As ever with parenting, one anxiety is swiftly replaced by another. A-level results in? Tick. University place confirmed? Tick. And how are they going to cope away from home? Visions of all the things you should have taught them about the big wide world parade before you, taunting you with the lack of time left before they head off into the vast and cavernous unknown.

Or at least they did with me, when my teenagers flew the coop. I knew they weren’t totally incompetent in the kitchen, but would they remember to assemble the occasional healthy and nutritious meal? Would their tight budgets stretch to decent food as well as rent, bills, books, and a social life? Did they know what to do if they sliced into a finger instead of a courgette? Or burnt the toast, obscuring the kitchen in a cloud of acrid smoke?

Undercooked chicken, scurvy, mal-nutrition, anorexia, burnt saucepans, food-theft, food-poisoning, allergies, faddy diets, beans-on-toast and frozen pizza diets. Nightmare.

And that’s before the thorny issue of cycle helmets, making the loan stretch to the end of each term, impending debt and decent shoes. Every family’s list is individual, but the core issues aren’t so very different.

Learning to cook with some degree of confidence before heading off to Uni is an essential.Some young people are already stir frying and casseroling with ease, but for many, fending for themselves in a world of new faces, and places and demands will be rough. Hunger is a driving force, and it’s all to easy to run for the cheapest quickest options. Chips and the university canteen will quell the pangs so easily, but for us parents that’s not much of a comfort.

And that’s why we (Sophie’s Cookery School, www.sophiescookeryschool) have scheduled a brace of cookery evenings aimed at giving teenagers basic techniques and recipes. Just enough to reassure mum and dad that they can at least tick one thing off their anxiety list.

Many halls of residence have only minimal cooking equipment – hobs, microwave, relatively small cupboards and fridge but no oven. So, with that in mind our first Off to Uni class (Thursday, September 9) will focus on dishes that can be cooked on the hob, for one or two people only, or that can be reheated thoroughly the day after they are made (and yes, we’ll go through all the safety issues). So we will start with how to chop an onion properly and without blood, and move on to a range of simple tomato sauces for pasta, vegetables, even soup, handling and cooking chicken safely, and of course, we’ll big up the humble and cheap egg. Along the way there’ll be tips on shopping on a budget and food storage.

The second Off to Uni class (Friday, September 9) will concentrate on shared cooking, hopefully with a trusty oven for roasting vegetables, or even a real lasagna, made from scratch. We’ll cover simmering up a classic white sauce, and how to fry minced beef or lamb for a curry or meatballs. Other dishes may include a chunky Tuscan bean soup, or a warm spiced mackerel and potato salad, or American Sloppy Joes.

As with all our classes we will wind the session up by sitting down together and sharing the food we’ve just cooked. Full recipe and techniques information is emailed out shortly after the class.

So, whilst none of us can guarantee that our youngsters will be cooking fabulous gourmet dinners for themselves once they settle into their new surroundings, at least they should be able to keep themselves decently fed. Attending a cookery class is an amazing kitchen confidence booster. A little knowledge is, in this case, a fantastic thing, creating a can-do approach to cooking that will last them for the rest of their life. And parents, the great thing for you is that you can then tick one more thing off your list of pre-Uni anxieties. Job (partially) done.

www.sophiescookeryschool.com