Preparing food
Design & Technology · Key Stage 1 · The School
Two safe grips
Here are two safe grips. The BRIDGE: make a bridge over the food with your thumb and fingers. Then cut underneath, between them. The CLAW: curl your fingertips under. Let the knife blade rest against your knuckles. Move them back as you cut. Both keep fingertips away from the blade. Both are taught in every school kitchen. And both are done with an adult there.
Following a recipe
Read the whole recipe first. Get everything out before you start. Chefs call that MISE EN PLACE. It prevents the disaster of finding halfway through that you have no eggs. Then follow the order exactly. In cooking, the order is usually the reason.
Why measuring matters
Cooking puts up with rough measuring. Baking does not. Bread, cakes and biscuits are chemistry. Too much flour changes the result completely. So does too little raising agent. Level a spoon off with a knife. Do not heap it.
Make the same small sponge twice. For cake A, weigh everything: 100 g each of flour, sugar and butter, and two eggs. For cake B, guess by eye. Bake them side by side. B usually comes out flat and greasy, from too much fat. Or dry and tough, from too much flour. Baking is chemistry with fixed proportions. That is why the scales matter here. They matter much less in a stew.