Learners at Landmarks Specialist College have been putting Flavour Bombs, the innovative cooking product featured on Dragons’ Den, to the test in our Nottingham Bistro.
After receiving a selection of samples, our Bistro learners have been experimenting with the spice balls and exploring how they can be used to make preparing different dishes simpler and more accessible.
Flavour Bombs contain the herbs, spices and flavours needed for a dish in a single portion. Rather than measuring out a number of individual ingredients, the Flavour Bomb can be added during cooking, making it easier to follow a recipe and achieve consistent results.
Nottingham learner Riley Atkin was one of the first to give them a try, preparing a butter chicken for lunch in the Bistro.
Working in the Bistro gives learners the opportunity to develop practical cooking and hospitality skills in a working environment. Trying the Flavour Bombs gave Riley another way to practise preparing a meal while following the different stages of a recipe.
Bistro tutor Jules was impressed with how learners responded to the product.
“They’ve been really, really useful to the learners to have a different cooking experience,” said Jules. “The learners, when they used them today, found it quite an easy experience.”
The simplicity of the process was particularly important to Jules, who highlighted how products like Flavour Bombs could make preparing more complicated dishes accessible to learners with additional needs.
“It just means that it’s an easy, accessible way for learners with educational needs to produce a very complex meal, which smells and tastes absolutely delicious.”
Developing independence is an important part of learning at Landmarks, and being able to prepare your own meals is a practical skill that can make a real difference in adult life.
Our Bistro sessions give learners regular opportunities to become more familiar with ingredients, kitchen equipment, food preparation and following instructions. Learners can build these skills at their own pace while gaining experience that can also support progression towards hospitality and catering opportunities.
Products such as Flavour Bombs offer another tool that could support this learning. By simplifying parts of the cooking process without taking away the experience of preparing the meal, they could help make a wider variety of recipes more manageable for some learners.
For Riley, the experiment ended with a freshly prepared butter chicken ready to be served for lunch – and a chance to put his developing Bistro skills into practice.
We’d like to thank Flavour Bombs for sending samples to Landmarks and giving our learners the opportunity to experiment with something new in the kitchen.