How many of you cook your evening meal from scratch every night?
I would hazard a guess that it won’t be many of you and as research from Jamie’s Ministry Of Food shows this sadly the case for many of us.
In fact a huge 1 in 5 adults rely on takeaways and convenience food due to a lack of knowledge in cooking skills and a whopping 1 in 10 have never cooked from scratch.
For me one of my favourite lessons at school was home economics and was actually the only A I got at GCSE.
It was an outlet away from the more academic subjects that I never thrived in and it certainly gave me a great knowledge of food preparation and nutrition that has always stayed with me.
Sadly in many schools this is not on the timetable at all now and 7 in 10 people feel the rise in takeaways and convience food has been greatly affected by this.
This makes for a vicious cycle of parents then not having the knowledge to pass down to their children creating a nation with little knowledge on food at all.
I was shocked to find that 1 in 5 can’t boil an egg, a quarter struggle to cook rice and a third of the people asked lack the skills to correctly cut an onion.
For these reasons Jamie’s Ministry Of Food has got together with Hotpoint to create a fantastic teaching kitchen that is setting up in the towns where obesity and diet related illnesses are at a high.
I was asked along to have a lesson at the truck earlier this week in Selhurst, South London.
I arrived in the car park of Crystal Palace Football Club which seemed like a pretty strange place to be learning to cook.
The truck was nothing liked I expected and was in fact a spectacularly kitted out set up with high tech appliances from Hopoint and plenty of natural light to make for a fantastic area to learn new skills.
Although I would say I’m a pretty confident cook my repertoire has become pretty limited due to cooking for a large family with limited time.
To be honest the majority of my meals are prepared from scratch but I’m a bit of a one pot fan and I was hoping this lesson would open my eyes to creating something new for the family.
Any nerves I had about starting the session were soon quashed when the super friendly chefs introduced themselves and started the afternoon.
Our mission was to prepare a beautiful dish of salmon teriyaki from scratch which is one of my favourite meals but something I’ve not tried to create mysel.
Each step was shown to us and then as we went through the process ourselves there was plenty of experts on hand to help out at any stage.
I learned some great tips on food wastage and an entirely new way to cook rice that I will be trying out at home!
Children as young as 7 can go along to take part and I think this would be the perfect way to introduce little ones to the exciting world of cooking and sparking off something that could turn into a real passion for them.
The truck is in Selhurst until 16th June and you can book your slot HERE for free.
It is then moving onto Bristol, Middlesborough, Sunderland and Liverpool.
There is then an exciting opportunity for one community to win the chance to have the truck come to your town.
All you need to do is post a picture on social media showing members of your local community such as a youth group or scout troop holding wooden spoons.
Simply let them know the name of your town and why they are deserving and is the hashtag #cookforchange.
I would love to know if you decide to visit the truck and if you do what you think!