Cooking Mama: A Great Introduction to Cooking for the Kids

Cooking Mama is a series of games created for the DS and Wii. The object of the game is for the player to prepare foods then combine the ingredients together as you cook them on the stove.  The recipes that they player is expected to recreate are real and can be cooked in real life as well. The game play is very easy to learn and my girls really enjoy playing it.

I got this game for my girls a few years ago, at their insistence since I thought it was a pretty silly concept for a game. However, I must confess that I have been pleasantly surprised to see just how much their “work” as a junior chef in Cooking Mama has spilled over into our cooking forays as a family. By playing the game they understood the mechanics and concept of dicing vegetables, sauteeing meats, grating, peeling, chopping, etc. And I have to admit they do a good job of it.

Here’s a brief description of the Cooking Mama games:

• Cooking Mama for the DS has 76 recipes already inside, but you can also create your own recipes and share them with your up to four of your children’s friends.
• Cooking Mama 2 has 80 recipes for foods including shark fin soup, ice cream and seafood salad!
• Cooking Mama: Shop and Chop you get an additional 80 recipes as well as experience learning to shop for produce and how to pick the freshest fruits and vegetables. This version also timed cooking challenges to decide who’s the fastest chef.
• Cooking Mama Cook Off is the only Cooking Mama game for the Wii. It introduces international cuisine from 10 different nations, 250+ foods to create 55 real world dishes from places like Spain, Germany, India, Mexico and more.

In the Cooking Mama games for the DS, when you are instructed to dice a vegetable you tap the screen with your stylus and the food is diced perfectly letting the child see exactly what the finished product should look like. If you put butter into a pan to melt and you leave it in too long it burns.  Also, as they “cook” their food you can see the changes that happen. For example, if you are frying french fries, the potatoes will change colors from white to brown as they cook.  After you’ve completed your recipe, Cooking Mama grades you and you can earn bronze, silver, and gold medals from Mama based on the quality of your cooking. I just wish part of the game play involved cleaning up the kitchen with you’re through!

So, for all those parents out there that are skittish about having young children in the kitchen, here’s a good training program to help them gain a few skills and learn a lot about food preparation in a safe (and clean) environment. Through the repetitive and realistic play kids can  develop many good cooking habits and get an understanding about how recipes and cooking works. A worthwhile and educational game to rent or buy for the kiddies. And the recipes contained within the games are very tasty when prepared in a real kitchen too!