If you’ve been introducing your kids to cooking skills over the years, by the time they’re teenagers they’ll have the ability to do anything an adult can do in the kitchen (dads too!). They can plan, shop for, and cook a full meal for the family. They can use knives, manage kitchen hygiene, double and divide recipes, and use the grill. They can even start to lighten the load for moms and dads while practicing all these important life skills they’ll need when they are living on their own.
I often hear from people who disbelieve that kids this age can do all this, so I’ve included pictures of my kids doing many of these things. If you’re just getting started with teaching your teenagers to cook, though, don’t worry! There’s still plenty of time for them to learn all these things. Keep reading to the end for ideas for how to approach it.
Cooking a Meal for the Family
Ideally, kids this age would start cooking regularly for the whole family, sharing the load with their parents. Learning how to plan a healthy meal, fit this work into a busy schedule, and even handle different food preferences of all the family members, is great for kids. My older son is at a college now where students in their sophomore year (age 19) live in apartments and need to be shopping and cooking for themselves in addition to handling all their coursework. I’m really glad he had so much practice at home!
When he was 13, my older son planned a meal one night of spaghetti, meatballs (he made them from scratch), roasted broccoli, and cantaloupe slices (not shown). I wasn’t allowed in the kitchen, and you can see the results below.
In reality, though, it’s pretty rare for my kids to cook a meal for the whole family. With soccer and homework and music lessons and the work of getting them to agree to do it, it’s been hard to make it happen very often. Even when they have occasionally agreed to cook a full meal, they’ve often ended up needing help when they realize they haven’t left enough time, or they planned a main course but no side dishes!
We had more success with having them help regularly with our dinner prep. One of our daily chores was “help cook dinner” and whichever kid was assigned that chore that day would come help cut things up, or manage heating the tortillas on the stove, or really do whatever task they preferred. My younger son especially liked to take over my job as head chef, and asked me to be his sous chef so he could pick the best jobs for himself and get to assign me the boring tasks rather than the other way around. That was fine with me!
One night they both wanted more interesting jobs than “set the table”, so I gave them the guacamole recipe and they shared the jobs and made it all on their own. They’re 11 and 14 in this picture:
On another memorable night, my older son (age 14) didn’t cook for the family, but he did cook for himself. At 10:30 at night he decided he was hungry. He made a grilled cheese sandwich, decided it wasn’t enough food, so he made himself some eggs while he was eating the sandwich.
Grocery Shopping
Kids this age can be very independent at the grocery store. I loved using trips to the grocery store to entertain my kids and teach them all sorts of things all through their childhood. By age 12 they could shop completely alone. One day my kids had a day off fom school for teacher prep. My older son had a friend over (they were probably 13?), and they were bored, so I decided they could cook dinner. I gave them money, dropped them off alone at the grocery store, and told them to figure out something to make. The excited chatter about what to get on the drive to the store was impressive. I don’t remember the full menu, but they bought steak, discovered how expensive it was, and decided to cook boxed macaroni and cheese from our pantry. They also got some carrots. They hadn’t used the grill before but were excited to give it a try! We helped show them how to use it and had a great meal.
Using a Sharp Knife
I wrote in previous posts about starting kids with a plastic knife and then moving them up to a small paring knife. Here are my kids at ages 11 & 12 using sharp knives, which they were allowed to do at this age whether a parent was present or not because they’d been using them safely with us for so many years.
Bake Alone
My older son tended to cook mostly to be able to make the foods he wanted to eat instead of what we might choose to cook for him. My younger son liked to bake sweet treats. In 5th grade (age 11) he found a simple cookie recipe and started baking batches to sell to friends.
During covid, he often amused himself by baking new recipes. His decorating skills need work, but his cake tasted great!
Food Hygiene
Kids can start learning this much earlier, but by age 12 we had practiced food hygiene often enough that we trusted our kid to safely handle food, including raw meat. My son is 14 in this photo.
Math
Oh my gosh there is so much good math practice found in cooking. Kids can be doing math from their toddler years while cooking (have them count the eggs or the grape tomatoes) so the only reason that this shows up on the 12+ list is that kids can now do all the recipe math on their own. If they’re cooking regularly enough and choosing their own recipes, they will naturally run into times when they need to double or halve a recipe, convert from mL to Cups, or divide a circle into 3 even parts. Hopefully they’ve learned all the math they need by this age to perform these tasks, and cooking is a wonderful, practical application for all this knowledge. Fractions in particular can be tricky for kids, and cooking offers up lots of fractions!
Outdoor Grill
Both of my kids thought cooking on the grill sounded super fun and they were thrilled when we taught them how to light it safely, manage the thermometer, and cook on their own. Here’s my younger son at age 13 grilling chicken thighs (that he had marinated) and carrots.
Starting at age 15
I follow a Facebook group for parents of kids in high school in our district, and recently a parent posted asking for advice on how to get her 15-year-old son started with cooking. Like many parents, she realized that she only had a few years before he would be living on his own, and he would need to know how to shop, cook, do laundry, find a doctor, etc.
For any parents of younger kids who are reading this, my first advice would be to start when your kids are 1 instead of 15!
Starting young isn’t the only path, though. High school aged kids (and adults!) can all learn to cook at any age. I have a friend who is an amazing cook who makes her yogurt and granola from scratch, and she didn’t start cooking until she was in her 20s!
A great way to get a teen started with cooking is to embrace social media. My kids used to cook from Grandma’s recipes, but these days they’re way more likely to want to cook something they saw on TikTok. They’ll be more invested if it’s a recipe that caught their eye, and every recipe they try will bring a whole host of skills with it. Similarly, they can use youtube to learn individual skills they may not have yet, like how to cut up an onion or get the pit out of an avocado. If your kids are like mine, they may prefer to use online media to learn these skills than have you teach them!
You can also have your teen help you in the kitchen, go to the grocery store with you, or teach them to cook their favorite meal. These are all great ways to get your teen started cooking.
The most important things are to follow their lead, let them ask you for help when they need it, be prepared to eat some interesting meals, and anticipate plenty of messes (picture below: onion chopping gone awry)! Learning to clean up is good learning too.
Here are other posts about cooking with kids:
Share the Load: Everyone Cooks!
The Trip Clip Blog 
The way you navigate the joys and challenges of cooking with older kids is both heartwarming and informative.
Thank you, Eleanor. I think this is one of the kindest comments I’ve ever had to something I’ve written!