Quick healthy meals that kids will eat for parents short on time!

[Tiredtom]

Please give me your best meals that you cook for your young children that do not take much time and are nutritious!

I work full time and so does my partner so I don’t have much spare time to meal plan or do a considered food shop. It all feels a bit all over the place if I’m honest and I’m embarrassed to admit I don’t know ‘how to cook’. I grew up in a diet of fried chips and butties and even now my diet is awful and I’m trying my best to make sure my child’s isn’t!

Please give me inspiration with failsafe meals that a) don’t take much time to cook, b) that are healthy and balanced and c) and probably most importantly that your child always eats!!

Thank you in advance!

How old are they? Picky?

She is 3. 4 in a couple of months. She is picky but I want to try to offer her a variety regardless as I think that is where I have gone wrong with just not offering her things she has refused in the past. Thank you!

Why don’t you use this as an opportunity to improve your diet too by sitting and eating with her.

as for food….
at this age the usual fare of spag Bol, lasagne , scrambled eggs on toast, grilled chicken mixed with pasta and cream cheese, salmon shoved in oven for 15 mins and served with sweet potato fries

always serve veg. Even if just a little portion of carrot and cucumber

What’s her current diet?

My 4 year old likes soup and a sandwich, eggs and soldiers with sausages, pesto pasta, spaghetti bolognese, fish fingers, wraps with different fillings. I serve a bowl of chopped fruit and veg with each of these. Usually things like cucumber, grapes, peppers, strawberries.

Soups I make at the weekend and freeze. Favourites are chicken, cheese broccoli and cauliflower, leek and potato.

If you don't already have an air fryer you should get one! They're fantastic for quick meals

First step is that every single meal and snack has a fruit or vegetable served with it. No exceptions. Including your meals and snacks. Eaten with relish and enjoyment (even if you are faking it).

Second step is to think of; healthy fats, protein, (mostly complex) carbs and fruits and vegetables. So chicken and veg stirfry on noodles. Pesto pasta (we make pesto and freeze it in ice cube trays). Porridge with fruit and nuts. Just think, ‘does this have all the bits?’ And add them if it doesn’t.

If you need quick and easy, eggs and porridge rather than frozen and take away.

I do think you need to plan really. It Can feel overwhelming to begin with but is a time saver in the end. I get my food shop
delivered too which I think really helps.

I enjoy feeding my kids well. I do tend to make extra and freeze Things. Eg I’ll cook all the potato and freeze left over mash for another day. I make a big tomato sauce and freeze ready to use it in bolognaise, curry, pasta bake. If I do a roast chicken, I can make this in my air fryer in an hour. Ill
use the left overs in fried rice the next day (microwave rice, peas any left over veg and egg - all in one pan too and takes ten minutes tops!). gammon would be used up in pasta / omelettes and in toasties.

jacket potato are quick and easy and can serve with lots of different toppings.

Also was about to say make fried rice out of leftover rice. Add in a couple of eggs, veggies and a handful of chicken, and stir in some sesame oil and soy sauce. My kids ate this, even on their fussy stage. They loved a few battered calamari chopped up on top of there was no chicken.

Another vote for baked potato. Most people pop it in the microwave but I still use the oven. I like it because its so low effort. I can shove it in at some point late afternoon and forget about it while I get on with something else or have a rest if I'm tired or unwell. Then when they're hungry I serve with cheese and cucumber.

The airfryer does the same in a third of the time! A potato definitely has to be baked (or air fried!) - definitely not microwaved

If you ever have time to batch cook, it’s much easier to give a nutritious, home cooked meal another day when you’re short on time!
We always have a selection in the freezer including things like curry, chilli, cottage pie, casserole and some sort of homemade pasta sauce/pesto frozen into ice cubes.
If we’ve not defrosted anything then jacket potatoes, homemade pizzas (usually on a wrap) with cucumber, beans or veg, or omelette tend to go down well. If I’m really disorganised, I try at the very least to get together a protein, a carb and a vegetable. Then it’s usually fruit and yoghurt for afters.

Brocolli and pesto pasta with grated cheese was always a winner for mine at that age

Macaroni cheese. Batch cook and freeze cheese sauce. Boil macaroni and stir hot defrosted sauce through ( I never put them in oven to crisp top just serve it). Add peas etc if you want

Egg fried rice:

Make a three egg omelette.

