Toddler Meal Ideas

[FizzyDucks]

Having graduated from the school of baby purée food, I am struggling to move up to simple nutricious Toddler meals for my 14 month old that don't require me to slave away at the cooker everyday.

I smugly got the hang of the purée stage quite quickly and managed to batch cook/freeze so it never really felt like too much extra work to give my ds healthy, interesting meals. My ds eats like a horse and I want him to experience as many textures and flavours possible but don't want to be slaving away cooking for him each day.

My partner and I eat quite late in the evening and I do try adapt our main meal for ds to eat the next day but not all meals lend themselves to this. I would therefore appreciate simple recipe ideas that I can batch cook and freeze so so can whip out of the freezer when the need arises.

Thanks all.

---

Landed on this thread in your search for toddler ready meals? Check out the new Little Explorers range, created by Iceland and Mumsnet.

Hope this helps! MNHQ

Cauliflower mac and cheese -
boil pasta with half a head of cauli
put cauli in a blender with a good handful of cheddar cheese, 100ml milk, bit of butter and some dijon mustard. Blitz.

stir in pasta and some peas, top with breadcrumbs and bake for 15 mins.

NHS weaning recipes were what saved me here. Over one week I'd batch cook in portions of four, serve one and freeze the rest and then wouldn't need to cook for a month.

https://www.nhs.uk/start-for-life/baby/recipes-and-meal-ideas/

Simple, mild curry sauce. I make a big pan of it then freeze it. Bring it out and mix with meat, fish, veg (sweet potato and cauliflower work well) and rice. I make it very mild with blitzed veg, stock, coconut milk and a tiny bit of curry powder. Always been a hit.

Thanks!

I have all these ingredients at the moment so will give it a whirl. Do you think it's freezable?

This is exactly how I tackled the purée phase with batch cooking so will have a good look at the website. Thank you!

Thank you. This sounds yummy enough for me to eat too!

My DD loves slow cooker recipes as they are soft and easy to watch plus I like them as there is little effort.
We all eat the same thing together but they often would work to freeze and reheat too.
She likes chicken casserole, lentil Dahl and chicken curry.
I do a lot of recipes from the taming twins a website

I’ve never frozen it tbf - but the sauce does keep in the fridge for a day so mine has it 2 days in a row haha!

@FizzyDucks DS is now 3 and I still keep a stock of batch cooked meals in the freezer for him for nights when DH and I are not eating at the same time as him for whatever reason 😊

I usually have:

• bolognese
• chilli (either beef mince/Turkey mince or veggie)
• curry (usually chicken or sweet potato, spinach & chickpea
• beef stew
• satay (usually chicken or beef)
• fish pie

As I use the last of each I put them on our meal plan for the following week and just make a double batch when I’m cooking dinner - feed me, DH and DS and then freeze the rest into individual DS portions 😊

I just lift one out of the freezer in the morning and by the evening it’s ready just to heat up and stick on something quick to go with it like pasta, rice, potatoes, sweet potato, toasted pitta etc.
If pasta/potato etc I’m also guilty of cooking more than what I need for that day and DS will have the rest with whatever he has the next night 🤷🏻‍♀️

The slow cooker! It seems so obvious now you have said, I don't know why I didn't think of it before!