We often think of very young children as being the ones who refuse to eat their 5 a day but with the shocking reports coming to light that a 17-year-old has near reached the point of blindness after only eating chips, crisps and white bread since leaving primary school, it has highlighted that teens and adults also need a push in the right direction to eat enough veg too.
If you’re dealing with a fussy eater and need a helping hand for ideas on how you can hide veg in dishes and snacks that everyone will enjoy, without realising how nutritious they are, then this is the blog for you!
Here are our top ideas for how to hide vegetables in your favourite recipes!
Tomato Pasta Sauce
One of the classic options for smuggling veg into the food of fussy eaters, tomato pasta sauces can be made from scratch using chopped tomatoes or passata with garlic and onion but you can throw in all kinds of extra veg, simmer until cooked through and then blend to disguise all the vegetables and achieve a smooth final consistency.
Carrots, courgettes and peppers are all perfect, flavourful additions to a tomato sauce and will blend really easily once softened.
Chicken Nuggets
Kids typically love chicken nuggets and if you make your own at home, it’s really easy to sneak vegetables in!
Using minced chicken, add salt, pepper, peas, sweetcorn and finely diced carrots before forming into small balls and dipping in egg and breadcrumbs and oven cooking.
Serve with homemade chips or side salad and we’re sure all ages will enjoy them!
Chips
Chunky chips, skin-on fries, potato wedges… We all love chips and they actually provide a super-easy way to disguise some extra vegetables in a meal that all ages will enjoy.
When it comes to making your own chips, mix white potato with sweet potato, carrots and parsnips, cover all in oil, salt and pepper and either oven bake or cook in an air fryer for a super low calorie, crispy finish. You’ll be serving up an extra portion of their 5 a day and we guarantee they will go down a treat!
Crisps
We’ve done a whole blog post with lots of tasty vegetable crisp recipes and these crunchy snacks really are the perfect way to get all ages eating more veg and less processed snacks.
Whether it’s with your lunch, in front of the TV or at a social event, we all love picking on crisps and a simple swap to a vegetable crisp, made using something such as kale, parsnips or sweet potatoes is an easy way to make your snacking game much healthier.
Cakes and Bakes
You may not think sweet treats are going to be the easiest way to hide vegetables but with the development of so many new healthier baking recipes, many of which are gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan, you can now even hide vegetables in your cakes and bakes too.
From chocolate beetroot brownies to muffins with carrots and courgettes in, there’s plenty of ways to disguise vegetables in cake mixture with other, stronger sweet flavours such as chocolate or lemon and no one will ever know!
So, whether your fussy eater is young in age or a little older, these ideas for getting extra vegetables into everyday recipes will be a real helping hand in keeping them healthy and well-nourished – and they taste great too!
