This week in the Kids Kitchen, we made Rainbow Pasta Salad! This colorful, nutrient-rich recipe makes it easy for kids to get excited about cooking and eating an assortment of veggies.
In this lesson our students learned the basics of boiling water and moist-heat cooking methods. Kids were also exposed to a wide variety of vegetables and some introduced to certain veggies for the first time! Kids Kitchen cooking classes encourage hands-on learning and active participation through each step of our recipes.
To make our Rainbow Pasta Salad, each student began by chopping a variety of bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, celery, cucumbers, tomatoes, and spinach. Meanwhile, selected students helped fill up pots with water, added salt, and brought it to a boil. We used a naturally color tri-color rotini packed with spinach and tomatos for our pasta noodles. During
the 9 minutes it took to cook the pasta to an ‘Al-Dente’ texture, students began making the Red Wine and Maple Vinaigrette dressing, where they learned about emulsions and the chemical reactions that occur when cooking. We tossed tender pasta together with
everyone’s chopped vegetables in the same pot used to cook pasta and mixed in the dressing. At first several students seemed a bit uneasy about certain items that were going into this recipe, however after chopping and mixing together all of their veggies and pasta, they became very excited to try this dish! The pasta salad was finished with a sweet and sour, herb filled dressing which was definitely a crowd-pleaser. All of our students raved about how delicious this pasta salad was and some even said it was the best pasta dish they have ever tried! The FAQ of the day was; “Chef Katelyn, Can we have more?” accompanied with a big smile!
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