MasterChef judge John Torode has said that parents need to let go of safety anxieties if they want their children to learn how to cook properly.
Worried that many mums and dads are preventing kids from learning to cook because they are too scared to let them near boiling water or knives, he said: “We've got to be able to trust our children a bit."
The father-of-four, who admits he was able to help make gravy (from scratch) by the age of six says, that he was not judging other people’s choices, but, to him, it was important his own children learned to cook.
Ta;king to an audience at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai, the 50-year-old recalled his own experience of cooking from an early age: "My grandmother would let me stand on a stool stirring gravy in a large roasting dish in front of a wood-fired stove at the age of six. She wasn't worried about the whole health and safety stuff.”
"But we've become quite pulled back from that. Maybe we've got to be able to trust our children a bit.”
Suggesting people start with the basics like making pancakes, boiling eggs and even making toast, he added: "It's alright for them to be able to use a knife to chop something with guidance, it's alright to boil water. As long as they're watched over. I think we're a bit scared of that."
"It's us letting go as much as it is the children getting enthused by it."
