitely on his team.

Now, don’t read this wrong. I think lots of girls love to create with their hands too, but if you have one of those boys who is a little busier in their body imagine how much energy they could get out kneading a loaf of bread for five minutes or cutting vegetables for fifteen. It’s good hard work and it makes boys feel great with both the physical creation of a dish and their opportunity to be creative in an artistic way.

Boys Need Connection in the Kitchen

Here at Kids Cook Real Food^™, we always talk about the incredible unseen benefits of kids learning to cook: connection, confidence, and creativity.

All humans are wired for connection, we need each other. We need to know that we aren’t isolated on an island and we need to connect with our food to build a great relationship with it since it’s something we need to sustain life multiple times a day.

In this, boys and girls are more similar than different. My second boy, third in birth order, Jonathan is definitely my most cuddly. He was the baby who co-slept for the longest because he kicked me the least. He still asks me to read to him at age 10, just so we can be near each other.

He often balks at helping in the kitchen. But if it’s just the two of us in there, and I asked him in the right way, you can just see his face light up as he enjoys the time together.

That opportunity for connection while doing significant work is so powerful. It’s not something we get easily in other areas of life, and I highly recommend you give it a shot.

I also love watching my kids work together in the kitchen. You can see the beautiful sibling relationship Paul has with his sister in this video they made together (without me there at all) demonstrating our grain-free pizza.

Nothing warms my heart more than hearing their giggles from the kitchen as they cook with their playlist blasting.

Leah has also been a peach about inviting her little brother Gabriel into the kitchen. He is six years younger than her and she’s definitely taught him some of the skills that I had forgotten since he was just a baby when we filmed the Kids Cook Real Food^™ course.

When he’s bored, and the big boys are playing video games and leaving him out, she will ask him to help her make guacamole or cookies or muffins. She slows down for him and is so tender and you can just see his joy meter being filled to the top with all that loving connection with his sister.

One of our members, Kari shared this story of how her boys were able to help out and make a fun family memory in the kitchen:

At 6:00pm, my boys (12 & 14) said, “Mom, what’s for dinner?” I was exhausted. I thought to myself, “I don’t even have energy to go out and get a pizza.” I looked at my boys and said, “Whatcha gonna help me make?” 30 minutes later we had hamburgers, tortellini, fruit, and cake for dessert. All because I had knowledgeable help in the kitchen.

The boys were able to provide practical help for their mom and had an unexpected bonding session as they connected over creating a last-minute dinner that night.

Bottom Line: Teach Your Boys to Cook

We all want to raise kids who make us proud both boys and girls. I think teaching boys to cook is as important if not more important than girls simply because the culture isn’t necessarily telling them to.

Let’s push against that culture which still has a few “traditional women’s roles” floating around.

• Boys can cook well
• Boys thrive with independence in the kitchen
• Confidence comes from failure and learning to cook
• Boys who love working with their hands should be trained in creativity in the kitchen
• Teaching boys to cook builds strong and powerful connections

I’m honored to be on your parenting team, as you raise boys who will know how to take care of themselves in college, feed their roommates and never take their wives or other women around them for granted. Here’s to teaching boys to cook!