Grilling With Kids

Have you ever tried grilling with kids? It’s fun and with these tips, safe! It’s never too early to start teaching future grill masters! In this article, we look at tips for grilling with kids.

Cooking with kids not only promotes healthy eating habits, but it builds confidence, instills creativity and makes your children appreciate their food.

Kids Cook Monday tells us that cooking with kids also helps with the following:

Kids are more likely to eat what they make.
They develop a mature palate.
Cooking together provides time for bonding and to learn about nutrition.
Kids learn a valuable life skill.
You can bring in science, language, counting, fractions, budgeting, weighing, sequencing, measuring, problem-solving, sharing and more!

So, let’s get started!

What Ages?

Before you teach your children to grill, first consider their ages. You’ll have to decide if they’re mature enough for certain tasks.

Does this mean only older children can help? Not at all. Younger children can help with prep work and organization.

Just be sure to assign age-appropriate tasks to your children and never, ever leave the unattended at the grill.

Your very first and most important task is to teach safety and maintain it at all times. If you’re ready to start, here are your grilling with kids tips:

Teach Safety

Set and enforce a three-foot child-free safety area around the grill if you are grilling with small children.

Jobs for Little Kids

As we mentioned earlier, your small children can help, too.

They can can rinse vegetables, husk corn and help set the table. They can assemble ingredients for S’mores and desserts, and butter buns for grilling.

Jobs for Big Kids

Older elementary age children can help you you shape and season burgers, brush chicken with barbecue sauce, put vegetables and fruit on skewers and mix salads.

You can also let them assist the younger children and teach them how to fold napkins and set the table. Put your big kids in charge of bringing food to the table and clean-up.

Jobs Reserved for Tweens and Teenagers

Your teens and tweens can chop vegetables, prepare food and help grill with your watchful supervision. They can also lead or assist with any of the above tasks.

Teach grill clean-up! Do enforce safety rules with tweens and teenagers as well. Remember they are new at this, and their safety is your responsibility.

Safety Tips for Everyone

Always have a working fire extinguisher nearby.Teach children how to use it.
Keep a phone nearby for emergencies.
Teach proper grill positioning. Grills should be ten feet away from building and fences on a level surface. Grills shouldn’t be used near low-hanging tree branches.
Closely supervise the use of any lighter fluid. Demonstrate proper usage.Do not add fluid to an already lit fire because the flames can flashback up into the container and explode.
Talk about the hot areas of the grill. This often includes the outside of the grill. Keep children from getting burned.
When cooking food, use long-handled grilling tools to give plenty of clearance from heat and flames.
Use a kitchen timer in the beginning so they’ll know how long to cook certain items.
Show them how to use tongs and how to turn items to avoid grease splatter.
Never put cooked food on the plate you used for raw meat. Teach children to wash their hands after handling raw meet.
Whatever takes the longest to cook goes on the grill first.
Teach proper grill clean-up as this is a vital part of the process.
Never leave your grill unattended while you are cooking.