Kids tea ideas please

[sweetheart]

Quite often dh and I will have something for dinner that the kids won't eat. On these days they end up with something like nuggets / pizza / kiev etc. Trouble is all these things are served with chips and I don't really like giving them chips more than twice in a week. Can anyone recommend meals I can make them that I won't have to spend hours prepping just because they won't eat what we are having?

I don't serve those things with chips necessarily:
pizza with garlic bread and salad.
chicken with mashed potatoes and peas.
bakes beans etc.

I make mash in big lots and freeze it flattened in ziplock bags, then I can snap off what I want and heat in microwave. Very quick!

Freeze kids size portions of things?

I like to freeze mash potato into fish/star shaped ice cube trays, then put them in the oven as needed. The kids like them and they cook really quickly.

Pasta? That's always quick especially if you have small portions of sauce frozen.

Salmon and rice
Pasta and meatballs
Plain Chicken/ steak/ fish with any veg or salad.

All take 10-15 mins max

microwave baked potatoes with beans and cheese.
fish fillets pan cook from frozen and go with lots of accompaniments.

Have you tried the frozen paellas that they sell in the supermarket? It has become my fall-back easy option.

They won't eat fish - which is why dh and I sometimes eat it without them. They also won't eat mash. Freezing smaller portions would also mean I'd have to do some batch cooking at some point which I don't really have time for. I do give them cut up veg stick but they wouldn't really eat a salad as a side dish type thing - god they are fussy aren't they!

put pasta / rice / couscous on the side instead of chips. Or half a baked potato. Or mini new potatoes. Pizza's mostly dough so you don't need another carb with it - we do it with carrot / cucumber sticks and a corn on the cob.

Gnocchi and pesto

Spaghetti and sauce

Quesadillas (two wraps with cheese, ham etc inside pan fried then cut into triangles with salad.

Jacket spuds.

Breaded chicken

You don't need to batch cook especially, just if you make say bolgnaise one might make a little extra and freeze leftovers

You can parboil a bag of mini new potatoes, serve some, then stick the rest in a bag with a little bit of oil (when cool) and freeze them. They just need 20 minutes in a hot oven to warm up.

Things like spag bol freeze well - it's not really a case of sitting down to batch cook, it's more making a lot more when you do make it.

Nuggets with salad sticks, fish fingers with baked beans/spaghetti hoops and mash, jacket potatoes go with anything, rice....

They sound like mine. When we are not eating with them I do often default to "X and chips" but often replace the chips with potato wedges - just cut up the potato into wedges, oil them up a bit and shove them in the oven.

Other easy teas they have are baked potatoes, special fried rice, wraps which they make themselves (I just put some out of hummus, grated cheese, tuna, ham, sweetcorn, diced cucumber, grated carrot etc and help them roll it up). Chicken nuggets that are chicken breasts cut into nuggets, dipped in egg and then dipped in crushed cornflakes.

They also really like "pillow pasta" (ravioli) which I do with a vegetable and grated cheese, or shaped pasta (eg space shapes) with tuna and tomato sauce although they don't really like the tomato sauce.

If they like egg you could do omelettes but mine won't touch it.

Eggs are your friend. Boiled with soldiers, scrambled, omelettes, fried, poached - takes less than five minutes.

I agree homemade wedges are really easy-either normal or sweet potato.

Rice and giant cous cous also goes down well here, esp if cooked in a bit of stock. Can add peas/sweetcorn etc..

Oh yeah, French toast. DS loves that.

Also a 'packed lunch tea' - similar to Laura's wraps, just bits of crackers and cheese and cucumber, yogurt, whatever's around.

ooh, French toast - or eggy bread as we used to call it - had completely forgotten about that! Hurrah, a way of getting eggs into them!

Thanks all - unfortunately egg's is not a big hit either lol

I've ordered some savory rice, cous cous, spaghetti hoops, fresh stuffed pasta and fresh pasta sauce so we'll see how they get on with those thanks.

We often have jacket potato's as a family for tea but could try giving them half with other dinners and also love the quasidilla idea - think that will have to be tried on a night where we're all eating the same though Sounds too good to give just to the kids lol

Guess I'd just become stuck in a rut with their dinners.

a hit here (and it isn't very foodie!) is a packet of the microwave rice (cheap in aldi/lidl) and then add peas and sweet corn some left over roast chicken/chopped ham/salami/chorizo and you have a meal!!

Instead of chips do wedges, potato but also carrots, sweet potato, parsnips.

Pizza doesn't need anything with it and if you do put something then salad is fine of fruit to follow.

You don't need to batch cook to freeze a child's portion. If you do something like a shepherds pie just put some of the meat in a oil container, add the potato, cool and freeze while the rest is cooking.

The same with a roast dinner, just dish up an extra plate's worth of food in to tupperware or foil. I find foil cartons better because they go from freezer to oven.

Have you tried them with sweet potato mash? No mashing required. Stick a sweet potato in the microwave for 2 mins, turn it over and give it 2 more, then cut it in half and squuze out the contents - put a tea towel between the SP and your hand to stop it burning.