Cooking school for Kids: Stir fry

Knife skills lesson plan

Objectives:

• Practice good knife grip habits
• Learn the most efficient way to use a knife when cutting
• Practice some basic knife cuts
• Practice good knife safety habits

Lesson Plan: Go over some basic types of knife cuts:

• slicing
• large dice
• small dice
• matchsticks (juienne)
• mince

Things to remember:

• Proper knife grip (see Handle Grip)
• It may seem intuitive to adults, but none of my kids seemed to understand that not everything cuts like cake. Or gelatin. Or butter. Remind your students that, for food that has some resistance, you may have to go back and forth in a series of slices in order to cut through without squashing the bejeezus out of it.

  For practice, I picked this recipe so they could work on a variety of vegetables shapes and cuts:

  • carrots (peel, julienne)
  • bell peppers (julienne)
  • sweet onions (dice)
  • broccoli (slice florets)

  And then they can work on slicing chicken (different texture).

  Other concepts:
  Accurate measuring – remind students about proper measuring habits: fill to the top and level off for dry measuring, carefully fill to the top for wet measuring.

  You should be able to prep, cook and serve this dish in under an hour.

  Timing:

  00:00 Wash and rinse the rice. Wash the veggies.
  00:05 Put the rice on heat. Start slicing veggies, chicken.
  00:10 Ask a student to start mixing 2 batches of marinade.
  00:15 Check heat level on rice. Marinate chicken, refrigerate.
  00:20 Start heating oil in pan. Add garlic to season.
  00:25 Check rice. If done, turn off heat. Sauté vegetables.
  00:30 Remove chicken from marinade. Discard marinade. Start cleanup.
  00:35 Set vegetables aside, heat oil, saute chicken.
  00:40 Return vegetables to pan, along with non-chicken marinade. Bring to a boil. Finish cleanup, set out serving dishes.
  00:45 Serve over rice.