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About Us
Reimagining cooking as an essential life skill
Philosophy
Mastery through practice. Skills for a lifetime.
At Junior Kitchen Lab, we believe teaching a child how to cook is a gift that shapes a lifetime. Rooted in Montessori-inspired principles, our approach emphasizes guided independence, hands-on learning, and thoughtfully structured lessons that progress with each child’s growth. Every experience is intentionally designed to build skills step by step, fostering confidence through mastery, repetition, and real responsibility.
Cooking is a powerful pathway to mindfulness, nutrition awareness, and a healthy relationship with food. Through purposeful progression, children learn how food fuels their bodies, why patience and precision matter, and how creativity flourishes within structure. Progress is nurtured, celebrated, and reinforced in every session.
Our goal is to equip children with the tools and confidence to explore independently, practice their skills beyond the lab, and carry these habits into their home and daily lives. Because practiced skills become lifelong foundations.
Founder Story
The heart behind Junior Kitchen Lab
Junior Kitchen Lab was founded by Sabah Muktar, whose lifelong relationship with food has shaped both her identity and her vision for children’s education. With a B.A. in Biological Sciences and ServSafe Manager certification, Sabah brings a rigorous foundation in food science, human nutrition, and kitchen safety into every aspect of the program. Yet her journey in the kitchen began long before formal training.
She learned to cook at the age of ten, guided by her aunt and grandmother, who taught her that food is more than nourishment. It is comfort, connection, and care. The gift of cooking became the way she brought people together, from Sunday chicken and waffles shared around the table to meals prepared with intention that marked milestones and moments of togetherness. It also became a source of healing, with homemade soup delivered to friends during times of illness and food offered as a quiet act of support. Through cooking, she learned that care could be expressed, community could be strengthened, and relationships could be nurtured.
Now a mother of three, Sabah has spent over a decade teaching and volunteering with children through after-school, weekend, and community-based programs. Through this work, she observed what many cultures have long understood, that cooking is an essential life skill woven into everyday education yet often missing from traditional classrooms in the United States.
Junior Kitchen Lab was created to change that. Through a thoughtfully structured, proprietary curriculum, Sabah’s goal is to give children the same enduring gift she received: mastery, confidence, and independence. These are skills that extend far beyond the kitchen and last a lifetime.
