Cooking Merit Badge

What this page is

The Cooking merit badge, laid out so you can see what has to happen before what. It is not a copy of the requirements: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.

How a merit badge is earned at all (the unit leader, the counselor, the blue card) is a separate page, How to Earn a Merit Badge.

The same five steps, three times

Requirements 4, 5 and 6 are the body of this badge, and they are the same shape:

1. Plan a menu.
2. Find the recipes, write the shopping list, work out the cost.
3. Show it to your counselor and talk it through.
4. Cook and serve the meals you planned.
5. Have the people you fed evaluate them, and evaluate them yourself. The order is not a suggestion. Requirement 4(d) asks you to cook *from the meals you planned*, 5(d) using your menu plans and recipes for this requirement, and 6(d) from the menu planned for this requirement. A menu written after the cooking is not what any of them ask for.

Three things the badge says that are easy to miss

They sit in an unnumbered note above requirement 1, which is exactly why people scroll past them.

The three menus must be different. Requirements 4, 5 and 6 need three distinct sets of meals. You cannot cook the same dinner three times and count it three ways.

These meals count for this badge only. They may not also be used for rank advancement or for another merit badge, and meals you cooked for those may not be counted here. This is a deliberate exception to the usual rule that one activity can satisfy more than one requirement.

If you cannot legally light a fire, say so. Where local regulations forbid it, the counselor may adjust the requirement to fit the law. That is provided for in the badge. It is not something you have to negotiate.

Where you choose

Requirement 7 asks for one of a careers investigation or a hobby investigation. The question above the plan narrows it to yours. Answer nothing and you see both, marked as steps that may not apply.