Alex Thompson, 15, has been helping out in the kitchen for so long that she can’t even remember when she started learning to cook. A self-described foodie, Thompson credits her interest in food to her mother’s boundless kitchen creativity, alongside a love of Food Network’s cooking competition shows.

“Chopped was always playing on the television when I was younger and I’d always tell my mom, ‘This is what I would make with those ingredients,’” says Thompson. “She has never given me a box of ingredients like that, but I was always thinking about what I would make.”

These days, Thompson draws a lot of meal inspiration from social media. “If I see something that looks really good while I’m scrolling, I’ll do more research to find the recipe for it and try to recreate it at home,” she says.

But finding the recipe is just the first step. Thompson says she’ll fixate on a dish for weeks at a time—sampling it repeatedly and making adjustments here and there. “I can think of three recipes off the top of my head that show that I’ll find a dish and kind of obsess over making it for a while,” she says. “Recently, it’s been smash burgers and this really good chicken dish. Now, it’s a really simple salmon. I guess I get super focused on one dish and then make it until I get sick of it.”

Thompson insists that no kid is ever too young to start learning how to cook and that starting early helps to develop a child’s interest in food. “I mean, maybe don’t give your 5-year-old a butcher knife,” she says, “but you can give a little kid a vegetable or something to rip apart into smaller pieces.”