SubscribeMe & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook
I enjoy grilling meat and vegetables during warm weather and do it as often as possible. I’m a devotee of using charcoal, preferring the flavor and scent it gives the food rather than the convenience of gas-powered grills. When we moved to North Carolina, I felt as if I lost a buddy when I gave away a charcoal grill I had owned for more than 10 years. It still had a bit of life but not enough to go through the effort of hauling it several hundred miles.
My daughter has been a sort of helper over the years, hauling some items from the kitchen to the grill and back so that I could manage the fire and tend the food. That changed a couple days ago when she had her first cooking lesson in grilling. Of course, the work started a day earlier when we rubbed a spicy Jamaican jerk seasoning into skinless turkey drumsticks and chicken breasts and let it marinate overnight. Eventually, I’ll show her how to make homemade marinades.
For a few months now, I’ve been on a mission to teach my 15-year-old daughter to cook. I’m also using the classes to sharpen and broaden my culinary skills. My nearly 80-year-old mother is helping –she’s going to teach my daughter how to make biscuits next month. I’m also using “Martha Stewart’s Cooking School” cookbook, which has instructions on everything from poaching to stewing.
While the charcoals were getting hot, I told my daughter about direct and indirect heat and how to use it while cooking different types of meat. We talked about flare-ups, caused when fat drips onto the coals. I shared a technique that someone told me years ago: Take the meat out of the refrigerator so that it reaches room temperature before placing it on the grill. This helps the meat cook more evenly.
I had a hard time trying to explain to my daughter how to know when the chicken and turkey was ready to come off the grill. I tend to undercook some meats because I usually prepare enough to last several days. (Who wants to go through all the effort of grilling and have only enough food for one meal?) That way, when the meat is used in a stir fry or another recipe it doesn’t dry out.
Overall, things went well but there will be plenty more lessons on grilling vegetables and seafood. It took my daughter a while to become comfortable using the tongs to flip the poultry and she dropped a piece of chicken on the ground when transferring it to a platter. I put a few ears of corn on the grill and sliced up some tomatoes from our little garden. It was a simple, delicious summer meal.
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I am a member of the Sandwich Generation, a Baby Boomer raising a teenage daughter and dealing with the needs of an aging mother. I am a veteran journalist, having worked for more than three decades as a reporter and editor. Mostly recently, I was an editor with the Metro section of The Washington Post.
