The Shelby County 4-H Council identified culinary programs as an excellent way to engage local youth and teach them important skills that they can use throughout their lives.  Good habits, new skills and practices taught at an early age tend to become routine and adopted practices as adults.  

Shelby County 4-H offered a four part cooking series to educate youth on important culinary skills, food safety principles, and the use of local foods.  The course included recipes, cooking methods and food safety guidelines for chicken, pork and beef.  The final session was held at the University of Kentucky’s Food Connection Kitchen where a professional chef helped the 4-Hers create a succotash using locally grown and purchased vegetables.

All of the 4-H members practiced important skills such as reading recipes, proper measuring techniques, food safety practices to prevent cross-contamination,  safe cooking temperatures, knife skills,  and kitchen safety.  Evaluations conducted at the end of the program revealed that one hundred percent of the 4-Hers had increased their knowledge and had practiced new skills that they had learned.

Prior to the program, over forty percent of the participants did not know what it meant to use local foods or currently used them in food preparation at their homes.  At the conclusion of the series, all of the youth indicated that their family had used local foods to make meals in their homes.