Kitchen Classroom 2021: Week 19

This week’s edition of Kitchen Classroom features Cooking for You. Using only a few ingredients, kids can make homemade Buttermilk-Ranch Pita Chips to enjoy on their own or use to scoop up their favorite dip. The recipe comes from our latest cookbook, The Complete DIY Cookbook for Young Chefs! This week’s Learning Moment is all about anagrams: How many words can your young chef make using the letters in Buttermilk-Ranch? Then, kids can learn the interesting history behind ranch dressing in Take It Further.

Don’t forget to share what your family makes by tagging @testkitchenkids or using #ATKkids on Instagram, or by sending photos to kids@americastestkitchen.com. Visit the America’s Test Kitchen Kids website for more culinary content designed especially for kids. 

Here’s what’s cooking for the week of May 10th through May 16th, 2021.

This beginner-friendly recipe takes America’s most popular dressing flavor out of the dip and onto the chip! Kids can make these pita chips as an after-school snack to enjoy on their own or with the dip of their choice—yes, even ranch! Kids can substitute whole-wheat pita bread for plain pita bread, or use vegetable oil or melted butter instead of the olive oil depending on what you’ve got on hand. (P.S. Ranch-averse kids might enjoy Plain Pita Chips or Chili-Spiced Pita Chips instead—see “Food for Thought” at the bottom of the recipe for more information.)  
[GET THE RECIPE]

What You’ll Need
2 (8-inch) pita breads
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon packaged buttermilk-ranch seasoning powder

Learning Moment
Language Arts (Vocabulary):
As the pita chips are baking, kids can play an anagram word game using the letters in the recipe title. Explain to kids that an anagram is the rearrangement of the letters of a word, name, phrase, or sentence into a new word or phrase. (Exact anagrams use all the letters in the given word, but you can also make words using just a few of the letters in the given word.) Ask kids: How many unique words can you make using the letters in the words buttermilk, ranch, and Buttermilk-Ranch? What is the longest word you can spell? If your young chef(s) get stuck, here are a few examples to get you started.

Take It Further
Social Studies (Culture, History):
Ranch is America’s favorite dressing by a long shot. Today’s ranch is a little different from the original recipe, which was mixed up fresh instead of being bottled like the ranch dressing you can find on grocery store shelves now. While they wait for their pita chips to cool, encourage kids to imagine where the flavor might have come from, or why it’s called “ranch.” Ask kids if they can guess some of the ingredients they taste in the buttermilk-ranch flavoring on their chips (you can check the ingredient list on the packet to see if they’re right!).

As they enjoy their chips, kids can find out more about the man who created the original recipe for ranch dressing by watching this quick video.

Catching up on Kitchen Classroom? Find previous weeks using the links below:

• Kitchen Classroom 2021
• Kitchen Classroom 2020