Kids and vegetables don’t always go together quite as easily as we’d like. End the veggie battle in your favour with these sneaky dinners with hidden vegetables.
The best bit about these veggie smuggling meals? The kids won’t even know!
If your kids are eagle-eyed and can spot a fleck of colour from across the table, use a fine grater to grate your vegetables to ensure they go undetected.
7 Sneaky Ways to Serve Hidden Vegetables for Dinner
1. Chicken nuggets
From Play Bake Smile comes this genius boosted chicken nugget recipe. Filled with chicken, corn, carrot and zucchini, it’s the chicken nugget you don’t have to feel guilty about dishing up to your kid. Tomato sauce not optional.
2. Lasagne
Who can resist a heavenly layered piece of lasagne. It’s both filling, comforting AND one of the best veggie smugglers getting around. My Kids Lick The Bowl has an amazing vegetable smuggling lasagne recipe, serving up to 12 people – that could be dinner for two nights easily done!
3. Spaghetti bolognese
Spaghetti is a firm favourite for many kids and an easy dinner to whip up and let simmer away on the stove top. Annabel Karmel has a fabulous bolognese recipe filled with hidden vegetables. There’s delicious sweet leek, celery, even an apple makes an appearance. Yum!
4. Chicken rissoles
Tried and true in my own kitchen, rissoles are fab for veggie smuggling. Kids usually welcome anything chicken with open arms, so we love this chicken rissole recipe with hidden vegetables from Taste.
5. Macaroni cheese
You wouldn’t think you could hide too much in mac and cheese but you’d be surprised! Creamed corn or sweet potato puree make great additions to this favourite. Check out this loaded up macaroni cheese recipe from Julie’s Eats And Treats.
6. Pizza
Even if your kids only love a cheese or ham and pineapple pizza, you can still sneak some serious vegetables into it. Kristine’s Kitchen shows us exactly how to make a delicious vegetable filled pizza sauce, so the kids are none the wiser.
7. Hamburger
Much like rissoles, you can add all manner of vegetables to a burger patty with little detection. Grated zucchini and carrot are usual contenders but this recipe from Buzzfeed includes broccoli. Who would even think to do that? A must try!
8. Meatballs
Winner, winner meatball dinner! Meatballs, tomato sauce and loads and loads of melted cheese makes for the perfect Friday night dinner. There’s two opportunities for veggie smuggling here – first the meatball mixture and then that beautiful tomato sauce. Head to Kitchen Sanctuary for all the recipe details.
9. Shepherd’s pie
Topped with fluffy mashed potato, the scrumptious meat filling of shepherd’s pie hides a multitude of delicious vegetables. Pumpkin, carrot and celery make this pie delicious, yet are barely anywhere to be seen! Find the recipe at Taste.
Happy vegetable smuggling! Looking for more ways to get some veggies into your kids? Try cooking up a kid-friendly Mexican feast!
