How to teach middle and high school students to read a recipe
As you know, if you screw up a recipe, it can be a waste of ingredients, time, and dirty dishes! Reading a recipe is one of the fundamentals in teaching teens life skills that can often go overlooked. If you teach Family Consumer Sciences or Culinary Arts, you can teach students one of life’s most essential skills.
However, simply handing them a recipe and telling them to cook or bake is not the best approach, and, as I am sure you know, it can turn ugly quickly. Let’s look at a few fun and engaging lesson ideas for teaching students how to read a recipe correctly!
1- Teach the Basics
Teaching the basic cooking skills before you do anything else is essential. Students need to know the vocabulary involved in reading a recipe. Terms such as “ingredients, yield, equipment, recipe instructions, directions, cooking time, tsp., Tbsp., lb, oz., etc.) need to be taught before anything else. The Reading a Recipe worksheets and slide deck introduce the basics. The lesson plans also include guided notes so that students follow along and are engaged, as well as comprehension questions and practice. This is a great place to start to cover the main content.
2- Recipe Conversion Practice and Kitchen Measurement
Reading recipes involves a lot of conversion and kitchen math. Kitchen measurement is a valuable life skill that students need to understand to be successful. Our kitchen measurement digital escape room is a fun way to teach the fundamentals. Students move through 8 clues to find the codes based on recipes, kitchen conversion questions, and scenarios.
3- Recipe Mix Up
Doing a “mystery lab” is a fun way to show students that reading a recipe all the way through ahead of time is a good idea. Kids will usually default to only skimming the recipe’s first few steps and saying they are ready to go. At the very end of the instructions, tell them to cross off steps, ingredients list #1-3, etc., which means they did not make the right recipe. This is a very visual way for students to realize that they made a mistake, a mistake that they won’t forget! Not only are these cooking skills, but they are also reading comprehension skills!
Here is a copy of the trick recipe that we use. It is fun to see how many groups read beforehand and how many did not!
4- Learn by Doing
Practice makes perfect, and students will improve their recipe reading, measurement conversion, and discussion of key vocabulary by practicing recipe reading and cooking. Another great option is using different variations of visual recipes. Visual recipes are especially beneficial for English language learners and some special education students.
Providing visuals for steps of a recipe, key words such as ingredients and equipment help students feel more confident about the process. Once students have a recipe collection of dishes that they are familiar with they will probably be more likely to cook at home! Here are some visual recipes to add to your collection!
5- Videos
Videos reinforce what students have learned and can help break up instruction. Your students might enjoy this how to read a recipe video by Edible Schoolyard. I also love this video by America’s Test Kitchen because it really breaks down recipes and how they are written. Use AI teacher tools for video questions, and you have a mini-lesson or excellent sub plan!
6- Food Lab Challenges
Food lab challenges are a great way for students to practice creating their own recipes. They get a reading, brainstorming sheet, and recipe template to prepare a gourmet of simple dish such as mac and cheese, grilled cheese, brownies, etc.
This free Brownie Challenge Food Lab involves students taking a box of brownies and making it into something to share. Students take ownership of the recipe they write and of the ingredients they choose.
Check out more fun cooking challenges for the culinary arts classroom! Your students will love the challenge of making their recipes and competing with their peers. You can even make it into a school-wide affair and invite staff and other students to be taste testers!
