6 Easy Multicultural Recipes to Make with Your Kids

One of the best ways to introduce culture and language into your home is through the kitchen. Everyone learns to love something that is the source of delicious meals and snacks. Whether your children are learning another language or just stretching their linguistic wings, cooking is the perfect time to explore the globe through language. 

Cook together and pick recipes from all over the world. Talk about the origin of recipes, why people cook the way they do in other cultures. Then name each ingredient in the language of the people who invented it. From toddlers to teenagers, cooking together is a great way to learn. Let's take a look at six multicultural recipes that are easy enough to cook with kids and will bring language to your kitchen.

Spanish: Soft and Crunchy Tacos

Everyone loves a delicious meal of tacos. Crunchy or soft, spicy or mild, tacos are the ultimate in hand food. Kids love tacos and most kids are crazy about taco night. Make it even more special by putting tacos together as a family and naming each ingredient in Spanish along the way.

Ingredients

• Ground Beef

  • Carne molida

• Seasoning

  • Condimento

• Lettuce

  • Lechuga

• Tomatoes

  • Tomates

• Shredded Cheese

  • Queso rallado

• Crunchy Taco Shells

  • Tacos crujientes

• Flour or Corn Tortillas

  • Tortillas de harina o maiz

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F

2. Pan-fry the ground beef (or other meats) until browned and fully cooked.

3. Chop lettuce and tomatoes

4. Lay foil on a cookie sheet. Place crunchy shells and soft tortillas, line each with cheese along the fold.

5. Place the sheet of shells and tortillas in the oven.

6. Add taco seasoning and 1-2 tablespoons of water. Let the water cook down and infuse the meat with flavor.

7. Remove the shells and tortillas, then distribute them onto plates. 

8. Load each taco with meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and a sprinkle of cheese.

French: Mini Breakfast Quiche

Quiche is one of the most simple and delicious French recipes in your cookbook. It's really very simple: Quiche is an omelet pie. If you can make a delicious omelet with your kids (or just delicious scrambled eggs) then you can make a delicious quiche. Explain the strange name and explore the French names for each ingredient as you put them together.

Ingredients

• Pastry Dough (optional)

  • Pate a patisserie

• Eggs

  • Des oeufs

• Milk

  • Lait

• Cheese

  • Fromage

• Diced Protein

  • Proteine en des 

  • Ham, Bacon, Feta, Tofu, Scallions, etc.

• Chopped Vegetables

  • legumes haches 

  • Mushrooms, Spinach, Tomatoes, Onion, etc.

Directions

1. Preheat the Oven to 350 F

2. Grease a muffin pan and line each cup with pastry dough. This can be pie crust, premade dough, or croissant roll dough.

3. Sprinkle in meat and vegetables into each cup

4. Fill each cup with egg

5. Top each cup with cheese

6. Bake 25-30 minutes

German: Deviled Eggs - Gefüllte Eier

Deviled eggs are hard-boiled eggs with a creamy kick. In fact, most families don't realize that this Easter classic has deep roots with the German people. They have a unique name for the recipe and introduced sprinkling paprika onto egg-yolks mixed with mustard. If your kids love to make deviled eggs, turn this treat into an all-year recipe by practicing the german names for each ingredient.

Ingredients

• Eggs

  • Eir

• Mustard

  • Senf

• Mayo

  • Mayonaise

• Salt and Pepper

  • Salz und Pfeffer

• Paprika

  • Paprika

• Optional

  • Dill or Sweet Relish

  • Tartar Sauce

  • Sour Cream

  • Onions

Directions

1. Hard-boil the eggs, give them an extra few minutes to boil quite-hard.

2. Peel each egg and slice it in half, longwise.

3. Scoop the hard yolk from each egg, carefully keeping the egg whites from breaking

4. Mix the egg yolks with mustard, salt, pepper, and mayo or a mayo substitute. Mix additional ingredients if preferred

5. Re-fill egg whites with deviled egg mixture

6. Top with sprinkled paprika

Irish: Shepherd's Pie

Shepherd's pie is filling and nutritious in a way that only very practical traditional foods can be. Stacked with all the good things a meal needs in one dish, kids love shepherd's pie. You can't go wrong with beef, mashed potatoes, and cheese. Enjoy the traditional recipe and Irish names for ingredients or mix it up and look up the Irish words for anything you add.

