Practical food skills videos
On this page, you'll find our practical food skills videos. These videos are the need-to-know for your pupils in their food and cooking journeys.
Most of our videos are 'peer to peer' videos, which means that your pupils can watch people like them perform the skills they are about to practise!
These instructional videos cover getting ready to cook, using important pieces of kitchen equipment, knife skills, preparing different ingredients, cooking with heat and making simple sauces and dishes.
To accompany these videos, you can view and download our Practical food skills charts, which identify all of the skills that pupils can acquire, develop and secure, as they progress.
If you are working with pupils who have additional needs, you can also download our skills chart for pupils with additional needs.
If you are a teacher and would like more details on how to teach these skills in lessons, you can use our teacher versions of these videos, which provide more context, plus additional tips and information.
Use the links below to jump to a section:
Getting started
Four videos to introduce getting ready to cook and weighing/measuring.
Getting ready to cook correctly is essential for any food lesson. Ensuring proper hygiene practices are followed ensures that the lesson can run safely and helps to embed these principles.
Weighing and measuring accurately is important for many dishes, particularly those that involve pastries and doughs.
These three videos will demonstrate how to weigh dry ingredients (e.g. flour), liquid ingredients (e.g. milk), and ingredients measured with spoons (e.g. spices).
Using equipment
These videos demonstrate the use of four important pieces of kitchen equipment: Electric hand whisks, hand-held blenders, standing blenders, and food processors.
Safety is paramount when using these pieces of equipment, due to their moving parts and sharp edges (in the blenders and processor). Pupils may also be blending hot foods, so should take care not to burn themselves.
Using these pieces of equipment can also save significant time in classroom settings, rather than using manual whisks, knives or graters for similar tasks.
Preparing ingredients
These videos demonstrate the essentials of preparing ingredients, so they are ready to be used in recipes.
Knife skills are crucial to prepare ingredients safely and in the right way for the recipe that pupils are making.
Ask pupils to watch the videos on the bridge hold, claw grip, and fork secure, so they can understand how to cut safely.
Then, you can use the additional videos to teach about how to prepare specific ingredients that may be called for in a recipe or dish.
Using the cooker
Four videos showing how to use the cooker safely, including draining away boiling water (after boiling on the hob).
Using the cooker safely is necessary to avoid scalds and burns.
Ensuring your pupils know how to use the oven, hob and handle hot water safely will reduce the likelihood of an injury in the classroom.
Using flour
Five videos showing how to rub-in, form a dough, roll out a dough, fold a mixture and spoon mixture into cases.
Understanding how to make and handle different types of dough for different purposes is a skill that will enable pupils to make many different dishes.
If a dough is prepared improperly, the resulting dish can often be disappointing.
Use these videos to teach pupils the basics of using flour to make dough and use it in different ways.
Making a sauce
Two videos showing how to make a white and a tomato sauce.
These two basic sauces can be adapted in many different ways, giving pupils the skills to create a multitude of different sauces.
Practising skills in recipes
Pupils can use the recipes below to practise the culinary skills that they have acquired throughout this video series.
Red meat skills videos
These videos demonstrate different methods of preparing and cooking meat products.
Licence to cook recipes
These videos are from the original 'Licence to cook' series. These recipes are useful for practising the food skills found above.