Then,
Chop and fry an onion for five mins.

Add two cups cold cooked rice to onion. Good splash soy sauce/ and or liquid chicken stock. Stir. Put lid on. Mix thoroughly.

Add a handful frozen peas. Mix. Lid back on.

Chop omelette into small pieces. Add to oan stir through to heat.

Kids love it. Can also add small diced cooked chicken, ham, bacon, leftover sausage etc etc

Spag Boli (include veg or blend in to sauce)
jacket potato and beans
tuna pasta
salmon, mash and peas (also chicken)
omelette
beef stew

Start using your weekends to batch eg tonight have chilli con carne for dinner (obviously low on the chilli heat!) with rice and salad. Make a huge batch and freeze the rest in family size portions - at least 3. On Sunday have a roast chicken. Then Monday night a bag of stir fry veg, leftover chicken and noodles, another night chilli again.
if you have a slow cooker my (v fussy) kids love the batch lady sweet potato Dahl. This can be prepped and just dumped in the slow cooker before work. You can serve it with mini naans from the supermarket done in the toaster when you get home. Another quick and easy my kids love is pasta, tuna, sweetcorn mayo which I would serve with cucumber/tomato. Then how about fish finger wraps one night - again plenty of salad - and jacket potatoes with baked beans, cheese and salad. That is a week of easy dinners. It is not perfect and does rely on some processed food, but it is realistic and nutritious.
It is hard - I used to love cooking but trying to plan and cook nutritious food for my kids on a daily basis does suck the joy out of it! Long time I advise 1. Meal plan, 2. Batch cook at weekend (try to make your Saturday dinner something you can make and freeze 3 potions) and 3. Ensure 1-2 dinner in the week are super easy (jackets and beans/eggs and toast/fishfingers)
Good websites to start meal planning - The Batch Lady; Taming Twins; BBC Good Food (this last one can be a bit overwhelming in quantity of recipes so maybe start with the first 2!)

Sausage pasta:
Cut sausages into small pieces (like mini meatballs) and fry in a little oil until golden. Add a clove of garlic and cook for another minute. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes. Add herbs/salt/pepper to taste and simmer for 10 minutes. Put the pasta on at the same time you add the tomatoes.
To make it healthier you could add chopped peppers/onions/courgette and a tin of cannellini (or other) beans. Frozen chopped veg would probably work well.

https://rebeccawilson.com/recipe/hulk-mac-n-cheese/

This is my go to quick recipe which both my kids love. It's even better if you add a bit of garlic granules and some powdered nutmeg to the sauce to up the flavour.

I normally chuck some chicken drumsticks on the air fryer then served them shredded on the side with some broccoli.

Don't you think that healthy meals are important enough to make some time for?

You don't have to make a huge effort to cook a healthy meal.

But seeing food as something 'quick' that you do in your spare time says to me that you have some of your priority wrongs.

It might not be a popular opinion but I think Brits and their kids would be so much healthier if they understood better the importance of decent nutrition like people in places like France, Italy or Spain do...

@summerskyblue can meals not be both quick and healthy some days?

It's great to take more time over recipes when you can, but the reality of juggling work and raising kids means that there will be some days when you want meals to be bothered quick and healthy. Clearly OP does think it's important otherwise she wouldn't have asked!

Even working full time you should be able to allocate some time to food. Try for 2 weeks meal planning and shopping and cooking.

You could get an easy healthy kids meals book out the library pick out 7 dinners and lunches and just do those. It will give you a sense of how you can do this going forwards. Stick the plan on the fridge.

Sadly it doesn’t look like the OP was all that keen to engage 🤷‍♀️

I find BBQ salmon and rice and homemade chips handy too and it gets salmon into my son. I get BBQ seasoning. Mix it with a little olive oil, water and brown sugar to make a marinade. Drizzle it over the salmon and cook in the air fryer. I make homemade chips from clean baby potatoes. I don't bother peeling them, just chop them into chips/wedges, a drizzle of olive oil and stick in air fryer. Sweet potato fries are lovely with it too

I always keep child size portions of veggie pasta sauce, chilli (meat version and beans version), bolgneses, mac & cheese etc in the freezer for those kind of nights.

Omelettes and scrambled eggs are quick and healthy.

Even just some cheesy pasta with a side of veg covers all the food groups.