Cooking Course in Birmingham is a 'Slow' Hit

For three weeks in January and February Central Co-op Member and Community Relations teamed up with Cathie from St Boniface Church and 'Big Local - Welsh House Farm' in Quinton, Birmingham to deliver a slow cooker cooking course to 10 local residents.

The sessions over a three-week period explored the benefits of using a slow cooker, the cost effective way of cooking on a budget, and basic cooking skills that promote safe and easy food preparation, how to chop, what to prepare, and how to cook healthy nutritious meals.

We started the first session by explaining what was going to happen over the sessions, and what they were going to be doing. during the three weeks participants will prepare the ingredients for Bolognaise Pasta Sauce, Mild Curry, and Sausage Casserole. As slow cooking is a slow process participants prepared the fresh ingredients into take away containers and took home those alongside dry ingredients to prepare the dish at home for themselves and their families. Thanks to the Big Local, those participants without slow cookers, got to take a free slow cooker home with them. During the sessions we talked about safe chopping, how to chop and we helped everyone with their chopping skills with the different fresh items.

Each week after we had prepared the ingredients, as a group we sat together and ate the dish that was prepared, so that they could see what it tasted like, but more importantly allowed people to try things that they were worried about cooking and eating. The item that worried the most, but was liked by all was lentils, and how versatile they can be in cooking.

We also spoke about how cost effective the meals and running a slow cooker is, with the average cost of having a slow cooker running for 6-8 hours working out at around 27p, this compared to a standard kettle that costs around 50p for a 45 second boil!!!

The meals we created that would serve a family of 4 was an average cost of £4.50

Following the sessions we asked everyone for feedback. reading what people had learnt and the improved confidence after attending these sessions was great to see, with overall confidence of cooking going from 5/10 to 8/10

If you are interested in joing our next sessions startin Thursday 1 May 2025, please sign up here https://forms.office.com/e/PMKVWc8756