Cooking with Toddlers: A Hilarious How-to Guide
Trust me, you’ll never have another experience quite like it
Today you will learn how to make a pork chop and potato casserole while juggling a toddler who is eagerly banging a metal spoon on the counter. (Watch your fingers.)
It is so cute when they’re at a stage where they find cooking absolutely fascinating.
Whenever you are in the kitchen playing with food, they are right under your feet, wanting to get onto the counter.
Sometimes it’s to see what you’re doing, other times it’s to steal the food.
Either way, it’s good to encourage it on days when you have the time.
I recommend that before starting your cooking journey, parents get out any toys, drinks, or snacks needed for bribes so that you won’t have to deal with two hours of tantrums.
Items needed:
1 kitchen helper stool 1 18-month old 4 thick-cut (defrosted) pork chops A jar of sauerkraut
1 russet potato 1 yellow onion 1/4 stick of butter Salt and pepper Lots of wipes or a wet kitchen rag
Cooking time without toddler: 1 1/2 hours Cooking time with toddler: 3 hours
Step 1: Attempt to clear off a workspace faster than the baby can make a mess
Set out the kitchen helper stool for the toddler to stand on. Clear off the kitchen island while she enthusiastically plays with a couple of oranges.
Clean up the orange juice from where she has poked holes in all the oranges.
Set out cutting boards and ingredients. Pull her off the island she was trying to climb onto and set her back on the stool.
Pacify tantrum by giving her a potato to play with.
Step 2: Bribe the toddler with one potato and peel the rest
Peel potatoes into a bowl. Attempt to keep the peels in the bowl.
Put the peels back into the bowl as she pulls them out. Finish peeling the potato and trade the toddler for the rest of the peels.
She wants them both. Accept that you will only be getting half the peels.
Dump them into the trash can as she watches. Quickly dive for the masking tape as you see her start to climb off her stool. Run to the trash can and tape it shut.
Redirect another brewing tantrum by rolling an onion across the counter and shouting, “Wow, look at that!”
Take your cutting board to another counter (away from little hands) and start slicing the potato into rounds.
Move your toes so that she doesn’t slam the stool into them as she happily moves it in front of the cutting board.
Hold the knife out of reach and give her the sliced potatoes to play with. Move the cutting board to the kitchen island and finish cutting.
Pick up all the sliced potato pieces that she threw onto the floor, wash them, and put them into a pot.
Pretend not to notice as she dumps them all out again.
Gather them up and fill your pot with water. Parboil potatoes for at least 5 minutes and place in a greased casserole dish.
(I didn’t parboil the potatoes the first time and they turned out hard. As you’re reading about the toddler picking out the butter in the next paragraph, realize that they were not hot! They were raw.)
Slice the butter and put it onto the potatoes in the casserole dish.
Watch in dismay as she meticulously picks out every single slice of butter and puts it into a neat little pile on the counter.
Pick up the butter and re-distribute it into the casserole dish, then move it into the other counter.
Step 3: Prepare the pork chops before she can run you over with the stool
Go to the fridge and get out the pork chops.
Watch glumly as she moves her stool to the new location of the casserole dish and starts picking out all the butter again.
Decide that you would rather have her playing with butter than trying to get into raw pork chops.
Dry off the pork chops and season with salt and pepper (we found that seasoning the pork chops and seasoning the whole casserole made it too salty, so tone it down a bit).
Heat up your frying pan and throw in one of the pats of butter from the smooshed ball on the counter that she is enthusiastically poking to death.
Brown the pork chops on each side and around the edges.
Periodically check to make sure she is still squishing butter.
While your pork is cooking, put a cutting board on the island and slice your onion.
Move quietly! You don’t want to draw her attention!
She notices anyways and runs over, dragging the stool behind her.
Clean off her buttery hands and scoot the stool away from the counter so that she can’t get at the onions.
She makes a lunge for the onions and almost falls over the top of the stool.
Get a bowl, toss the onions in and hide them on the top of the spice cabinet.
Distract her with fruit snacks as she starts wailing.
Run back to the stove to save the pork chops before they burn. Set them into the casserole dish and re-distribute the butter.
Run (literally), get the onions, then move the casserole dish again (she is very fast at moving her stool to a new location).
Pour on the onions and move again.
Make a line of fruit snacks along the entire length of the counter so that it takes a long time for her to reach all of them.
Pour the jar of sauerkraut over everything.
Move again because apparently sauerkraut is way more interesting than fruit snacks.
Salt and pepper (lightly, remember!) while holding off the kitchen stool with your foot to keep her hands out of the sauerkraut.
She reaches it anyways.
Let her have a small piece to play with. She immediately eats it and wants more.
Stare for a few seconds and wonder why a toddler who won’t eat a peanut butter sandwich is happy eating a piece of sauerkraut.
Put a small pile of sauerkraut at the front of the line of fruit snacks. Put a little water in the bottom of the baking dish and start to cover it with foil.
You hear her coming again (apparently she has eaten all the snacks in 5 seconds). Give her a foil ball to play with and try to finish covering the pan without her ripping it all off.
Good times.
Remind her of the rest of the line of fruit snacks.
Put the casserole in the oven while she’s distracted and set the timer for an hour.
Step 5: Collapse onto a stool and take a break
She runs over the instant you sit down, crying and foot-stomping with all the enthusiasm of a teenage drama queen.
Decide that you need a longer break while the casserole cooks. Pretend to take a nap on the couch. When you open your eyes, she’s still there, two inches from your face.
She reaches up and tries to pick your nose to see if you’re awake.
You decide that it’s easier to sit on the floor and play with her for a while. After all, the meat will take an hour to cook.
Attempt to wash some dishes after you’ve played a bit. Your efforts are rewarded with screeching tantrums. After five minutes of wearing earplugs, the dishes are done.
Thankfully, by now your spouse has arrived and you can go hide in the bathroom until the casserole timer goes off.
Enjoy your dinner!