Turn Up the Heat

When teaching food safety, Erik focused on concepts most applicable to everyday life. Students learned how to thoroughly wash their hands, the correct temperature at which to cook different types of meats, how to keep leftover food safe, and how to organize a refrigerator to minimize the risk of foodborne illness. Throughout the lesson students were able to reflect on experiences in their own lives, such as helping older family members prep food for a meal or getting sick from eating mishandled food. Did you know that frozen food should be defrosted in the refrigerator instead of on the counter? This was something even a few of the teachers and aides learned from the lesson!

To transition from the lesson to the cooking activity, students took turns reading facts about cranberries, from how they are grown to how to choose cranberries at the store. They were then able to show off what they’d learned about food safety by taking turns scrubbing their hands before heading into the kitchen.

Between deseeding hot peppers, chopping carrots, and dicing onions, there were lots of cooking tasks to go around! The students took turns practicing with plastic safety knives to prepare the produce before simmering it in a large pot of water to soften. Once everything was cooked, Erik demonstrated how to use an immersion blender, having the students take turns adding spices and blending the hot sauce. The strong scent of apple cider vinegar made several students nervous about the finished product, but when one brave student tried the hot sauce and declared it to be good, the rest of the class followed suit in sampling the tasting!