SCHOOLHOUSE Mobile Kitchen Project

AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAM RECIPES

Hands on cooking classes invite young chefs to explore and be creative in the kitchen. Your student will bring home what they cooked in their class to share with you. They are so excited about what they made!

We encourage you to ask them about their class, describe the techniques they used, the ingredients in the recipe and more.

The recipes below are chosen to inspire you and your family to continue the culinary exploration at home. They are perfect for young chefs to explore a variety of cuisines, practice their new cooking techniques and build upon as they learn and practice. Enjoy!

(Recipes below are not identical to those that we use in class as they are scaled for our timeline, group cooking activities and mobile kitchen adaptations. The recipes shared here are intended for family use in a home kitchen.)

Good Food Experience 2024-25

Black Bean Croquettes

Crispy and flavorful snacks packed with protein, fiber and fragrant spices. Black beans are native to the Americas, cultivated by indigenous people for thousands of years. Black beans are also called: turtle beans, caviar criolla and frijoles negros.

Asparagus & Butterflies (Farfalle) Salad

This creamy asparagus pasta salad is the perfect side dish for a spring potluck, summer BBQ, or a simple meal prep idea for healthy lunches. It’s full of bright green color, loaded with veggies, and covered in a rich and flavorful lemon ricotta dressing.

Johnny Cakes with Homemade Honey Butter

Buttermilk is, quite simply, fermented milk.
It’s made up of water, milk proteins, milk sugars (lactose) and a small amount of fat (about as much as low-fat milk). When butter was made at home, the buttermilk was left out overnight to ferment and thicken on its own.

Banana Bread Granola

Mixing up your healthy breakfast routine can be a challenge. Instead of reaching for the sugary cereals or granola bars - make a batch of this! It will keep for over a week in a sealed jar… if it lasts that long.

Orrechiette with Peas and Parm

Making homemade orecchiette pasta could not be simpler and it requires no specialty equipment.
This pasta’s name comes from its shape - they look like “little ears”! They are perfect scoops for a creamy cheese sauce with peas.

Apple Cinnamon Matzo Brei

This is a traditional breakfast eaten during Passover by Jewish people. It can be sweet like this recipe or savory with the addition of veggies. It’s a popular recipe with our students!

Colcannon

Young chefs will peel potatoes and chop them for the Irish mashed potato “mash up” that also includes greens and scallions. We’ll learn the dish’s origins as well as hear a traditional Irish song about Colcannon.

Energy Bites

These delicious snacks are endlessly customizable! Our instructors offered dry fruit, crushed graham crackers, pretzel bites, and more. What combination will your family come up with?

Fattoush Salad

UIC Dietetic Intern and food blogger, Noha, shares that, “I love encouraging my children (and adults!) to eat as many colors from the rainbow in each meal! The rainbow of colors means you are getting a rich variety of phytonutrients, vitamins, and minerals important for your health by boosting immunity and fighting free radicals.”

Ful Mudammas

Ful mudammas is a famed Egyptian breakfast recipe as far back as the fourth century where the beans were buried over gentle embers to slow cook – 'Mudammas' means buried in Egyptian. Yet today it is enjoyed throughout the Middle East, from Sudan to Syria, Israel and Yemen.

French Toast Sticks

Made with simple ingredients, these delicious treats are both easy and fun to make and teach several important cooking techniques.

Patatas Bravas

Patatas bravas are a classic Spanish dish that was created sometime after 1542 when the Spanish conquered the Inca empire and tubers became a more common food in Europe. The dish originates from Madrid where it became widely known as fried potatoes served with a spicy tomato sauce.

Valentine's Donuts

These adorable little donuts are perfect for seasonal celebrations. Kids will love making them as much as they like eating them!

Garlic Naan

This delicious bread is so fun and easy to make and is the perfect snack or side dish to dips, soups and stews. Originating from over 2,500 years ago, naan, today identified as a leavened indian flatbread, traces its history back to old iran or persia, where the word “naan” referred to bread baked on hot pebbles.

Long Life Noodles

Happy Lunar New Year! 🐉🧧🍜

Longevity Noodles (yī miàn, 伊面), also known as yi mein or e-fu noodles, symbolize long life and can always be found on the banquet table at Chinese celebrations.

Swedish Pancakes

This simple and easy to make batter yields delicious and tender thin pancakes similar to crepes. In Sweden they are served with lingonberry or other berry jam on top with a dollop of cream or yogurt.

Tofu Lettuce Wraps

A delicious, savory filling is seasoned with asian ingredients and stir fried. The filling is served in crispy, cool lettuce wrappers for a yummy snack with lots of flavor and texture.

Edible Cookie Dough

A fan favorite recipe that also inspires a conversation about food safety. What’s your favorite type of cookie? Can you create edible cookie dough in that flavor? Or can you create your own flavor?

Moroccan Veggie Couscous

Chopping veggies and measuring spices will introduce young chefs to bright flavors and colors that make this dish the perfect meal for a cold wintry day.

Foccacia Art

Focaccia is a simple yeasted bread enriched with lots of olive oil that gives it a rich flavor and crispy crust. Young chefs enjoy decorating their focaccia with fresh veggies and herbs to create a beautiful design!

Skillet Granola

You can make small batch granola with the kids and let them create their very own recipe with their favorite flavors and mix ins like nuts, seeds, fried fruit coconut and chocolate chips. It’s a delicious high fiber snack on top of yogurt or in a baggie in their lunch box.

