Pupils will learn to cook for an hour a week for one term. Poorer pupils' ingredients will be subsidised.
Cookery is a ministerial "expectation" but, as an optional part of the design and technology curriculum, is not currently taught in all schools.
The move is part of the strategy to tackle obesity, as experts believe 1m children will be obese in a decade.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families says that about 85% of secondary schools do offer cookery in some form.
It wants those schools to make the change immediately, and the rest by 2011.
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