Ingredients

• Ground Beef

  • Mairteoil Talun

• Peas, Carrots, and Corn

  • Pisaenna, Caireid, agus Corn

• Onions

  • Oiniuin

• Worcestershire Sauce

  • Anlann Worcestershire 

• Seasoning

  • Seasue

• Mashed Potatoes

  • Bruitin

• Cheese

  • Cais

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 F

2. Brown and break up ground beef in a pan

3. Fry chopped vegetables with the beef. Add Worcestershire sauce and seasoning to taste.

4. Load a casserole dish or muffin cups with beef-vegetable mixture

5. Top casserole or cups with mashed potatoes

6. Sprinkle with cheese

7. Bake for 30 minutes

English: Hand Pies

Every culture has hand-held recipes and in the UK islands, the favorite is definitely hand-pies. For children practicing English, explore the names of pastry dough, and name the fruit in the filling. Talk about street vendors singing about their pies and how hand-pies are an important part of traditional life in both rural and city England.

Ingredients

• Pastry Dough

• Fruit Filling

• Meat Filling

  • Cooked and minced

• Butter

Directions

1. Preheat Oven to 

2. Shape dough into flat circles the size of a spread-out hand

3. Add 2-3 tablespoons of filling to the center of each dough circle

4. Fold each dough circle in half and press the edges together

5. Brush the tops with butter, line pinched crusts with foil

6. Bake for 20-30 minutes

Japanese: Sushi (Philadelphia) Rolls

Sushi is the single most recognizable meal from Japan and something every kid can enjoy. Both a refined entree and a healthy finger-food, practice Japanese with your children while rolling your own sushi rolls.

Ingredients

• Short Grain White Rice

  • Sushi to Gohan

• Seaweed Sheets

  • Nori

• Fresh Raw Salmon

  • Furesshusamon

• Avocado

  • Abokado

• Stick of Cream Cheese

  • Kruimuchizu

Directions

1. Cook 2-3 cups of sticky white rice

2. Slice thin strips of sushi-grade raw salmon

3. Slice equally thin strips of avocado

4. Lay out one sheet of nori seaweed on a bamboo rolling mat

5. Distribute an even layer of sticky rice over the nori

6. Lay salmon in a line down the center of your rice, same direction as your bamboo mat sticks are pointing

7. Lay avocado in a line next to the salmon

Kid's Craft: Create a Cherry Blossom Festival Bento Box

cherry-blossoms-at-jefferson

There are few surer signs that spring has arrived than the lovely pink blossoms that mark Cherry Blossom Festivals around the world. In Japan, families celebrate the arrival of spring with hanami, which means “viewing flowers” parties that celebrate the blooming of the country’s numerous sakura, “cherry blossom trees”. For families, this means bringing picnics and bento boxes, an assortment of small tasty bites, usually with a nod towards what’s fresh and in season, to eat under the flower-laden branches.

If you’re lucky enough to be in Washington DC in spring, the National Cherry Blossom Festival runs from the end of March through mid-April and you can witness of the cloud of pink that surrounds the Tidal Basin from the 3,000 trees that were a gift from Japan in 1912.

Or, you can take a look at Japan’s official Cherry Blossom site, which offers a fascinating glimpse of the country’s cherry trees as they bloom. 

Even if you don’t have the fluttering flora near you, you can still celebrate spring flowers with an outdoor garden picnic and our fun, kid-friendly bento boxes featuring “sandwich sushi” that’s sure to have your kids saying Un, oishii! or “Mmm, it’s good!”

SANDWICH SUSHI

What You’ll Need

• * Soft square sandwich bread
• * Any of the following spreads:
• -Nut butter
• -Jelly
• -Hummus
• -Spreadable Cheese (ie, cream cheese, Neufchatel, Laughing Cow, etc)
• -Butter or butter spread

Then add crunch if you’d like:

• *Pepper slices
• *Carrot sticks
• *Celery
• *Cucumber
• (The sky’s really the limit here!)

Roll it all together:

1. First, slice the crusts off the bread so that you have a perfect square
2. Then, using a rolling pin, flatten bread
3. Choose a spread or two and thinly layer on the bread
4. Choose a “crunch” if you'd like and place horizontally along the top edge of your spread bread
5. Now roll from top to bottom until you have a log, then slice in 1/3 inch rounds

Take your sandwich sushi and place in cupcake liners in a square or rectangle plastic container. Fill empty spots with other liners filled with bites of fruits, veggies, sweets or cheese. Tabeyou! (Let's Eat!)

Little Pim Bento (pb&j sushi, cheese spread & orange/yellow peppers, hummus & red/yellow peppers, hardboiled egg with a pepper happy face, berries)