Cooking Games: Knife Safety 101

Playing cooking games in the kitchen is fun, but part of the fun is often using knives to cut and prepare food items. Knowing how to use the knives correctly is imperative to your safety. Knowing how to use them will also help you prepare food more safely and possibly even with a bit more care and flavor.

1. Always be careful with knives. When you handle a knife, always be careful about grabbing it, holding it, using it and then washing it. You’ll want to hold the handle well and never touch the blade unless you absolutely have to – pushing on the top of the blade, for example is appropriate, but wiping the sharp side isn’t.

2. Always use a sharp knife. It might seem that using a dull knife would be better as you’re learning to use a knife, but a dull knife is far more likely to slip while you’re trying to cut than a sharp one. So keep your knives sharpened and handle them carefully while you whip up a fabulous dish.

Grilling Cooking Games

Using the grill is fun, especially in cooking games. My personal favorite cooking game is a grilling game. Like so many of the cooking games, you are given an exact order you must fill. You then play the part of the short-order cook trying to cook food on the grill that is used on the plates.

You can’t let anything burn or you lose points and the orders will just keep coming in whether you’re ready or not so you have to stay on top of things. The first time I played, I was completely unprepared for how quickly things would move. I fell immediately behind and couldn’t get caught up.

I also had a lot of fun playing with the different foods that I could cook and starting cooking what I wanted instead of what was being required on the plates so I burned all kinds of things. I think I actually got a negative score for the first few games until I got the hang of it.

The best thing about that favorite grilling game is that when I’m ready to fire up my own grill, I’m going to know exactly what to do.

Healthy Cooking Games

Cooking games are fun when they involve rich or sweet foods, but not all cooking games have to be unhealthy. In fact, many of the most enjoyable cooking games are a great deal of fun for you and your younger siblings to play together.

Fruit Salad
Have your little sister help you cut up fruit to put into a fruit salad. Use a nice variety of ingredients cut into bite sized bites. Put them all together in a pretty bowl and stir them up. The resulting salad is just as delicious as it is healthy. You can even dab a bit of low-fat Cool-Whip on top to give it extra flavor.

Fruit Smoothies
A fruit smoothie is essentially a blended fruit salad. Start by cutting up some fruit and then add it to the blender. Mix in a bit of orange or another kind of juice to give it some moisture and then get started blending. Add ice as needed to make it smoother and more delicious.

Grilled Food
Food on the grill can be extremely healthy. By removing the oil and butter you might use in a wok or frying pan, you’re able to prepare a healthy meal that is yummy, outdoorsy and delicious.

Cooking Games and Family Fun

Cooking games can be great fun for the entire family. When you feel like playing cooking games, why not invite your family to join you. As a family, you can prepare a full meal or you can make a fun dessert or even a meal that is easy to reheat during the week when the family is a bit more pressed for time.

Give Everyone a Job
When you work in the kitchen, it is best if everyone has an assigned task. This will keep people, especially younger brothers and sisters, from fighting over tasks and possible putting themselves in dangerous situations. Giving everyone their own job also helps to be sure all of the important parts of meal preparation are covered.

Enjoy the Meal Together
The best reward for a meal you prepared together is for everyone to sit down together and enjoy it. Set the table. Pull out the nice plates, and sit down to eat the food that your family so painstakingly put together. The entire experience makes for a nice family time.

Cooking Games and Kitchen Safety

One of the most important parts of cooking games is being safe in the kitchen. Kitchen safety is essential not only enjoying your cooking games (it’s hard to enjoy it with your finger sliced open), but also to being allowed back in the kitchen to play again another day. When you’re heading to the kitchen to play some cooking games, always remember some basic kitchen safety rules.
Cut Away From You
Use a table knife when you can, but when you do use a sharp knife, always cut away from you. Use a very sharp knife when a blade matters. A sharp knife cuts easily making it easier to cut. A dull blade can actually be dangerous as it might not cut well or can even slip off the cutting surface as you apply pressure.

