Mealtime with young children can get complicated very quickly Maybe your kids are great eaters but are working on their ability to stay in their seats. Maybe your kids are super picky. Maybe everyone's bored of eating the same thing every night. Raddish, a cooking club for kids, could be an answer to all those problems and more.
In my house, we're a little of everything. My 5-year-old has a lot of opinions about what she eats, the 21-month-old is stuck in a food-throwing phase, and we're all working on sitting still a little bit longer.
Raddish looked appealing as a way of setting some boundaries for my daughter (kids eat what they make, people love to tell me) and getting everyone engaged enough during the meal that we'd quit wiggling a little. For the purposes of this review, Raddish provided me with a complimentary code to order a single kit.
Raddish offers themed boxes filled with classic recipes, cooking tools and tips, and small gifts. It came as a surprise to me that their boxes do not actually include the ingredients for each recipe, but they do offer a consolidated and easy-to-use shopping list.
You can order a single themed kit of your choice, which is great for gifting, or receive a surprise kit each month by signing up for one of their three subscription options: monthly ($24/kit), six months ($22/kit), or one year ($20/kit). Shipping is free within the US.
When you sign up for a subscription, you can also opt for additional materials, including an extra tool and decorative patch for siblings ($5 per child), an apron in your first kit ($15 for monthly subscribers, free with 6- and 12-month plans), and a recipe binder ($20). Each surprise themed kit is pegged to a season, a global cuisine, creative science- or imagination-based cooking, or a holiday. The themes do not repeat, so you will always receive a unique kit.
It took some digging through the Raddish website to find the single kits to purchase. I had to navigate to their shop where I could choose from a few select offerings, which currently include a Taste of Thailand and Hometown Diner. Additional materials for siblings can't be added to these kits.
We ordered the Cosmic Cuisine kit, which is no longer available for purchase. The following week we received a small brown box in the mail. Inside was a veritable treasure trove of items designed for kids roughly 4 to 14 years old: three trifold recipe guides, an envelope that held a decorative patch, conversation starter cards, a bonus activity, a grocery list, and a comprehensive summary of the skills and connections a child can develop when cooking.
The highlight, though, was the special cooking tools: two pancake molds, shaped like a star and a moon. The molds were for the Galactic Pancakes, and our other two recipes were Meteor Meatballs and Planetary Pasta Salad.
The website extends the bounty even further. You can find dietary modifications for gluten-free and vegan meals, Spotify playlists, and corresponding lesson plans for each box. But beware — Raddish's proclivity for materials also means an onslaught of emails with even more related tips and tricks.
Overall, we spent a lot of time looking over each piece in the box. This may be challenging for some families, depending on how many kids you have and how much time you can dedicate to dinner. For us, it was time well spent talking about tools, kitchen safety, and outer space.
We started with the fancy pancakes to breathe a little life back into a go-to meal: breakfast for dinner. Everything in the recipe guide is illustrated, and my big kid followed along easily. The little one got his own bowl and spoon to play along with since we were using raw eggs.
Between the fun pancake molds, the on-theme conversation prompts ("What would you take on a trip to the moon?"), and the random assortment of jokes and facts throughout the materials, it was one of our liveliest and longest dinners in quite some time.
Even our single kit encouraged a ripple effect of skill development. Both kids have continually loved playing pretend with what they now call their "menus." They use the guides to find matching tools and ingredients in their play kitchen and make up elaborate scenes by tapping into what they learned during our real meal prep and dinners. I can also hear the big kid gently correcting how her younger sibling holds his pretend knife, so I know she's processing the safety skills that Raddish prompted.
My chief hesitation about investing in a Raddish subscription is that it's rather pricey. For maybe $25 more a month, most food-related subscription services will actually include the ingredients, saving you the time and stress of going to a grocery store. However, this is not the point of Raddish, which is more about encouraging quality time and your children's skill development in the kitchen.
Raddish serves up a family-friendly, colorful, and intuitive system for encouraging kitchen confidence and the skills that come with it. The Raddish kit my children and I tried provided a lively, educational mealtime experience. That said, signing up for this type of service may not be practical for every family.
Raddish does offer inclusive alternatives, like recipe guides for pantry staples you'd already have in your home. You could also encourage more kitchen involvement with a child-friendly meal prep set, or even just by breaking out an old recipe box together to see what ideas and conversation transpire.
Pros: Facilitates family engagement, self-confidence, and math, science, and social skills
Cons: Pricey, ingredients not included
