While Young Chefs has a lot to offer to educators, including an extensive curriculum and a range of teacher resources, the organization has long lacked resources designed exclusively for students. Web-based resources are now playing a larger role in education than ever before, giving people of all ages access to new knowledge, irrespective of geographical location and other constraints. With this in mind, the Young Chefs advisory board has created a virtual learning lab where students across the globe can download and interact with all the resources they need to improve their culinary skill and scientific literacy — through simple kitchen experiments.

Specifically, our website now features lesson plans specifically designed for students. These lessons are adapted from our extensive educator lessons but focus more on the hands-on experimentation as opposed to teaching methods and detailed discussion of scientific concepts. Each lesson contains brief information about the relevant science, followed by a detailed experiment that leads to a delicious edible outcome. Currently, students can learn about protein denaturation through pancakes, solubility of liquids through salad dressing, diffusion through tofu, and many more scientific concepts. We are currently developing even more student lesson and hope to provide our full physical science and life science curriculum directly to students in just a few weeks.

In addition to student lesson plans, we have developed a comprehensive guide describing all the necessary kitchen tips and tricks that you will need to get started. We hope that this document will remove any barriers for first-time learners.

We are excited to add this development, which is just a small part of our recent efforts to create a worldwide network of educators and learners interested in food science education.

Stay tuned for more!

Student carefully making delicious chocolate sauce in New Haven, CT