Watch the Heat
There are plenty of hot things it he kitchen that you’ll need to avoid. Watch out for burners on the stove, the oven and dishes straight from either. You’ll need to use potholders and special pads for hot items to avoid burning your hands or your countertops. Also be sure to watch for steam coming from cooked items –especially those cooked in the microwave.

Cooking Games – Ice Cream Sundaes

As the weather gets warmer, it will time for a bit of ice cream. Ice cream sundaes are the perfect excuse to get your friends and neighbors together. Or bring the ingredients over to a friend’s house for a pool party or a sleep over. Where ever you make your sundaes you can trust, you’ll have a great crowd having fun.

Gather Ingredients for Cooking Games
To make ice cream sundaes, you’ll need ice cream, bowls, spoons, hot fudge, caramel, bananas, and as many other candy and sprinkle toppings you’d like to use. Bring everything together in one place and get everyone ready to feast on ice cream confections.

Make Sundaes
Grab a bowl and dish out as much ice cream as you can stand. This might not be a healthy snack, but it certainly delicious. Once you have your ice cream, pour on chocolate sauce and butterscotch or caramel sauce. Add as many toppings as you’d like. If you’d like, you can use cut bananas to make your sundae a banana split. Add some whipped cream and a cherry and your creation is complete! Enjoy!

Cooking Games – Finger Sandwiches

A tiny delicious treat you can make for fun or for a special event are finger sandwiches. Traditionally these sandwiches are made by cutting the crusts off bread and then cutting the remaining squares into smaller triangles, but you can get much more creative than that.

Gather Cooking Games Ingredients
Your first task is to decide what sort of sandwiches you plan to make. You can get fancy with cucumber tea sandwiches or pimento, but you also have the option to make peanut butter and jelly if you want to. These are your sandwiches after all.

Cut the Bread
Your next step will be to cut the bread into fun shapes. There is no rule that finger sandwiches have to be tiny triangles or squares. So use cookie cutters or special sandwich cutters to make fun shapes. You might have sandwiches shaped like stars or circles instead. If you’re making sandwiches for someone very special, you can even use stars or hearts.

Make the Sandwiches
Using your cut bread, make the sandwiches using your choice of ingredients and serve up nicely. Enjoy!

Cooking Games – Eating Bread

Making bread from scratch is only half of the pleasure. What you do with your bread once you make it is just as important as making it in the first place. One of the best cooking games is making your fresh bread into just about anything you want.

Fresh Bread into Toast
You can easily make your fresh bread into toast by sticking a thick slice in the toaster. Of course, this isn’t nearly as much fun as eating the bread while it is soft and squishy fresh from the oven.

Fresh Bread and Jam
Grab your jam or jelly from the fridge and liberally apply a glob to the hot bread. Spread it around a bit, grab a napkin and dig in. The hot bread will make the jam even more delicious and you’ll want to grab another slice when you manage to finish the first.

Fresh Bread and Butter
Just a simple pat of butter on a slice of fresh bread is delicious. For this treat, opt for flavored honey butter or cinnamon butter and avoid the fake stuff.

Cooking Games – Making Bread

One of the homiest smells in the world is bread. Making bread is akin to the skills of an almost forgotten time when women made bread from scratch every morning while men worked the fields. But old stereotypes shouldn’t keep you from making bread if you are interested in giving it a try. Just remember that the whole process takes hours.

Ingredients for Bread
• All-purpose flour
• Water
• Yeast
• Oil, lard, margarine or butter

Making Bread
Put ¾ cup of warm water in a mixing bowl. Add a packet of yeast. Use a fork to break up the yeast if it is clumping together. Wait ten minutes for the yeast to get active. Start adding a bit of flour a bit at a time and stirring. When the mixture pulls away from the sides of the bowl, get your hands clean and dig in. It’s time to mix.

Knead the dough by folding it over on itself over and over again turning it slightly in the bowl as you do so. Knead the dough for about ten minutes until it is no longer sticky and it springs back when poked. Let the dough rise in a greased bowl for an hour. Punch it down again and separate it into loaves. Allow the dough to rise again for thirty minutes before baking for twenty-five.