Souper stuff! Pupils turn homegrown veg into a winning recipe

CHILDREN from a county primary school have shown their culinary skills by winning a national competition.

The Year 3 pupils from Booth Wood Primary School in Loughborough – all seven or eight years old – won a national soupmaking competition which was judged by MasterChef finalist Simon Spooner.

After lockdown, Miss Jessica Knowles (the class teacher) and Mrs Roper (teaching assistant) decided the children needed a project to unite them and build on their teamwork skills.

Miss Knowles said: “We are all new to gardening, but decided to be ambitious and grow tomatoes, potatoes, radishes, rosemary, carrots, kale and a pumpkin. This inspired our soup recipe as we wanted it to be all made from home-grown vegetables.

“The whole of the Year 3 class worked collaboratively to maintain, harvest and water the garden on a regular basis. So far, we have made our own potato salad, soup and the children have suggested making a rosemaryflavoured bread!”

When it was competition day, the children wanted to stand out from the crowd and so made their soup over an open fire pit in their forest school area.

“As a class we were inspired from our learning in our history topic as we have been researching the Stone Age. The children felt that cooking by a fire would simulate what it was like in the palaeolithic period and wanted to wow the judges, especially Simon.”

A joint quote agreed by the children said: “We loved every minute of this competition, especially cooking outside in our forest school. It was a great experience – we can’t believe we won! This has inspired us to go back to our school garden and grow some more vegetables for the summer. We will go on I’m a Celebrity next!”

Some of the Year 3 pupils involved, with staff enjoying the fruits (well, veg) of their labour of love are pictured above.