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16 Kitchen Safety Tips For Children
by Alyice Edrich
Make cooking fun and your children will beg you to help in the kitchen. Make
cooking a chore, and your children will run for cover the moment you mention
it's time to cook or make your life so miserable you kick them out of the
kitchen. Either way, your children need to understand the importance of kitchen
safety and safe cooking.
Understanding the dangers of the kitchen and how to prevent them is an
essential life tool that all children should learn. Whether your children want
to take over as household "Chefs" or simply wants to learn how to feed
themselves when they move out on their own, I invite you to read these important
kitchen safety tips and share them with your children, today.
Kitchen Safety Tips:
1. Supervise young children and first-time chefs. Never let your child cook
alone.
2. Develop patience. Your children will make fewer mistakes when they are
enjoying the process and not worrying about getting yelled at.
3. Handle kitchen
products properly. Don't assume your children will know what to do with kitchen
products just by watching you in the kitchen. Take the time to explain how each
product works, as it's needed for each recipe.
4. Understand fire safety.
Explain how the fire extinguisher works, how to put out a grease fire, and when
to call 911.
5. Wear short sleeves. Long sleeves have a chance of catching fire
or falling into hot grease or boiling water.
6. Wear an apron. Aprons help
protect clothes and add extra padding in case of spilt hot water, splattered
oil, etc.
7. Use oven mitts. Never use a towel to move hot pans because the
loose parts of the towel can fall onto a hot burner and catch on fire. Oven
mitts are safer because they help your children hold onto the handle of a hot
pan more securely.
8. Wash your hands. Hands carry germs and can contaminate
food.
9. Keep pan handles facing in and over countertops. Pan handles should
never extend over the hot stove and definitely not out towards the floor where
someone could bump the handle and spill a pot of hot food on him.
10. Never
leave food unattended. Unwatched pots can spill over causing fires and other
kitchen hazards.
11. Clean up spills. Serious injuries occur when others slip
and fall because of wet floors or foreign objects, so make sure your children
understand the importance of cleaning up a spill as it occurs. (Always have a
mop or rag handy.)
12. Speed clean ups. Teach your children to clean while they
wait for the next stage in preparing the food (i.e. water boils, soup simmers,
etc.).
13. Never eat raw meats or poultry. Raw poultry can lead to food
poisoning (i.e. salmonella).
14. Wash surfaces where raw meats and poultry
touched. Surfaces touched by raw meat should be cleaned before placing another
food product on that surface to prevent cross contamination.
15. Keep raw food
separate from cooked food. Never place cooked food back on a plate that once
contained raw food.
16. Metal and microwaves don't mix. Any object that contains
metal or aluminum should not be placed into a microwave because doing so could
cause a fire.
And finally, listen to your children. Making your children cook foods they
don't like could cause them to cook out of anger, become careless in the
kitchen, and in the end get seriously hurt.
If one of your children shows enthusiasm when you ask him to help bake a
cake, stir up a batch of cookies, or knead dough but enters the kitchen kicking
and screaming at the mention of helping you cook meat or a side-dish, don't
force him to cook the meal—not yet anyway. Sometimes, children need to start off
doing what they love in the kitchen and then graduate into cooking other food
items. If you push too hard, you could turn your child off of cooking forever.
Alyice Edrich is the the editor of a national publication for BUSY parents
which hosts wonderful recipes. Subscribe to her free e- newsletter at
http://thedabblingmum.com/joinezine.htm
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