Teach your students about cooking through experimentation. Bring a random selection of ingredients to each cooking class. Include fruits, vegetables, carbohydrates, sauces, spices and sweet things. Challenge your students to create something using the ingredients available. If they have time, they can make two or three things. At the end of the class, let your students sample each other's creations and discuss what tastes, textures and food types combine together well. This type of cooking class enables students to come up with tasty foods each day with whatever they have in the refrigerator and pantry.
Pick a different cuisine for each class. Teach your students how to create a Chinese meal in one class, for example, and a French meal in the next time. If you have students from different countries, give priority to those cuisines. Show your students episodes from cooking shows that incorporate these different cuisines.
Have your students supply family recipes that have been passed down from their parents or grandparents. Select a different recipe for each class, teach the class how to make it and give credit to the student who supplied the recipe. Choose a recipe for an appetizer one class, an entrée the next and a dessert in the third. Over a period of time, the class will learn how to cook a complete meal, and your students will have shared their special recipes.
Organize your cooking classes according to the seasons. Teach your students how to make light salads, barbecued meat and cold desserts like sorbet or milk shakes during the summer. Pumpkin pie, homemade applesauce and mashed potatoes are appropriate in the fall. Make eggnog, latkes, glazed ham, yams and pecan pie around the holidays in December.