Alex Thompson proves that kids can be just as obsessed with food as adults

Alex Thompson, 15, has been helping in the kitchen for so long that she can’t even remember when she started learning to cook. A self-proclaimed foodie, Thompson credits her interest in food to her mother’s endless kitchen creativity and her love of Food Network’s cooking competition shows.

“Chopped “When I was younger, it was always on TV and I would always tell my mom, ‘This is what I would make with these ingredients,'” Thompson says. “She’s never given me a box of ingredients like that before, but I always thought about what I would make.”

These days, Thompson gets a lot of his meal inspiration from social media. “When I see something that looks really good while I’m scrolling, I do more research to find the recipe and try to make it at home,” she says.

But finding the recipe is just the first step. Thompson says she fixates on a dish for weeks, trying it repeatedly and making adjustments here and there. “I can think of three recipes off the top of my head that show me finding a dish and obsessing over making it for a while,” she says. “There have been some great burgers lately and this really good chicken dish. Well, it’s a really easy salmon. I guess I really focus on one dish and then do it until I get tired of it.”

Thompson insists that no child is too young to start cooking and that starting early helps develop a child’s interest in food. “I mean, maybe you don’t give your 5-year-old a butcher knife,” she says, “but you can give a little kid a vegetable or something that he can tear into smaller pieces.”