By MARK KENNEDY

NEW YORK (AP) — Mark Bitman taught us how to cook everything: how to bake and grill, prepare fish and vegetarian meals and do it quickly. This fall, he’s targeting a different type of home chef: the little ones.

“How to Cook Everything for Kids” is written for children ages 8-12 and is packed with photos, graphics, tips, and techniques to empower all the mini-Julia Childs in your house.

“It required a different type of thinking,” says Bittman. “This is a book designed to appeal to children and we are not children. So we had to consult the children. We had to try to think like children and about children.

Bittman, who has gone from being a recipe developer and food writer to one of the leading voices on food and health policy, offers his perspective dishes suitable for children like baked ziti, chicken nuggets, and chicken with orange sauce, giving easy instructions and variations, like apple pork chops for the latter dish.

The tone is less pedantic and more encouraging, giving young chefs the opportunity to experiment and personalize the dishes. There are lists – like “9 Ways to Flavor Scrambled Eggs” – and recipes for replacing soy sauce glaze with sweet and sour, peanutty and spicy variations. “You do it,” Bittman writes at one point.

“Visually fun”

It’s a useful resource for beginning cooks, explaining that things like chickpeas are the same as chickpeas and offering helpful sections on spices and herbs, kitchen equipment and how to prepare everything from butternut squash with corn. There are photos of children throughout the book.

“We wanted it to be visually inviting and fun for kids. I think keeping their interest and holding their attention was something we really wanted to do,” says Jacqueline Quirk, associate editor at Harvest, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Bittman says the hope is that “How to Cook Anything for Kids” will teach children that cooking isn’t hard and that they can produce things that taste good – a lifelong path to better health and break the addiction to eating out.

“If you allow them to prepare it themselves, they’ll be more likely to enjoy it, even if it’s a weird vegetable or something,” Quirk says. “We wanted to inspire adventure in children.”

Bittman is also the author of several books, including, among others, “How to Cook Everything,” “Fish” and “Food Matters,” which examine the intersection of food, personal and planetary health. Expanding its franchise to children made sense.

“There’s a lot of stuff here that 4- and 5-year-olds could enjoy if they want to,” Bittman says. “The important thing is that parents lead by example and that is a more important thing than letting children cook hands-on.”

He laughs that when he was a kid, the only cooking he did was mix chocolate syrup and peanut butter in a glass to see what would happen.

“Now you’ll have 4-year-olds telling you they want to be chefs when they grow up and it’s really different. Chefs were not visible people when I was younger, even when my children were young,” he says. “Even being a food writer is an acceptable career.”

Color and sweetness but no mandolins

The book — organized by dishes like soups, breakfast, sandwiches, pastas, breads, main dishes and grains and beans — reaches a crescendo with a beef and vegetable stir-fry, a dish that Bittman considers as part of a holy trinity.

“I think there are three essential recipes in this world. And they are: stir fry, rice and beans and chopped salad. Imagine mastering them, or having an idea of ​​them, when you were 12 — you’re kind of ready for life at that point,” Bittman says.

“Almost everything people end up cooking can fall into one of these three categories. They are, in a way, the pillars of world cuisine,” he adds.

The book tries not to rely on kitchen appliances – and urges children to seek help from a parent or guardian with things like blenders – and one utensil has been banned altogether: the mandolin . Even Quirk is wary of them.

Bittman turned to his audience to prepare visually appealing dishes — like blueberry pasta — and cooked certain ingredients, like sweet potatoes and carrots, for a long time so that the natural sugars shine.

“There are more colors here than we would normally pay attention to. And frankly, there’s more sugar here than we would normally pay attention to,” he says. “We focus on real food and good food, but we take into account that kids are really into sweets and you have to adapt to that to a certain extent.”

Originally published: November 1, 2024 at 3:45 p.m. CDT