Tortilla Art

Homemade corn tortillas are a lot of fun to make and you don’t need any special equipment! While we use tortilla presses in our classrooms, you can also make them at home with a heavy bottomed pot. We used several colors of masa to make these tortillas even more beautiful and creative!

Soba Noodles Stirfry

Kids love noodles! Let's change it up a bit by adding a delicious sauce and fresh veggies with flavors from Asian Cuisine like Ginger and Garlic.

Baked Apple Cider Donuts

These delicious donuts have all of the warming spices of Fall and are so fun to make! Young chefs enjoy all of the measuring and mixing. You can purchase inexpensive silicone donut molds online to make these at home.

Zucchini Fritters

The process of making fritters is engaging and rewarding for both kids and adults. Start by shredding and draining the zucchini to remove excess moisture. This step not only keeps little chefs occupied but also helps enhance the fritters' texture.

Tres Hermanas Tacos

Learning about culture and tradition through food is so much fun with this recipe. Students learn about The Three Sisters my making yummy tacos with corn tortillas, zucchini and black beans. Read more about the agricultural tradition of Native Americans from resources from The Food Literacy Center.

Broccoli Cheese Risotto

Creamy rice, cheddar cheese and bit sized pieces of broccoli make this dish a winner with kids. If your child is wary of eating veggies try pairing them with something they already enjoy like rice and cheese! This concept is called "chaining" in feeding therapy and it works well to introduce kiddos to new foods.

Johnny Cakes and Homemade Honey Butter

The process of making fritters is engaging and rewarding for both kids and adults. Start by shredding and draining the zucchini to remove excess moisture. This step not only keeps little chefs occupied but also helps enhance the fritters' texture.

WINTER RECIPES 2024

Miso Ramen

In this class our young chefs will learn how to build flavors using asian ingredients to flavor a warming, savory broth for instant ramen noodles.

French Toast Sticks

Made with simple ingredients, these delicious treats are both easy and fun to make and teach several important cooking techniques.

Black Bean Croquettes

Kids will enjoy smashing up black beans with fragrant spices to create these yummy treats. Forming the croquettes and rolling them in bread crumbs before pan frying will be a new technique for many young chefs!

Wonton Soup

We’re making homemade dumplings to celebrate Chinese New Year. Young chefs will love making their own wontons from scratch as the ginger scented broth simmers for our soup. Happy New Year!

Birthday Cake Pancakes

Let’s celebrate! Kids will love mixing up a pancake batter with colorful sprinkles. We’ll talk about how we celebrate our birthdays with special food traditions as we enjoy our stack of birthday pancakes together.

FALL RECIPES 2023

Chilaquiles

This dish is full of familiar ingredients: tortillas, eggs, cheese, black beans and we included some extra veggies and greens for good measure. Kids can practice chopping veggies and cracking eggs while adults can manage the cooking. We used salsa verde in class but you can make these red or green. Perfect for using up leftovers in the fridge for a quick meal!

Donuts

Young chefs love making this recipe. It’s a lot of measuring and mixing which helps them practice. For our offsite classes we use donut makers but you can make these at home in the oven with an inexpensive silicone donut mold. The recipe includes different ideas for toppings. The possibilities are endless and delicious!

Pasta Salad with Lemon Vinagrette

Most kids love pasta and when we pair that familiar food with some crunchy veggies and a vinaigrette, they are much more likely to be open to trying it (and liking it!). Pasta salad can be made so many ways but we love the lemony vinaigrette in this recipe. Whisking is so much fun, too!

Crepes

Mixing and measuring and learning how to make homemade whipped cream make this recipe so much fun. Crepes seem like a difficult dish to make but when we use proper technique, we can achieve anything in the kitchen!

Handmade Pasta

Pasta is so fun for kids to make! It’s really quite simple, too, once they get a feel for it. Our Chef Instructors teach our young chefs how to use a hand crank pasta machine but you can use a rolling pin at home to create thin sheets of pasta that can be cut into any shape you like. Enjoy!

Taco Soup

Kids love this soup for it’s taco flavors and spoonfuls of beans and corn and… all of the toppings. Make your own taco seasoning at home for this soup (recipe linked) or simply buy some to make this hearty taco night soup with your young chef.

Chana Masala

Our students love exploring ginger, garlic and the many spices that flavor this chick pea and tomato stew. Young chefs take turns using the mortar and pestle to grind all of the seasonings into an aromatic paste. It’s so fun and entices them to be open to new flavors.

Veggie Fried Rice

This recipe invites kids to explore veggie prep and how to create a balanced sauce for the fried rice. They enjoy chopping, measuring, peeling, mixing and more. It’s an endlessly adaptable recipe and uses up what you have on hand.

Apple Sage Stuffing

Using fresh garden herbs, aromatics and tart apples, kids learn how to layer flavors in this recipe. Maybe you’ll want to include this in your holiday cooking this year and have your young chef recreate their dish!

Vegetable Marinara Polenta

Nothing is more comforting that a warm bowl of polenta. Young chefs will chop + dice veggies for a delicious marinara sauce to top their creamy polenta in this skill building cooking adventure.

Latkes + Applesauce

Young chefs love making this recipe as much as they enjoy eating it and learning about the Hanukkah celebration. You’ll want to try this recipe at home with your family!

Peppermint Chocolate Mini Donuts

Kids will enjoy mixing and measuring their donut batter, crushing candy canes and making a frosting in this baking workshop that yields delicious holiday treats.