Young Chefs of Seattle is a cooking camp for middle and high school aged children located in the Green Lake neighborhood of Seattle. Founded by Monica Hinckley, it has been in operation since 2002.  Camps are Monday through Friday, from 9:00am – 3:00pm, and the occasional weekend camp during the school year. All of our classes are completely hands-on and every young chef has an opportunity to prepare every recipe. Chefs work in groups of 2-3, rotating through 3 cooking stations per day. Each chef receives a t-shirt and a personalized Chef’s Handbook for participating in the class.

There are two sessions to choose from during the summer camps: Cooking 101, and Ethnic Cuisine. Both are week-long camps that end with a dinner party for parents, served by the campers. and they all go home with their own personalized cookbook. Cooking 101 offers instruction in the basics: breakfast, lunch, dinner and sweets, while Ethnic Cuisine focuses on different regions of the world with a field trip to Uwajimaya on the last day (chefs must complete Cooking 101 to be qualified to join the Ethnic Cuisine classes).

In addition to preparation and cooking skills, campers learn:

how to read and follow recipes,
the fine art of creating accurate grocery lists,
how to decipher nutritional and pricing labels to be a savvy shoppers
expert knife skills,
culinary terminology, and
proper plating and serving etiquette

We also offer some weekend sessions over the Veterans Day Holiday: Thanksgiving Desserts, Mid-Winter Break: Mother’s Day Brunch, and Spring Break: Father’s Day Bar-B-Que.

If you do not live in the Seattle area, you are welcome to explore this site to find recipes that are written and designed with kids in mind so that they can cook independent of you and will no longer say, “Mom! I’m hungry.”