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There’s just something about vegetables that doesn’t sit well with most children, but they do need to eat them nonetheless, to get all the nutrients necessary to grow healthy and strong. To make the job of the worried parent a little easier in this regard, here are four ways to cook veggies that your children will actually look forward to eating, rather than seeing them as punishment food!
In This Post:
1. Roast Your Veggies
This one little simple trick makes vegetables infinitely more attractive because they just taste so much better. If you want your kids to have some brussels sprouts, roast them, and the same goes for beets, cauliflowers, and most other root-veggies. What makes roasting such a successful way to turn even the most dreaded of veggies tasty is the fact that it makes them crispy on the outside, but soft and juicy on the inside.
2. Salt and Sweet
Salting your vegetables before cooking them makes them a lot more appealing to the young taste buds and although you might have heard or read somewhere that salt is bad for you, it’s mostly not true for children, or even adults, unless the concerned individuals are suffering from any specific medical conditions where salt consumption is really harmful.
Sometimes, it’s also a good idea to add just a little bit of white or brown sugar to your veggie dishes to make things more appealing for the children. You can use maple syrup or honey instead of sugar but remember not to overdo it. The sweetness is there to just make your children’s vegetables a little bit more appealing, not for masking the original flavors of the vegetables completely.
3. Surround the Vegetables With the Things They Love
Kale with pizza sauce, zucchini in a grilled cheese sandwich, sweet peas in mac and cheese, beans and broccoli in burgers; it’s all about mixing the veggies with the foods that children actually want to eat. Now, don’t keep it a secret that their favorite food contains vegetables that they would not eat otherwise because knowing that vegetables are actually a part of what they love so much will cure a bit of the hatred that all children seem to harbor for veggies!
4. Frying
Finally, we come to the most controversial technique to make vegetables more attractive to children, which is frying them. Admittedly, a sautéed, crunchy black bean cake isn’t the healthiest way for children to eat their vegetables, but it isn’t as harmful as you may have been led to believe either.
The body of a child doesn’t work the same as that of an adult and they can consume at least some fried food without having to worry about cardiovascular problems anytime soon. If you want to see more ideas and recipes about cooking tasty dishes, with or without veggies, you will find a whole bunch of them at Cinnamon Spice And Everything Nice.
After all, one can never have too many recipes down their sleeves for those special occasions or for making just an ordinary day a bit more special.