How To: Flip Food
Duration: 
30 Min
Contributor

The Edible Schoolyard Project
Berkeley, CA

Summary: 
Have you watched chefs on TV effortlessly flip an egg or pancake without using a spatula? Do you want to be able to do that and impress your friends with your skills? In this lesson, you’ll learn how to flip food in a sauté pan and reflect upon how you learn new skills.
Student Learning Goals & Objectives: 
  • Understand and practice the basics of flipping food.
Download Lesson Materials
Teaching Notes: 
  • If students are completing this lesson as part of the kitchen curriculum, Cooking with Curiosity: Challenging Perfection with Reflection, this lesson is 3.1, the first lesson of Unit 3.
  • This lesson encourages students to practice flipping with rice or popcorn kernels as a means of low stakes practice. Flipping a cooking egg or pancake is more difficult and also more stressful as a mistake would mess up the end product. Practice with rice or popcorn kernels also avoids the risk of burning themselves with hot food while learning a new fine motor skill. This lesson provides practice for students to build their motor skills and muscle memory before attempting to flip hot food. This practice sets them up for success when it matters.
  • Some lesson plans are formatted as a fillable PDF so that students can answer the questions and return the document as if it were a worksheet. We recommend testing this functionality with your technology as it varies by device and operating system. If it does not work for you, consider using a google form or having students answer the questions in a new document and submitting their answers to you that way.