Virtual Cooking: Teaching Rudimentary Cooking Skills

If you've ever loved cooking but hated the mess, would you ever consider cooking through a video game instead?

Cooking video games now abound in the gaming industry. From cooking video games on the Nintendo DS and PSP, cooking games are also available via online gaming sites. Cooking video games are not only engaging, but they are actually quite educational as well.

The great part about cooking video games is that they give the emphasis on the precision of the measurements and processes of cooking. This gives the gamer an understanding that in real life, in order to make chocolate chip cookies just like Toll House or Chips Ahoy, you have to have the oven exactly at that temperature, and the ingredients tossed in the bowl at those exact weights and measurements.

Other than the precision, cooking video games also help emphasize the importance of certain oft-neglected ingredients like salt and spices. While a bored and jaded gamer may just click through everything in routine motions, if a gamer actually pays attention, he or she gets to understand the essence of using every single ingredient on the recipe list. Hopefully, the gamer gets to understand that even the littlest details count, and would make the dish complete.

More on the skill of measurements, cooking video games also help in letting the gamer understand the difference between the teaspoon and the tablespoon, and the weight of why 1 cup of sugar should be used for a particular recipe, instead of 2 cups or just half a cup.

Another skill that cooking games pose to develop is the skill of substitution. There are some ingredients in a recipe that can actually be substituted for a similar item, and would actually make the dish even tastier at times. If a gamer pays attention to that detail, he or she learns one secret of top chefs: knowing how to substitute ingredients in a recipe.

While these skills taught are not exactly as close to real life as they should be, these are quite well-taught as basics in cooking video games. It is only up to the gamer if he wants to absorb these skills or not.

The best part is that cooking video games engage the mind and help a gamer learn, as well as entertain him. The bad part is that the reward of executing the process perfectly is just a level up or a score. Unlike in real-life cooking, where one gets to taste the actual product of executing a cooking process perfectly, video game cooking just gives you virtual rewards for a job well done. Either way, you can surely while the hours away by learning how to cook on your Nintendo DS, PSP, or even through Y8.com.


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