This post is part of the kids in the kitchen series, inspiring you to cook with the kids these school holidays sponsored by Western Star. My aim for the getting the kids into the kitchen is to create capable cooks and who have a love of preparing tasty whole food recipes.
***********
One of the benefits about making sure you spend time in the kitchen with the kids when they are younger, is that you help develop capable cooks in the kitchen.
The older three happily cook themselves a hot breakfast in the mornings and will make themselves a meal when they need to. My role is to keep expanding their skills so they can cook more recipes that make complete meals, and they can start taking their turns cooking a meal for the family.
As noted in my post on tips for cooking with kids, not aiming for perfection is even more important with the older kids, especially teenagers. My teenagers already feel quite confident in the kitchen, so it is important that I don’t take over or micromanage them when they are having a go at a new recipe.
If this post was going to be about me cooking these delicious mash mounds, then the photos would look very different. And I would most likely have reshaped a few mounds to make them look just right!
Mastering the piping bag takes time and the teenager was happy for them to come out any way, not the high mounds I had envisaged. So I just let him run with it.
I think he was actually on to something though, as the tastiest bits of the mash mounds were the crispy bits, the flatter they were the more crispy bits they had. These mash mounds were so good. They have a beautiful creamy texture in the middle with a crunchy chip like outside due to the delicious melted butter painted on the top.
Served up with veggies and chicken sausages, they were a hit, with many of the kids and me looking for more!
A recipe like this has much to teach an aspiring cook, like:
- Timing the veggies and the meat so they are ready together
- Using different colour veggies to make the meal look appealing
- Why cutting veggies of similar size is important for even cooking times
- The role butter can play in adding colour and flavour to food
- The role salt plays in enhancing flavour
- 14 sausages
- 8 medium carrots
- 4 large pieces of broccoli
- 2 kg potatoes
- 75 grams Western Star Chef’s choice butter
- ½ tsp pink Himalayan salt
- Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
- Place water in a double steamer and bring to the boil.
- Peel potatoes and cube them into small similar size pieces.
- Place potatoes in the steamer and cook until tender.
- While potatoes are cooking, prepare broccoli into small florets and slice carrots into sticks.
- Once potatoes are cooked, place them in a large bowl.
- Set aside 25 grams of butter for painting the mounds once made.
- Add the cubed butter and salt and mash until there are no lumps.
- Line two trays with baking paper.
- Fill a piping bag with the mashed potatoes. Use the largest star point nozzle to squeeze out pattern mounds onto the baking paper.
- Melt the extra butter, then brush the mounds with the melted butter.
- Place the trays in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes.
- After the mash mounds have been cooking for about 10 minutes, begin cooking the sausages.
- About 10 minutes before the mash mounds will be ready, put the other veggies in the steamer to cook.
- Once the veggies are ready serve them onto the plates, place a few delicious mash mounds on each plate with two sausages and enjoy!
If you are looking for more easy recipe to get the kids in the kitchen these school holidays and cooking their own breakfast, check out these easy to make recipes from Western Star:
|
|
What meals do your kids make?