Cooking is an essential life skill, empowering us to make changes that benefit our health and wellbeing. Our Home Cooking Skills courses aim to give every young person the basic skills and knowledge to be able to cook for themselves in a healthy, cost-effective way, as well as gain the confidence to share these skills with friends and family.

Learning to cook used to be passed down through the generations, but these days many of us lack the knowledge or skills to cook from scratch. Instead, we rely on pre-prepared or ready-cooked food, a major cause of the obesity epidemic affecting our nation’s health.

This engaging course aims to change all that. For some, it may be the start of a career in cooking; for others, it will help them to learn the basic skills and recipes that will help them to make healthy choices throughout their lives.

You will learn essential knowledge and skills such as:

• Kitchen basics: what equipment you need and the best way to stock your store cupboard, fridge and freezer
• Food safety and hygiene: knife safety, fridge management and rotation
• How to shop cleverly: shopping lists, seasonal food and planning ahead
• Preparing ingredients and understanding confusing food labels.

Home Cooking Skills includes two single-unit BTEC qualifications, one at Level 1 and one at Level 2.