Marcus Wareing’s advice for getting kids cooking
Marcus Wareing might be best known for critiquing budding chefs’ dishes on MasterChef: The Professionals, but the Michelin star restaurateur has a softer side at home.
The 49-year-old has three children with wife Jane – Jake, 18, Archie, 15 and Jessie, 12 – and it probably comes as no surprise that all of the Wareing kids can cook, which he says is a result of pulling them into the kitchen and getting them involved since they were young.
Wareing’s 12-year-old is an avid baker and many of the recipes they like to make together are in his latest cookbook, Marcus Everyday (HarperCollins, £20).
So what’s his advice for other parents who’d like their kids to pick up some kitchen skills?
Make the kitchen your main communal area
“When we’re all in the house, we congregate in the kitchen, it’s where the food is, it’s where the drink is, it’s where we always seem to be. It’s the only room you can say our family sit – we don’t sit in front of the TV as a family, we’d rather sit at the kitchen table.
“We’re no different to anyone else at home, we’re a family, but we also want to enjoy that time together, we use the kitchen as the place where we talk.”
Get them involved early
“Don’t wait too long before you introduce them to good food, buy them books, bring them into the kitchen, get them shopping. Every now and again, if you can afford it, maybe go and have a meal somewhere, showing them what food looks like outside of the house.”
Put effort into your own cooking
“Be disciplined in the kitchen and enjoy cookery, because your children will enjoy it when you put it on the table and you’ve done a nice job. When you put something down that’s overcooked and doesn’t look nice and doesn’t smell nice, that’s when kids turn their nose up at things.”
Include them as part of the process
“I remember when my wife used to bring the kids onto the central island and they’d be doing their homework while mum cooks them dinner. So even though they were working, they were part of the cooking process – so you’re slowly drawing them in, rather than them sitting in the lounge watching telly or on an iPad.
“I suppose you could say, as a father, I’m educating the children, and to a certain extent I am, but they don’t know that! They just think we’re having fun, chopping things up, sitting doing homework, but we all happen to be in the kitchen. And the radio might be on, TV may be on in the corner.
“What we do is create atmosphere in our kitchen, our central hub, for us all to enjoy.”
Marcus Everyday by Marcus Wareing, photography by Susan Bell, is published by HarperCollins, priced £20. Available now.
