Gen X and Y Better Cooks than Boomers?

When assessing their own cooking skills from fair to excellent, age and years of cooking experience don’t necessarily translate into a higher skill level in the minds of U.S. homemakers.

That’s according to The NPD Group, whose recently released Kitchen Audit 2011 study finds that 60 percent of homemakers age 25-34, and 57 percent of homemakers age 35-44, rated their cooking skills as very good compared to 50 percent of homemakers age 45-54, and age 65 and over, whom also rated their skills at that level.

NPD’s Kitchen Audit, a survey conducted every three years by NPD to determine what food ingredients U.S. households have on hand and what appliances, cookware, and utensils they own, and to assess usage and sources of recipes, reports that only a small percentage of homemakers, across all age groups, rated their cooking skills as excellent. The highest percentage of homemakers, 16 percent, rating their skills as excellent was in the 55-64 age group, and the lowest percentage, 10 percent, was in the 25-34 age group.

“Food and appliance manufacturers use Kitchen Audit primarily for product development and recipe development,” said Dori Hickey, NPD director of product management, whose team conducts the Kitchen Audit. “They will consider the homemaker’s cooking skills self-assessment when developing recipes and future product and marketing strategies.”

Other findings from NPD’s latest Kitchen Audit study include:

- Four in 10 respondents use a recipe once a week or more to make any kind of dish.
- A cookbook owned for more than two years is the top recipe source. One percent of respondents use a recipe from a mobile phone app once every two to six months.
- 20 percent of households own a pressure cooker.
- 55 percent of households have cheddar cheese “on hand now.”

NPD’s Kitchen Audit is based on reporting by a nationally representative sample of approximately 2,700 U.S. households.

The NPD Group is the leading provider of reliable and comprehensive consumer and retail information for a wide range of industries, including automotive, beauty, entertainment, fashion and food.