Preparing food
Design & Technology · Key Stage 1 · The School
Two safe grips
The BRIDGE: make a bridge over the food with your thumb and fingers, and cut underneath between them. The CLAW: curl your fingertips under and let the knife blade rest against your knuckles, moving them back as you cut. Both keep fingertips away from the blade, and both are taught in every school kitchen — with an adult present.
Following a recipe
Read the whole thing first. Get everything out before you start — chefs call this MISE EN PLACE, and it prevents the disaster of discovering halfway that you have no eggs. Then follow the order exactly, because in cooking the order is usually the reason.
Why measuring matters
Cooking tolerates rough measuring; baking does not. Bread, cakes and biscuits are chemistry, and too much flour or too little raising agent changes the result completely. Level a spoon with a knife rather than heaping it.
Make the same small sponge twice. Cake A: weigh everything — 100 g each of flour, sugar, butter and two eggs. Cake B: guess by eye. Bake them side by side. B usually comes out either flat and greasy (too much fat) or dry and tough (too much flour). Baking is chemistry with fixed proportions, which is why the scales matter here and matter much less in a stew.