Getting a toddler to try new foods (like veg!)

[Loops81]

Does anyone have any tried-and-tested advice on getting toddlers to try new foods (i.e. vegetables, mostly)? My two-year-old has a pretty limited repertoire - ham/cheese sandwiches, pasta, eggs, fishfingers, lots of fruit, cereal - and although we make an effort to ensure her diet is reasonably balanced, she won’t touch vegetables (unless we sneak them into pasta sauce). We always put them in front of her alongside the things she likes, but she just ignores them/removes them from the plate. Even things I know she could like, like peas and sweet potato. I don’t want to stress/fight about food, but it is a drag - does anyone have any advice on how to gradually expand her horizons?

Will she take new fruit? How do you offer fruit vs veg?

We struggle but have found peer pressure works well. Will try new foods at nursery or other people's houses when other toddlers eating. Haven't quite managed to get the new foods into her in our house yet!

We 100% have this! (dd 2 and a half). The only real veg she likes are (bizarrely) mushrooms and spinach. But I cheer myself up by factoring in that baked beans, tinned sweetcorn, mushy peas are all veg (yes they are!) plus houmous (bit of a stretch) and she will have tomato sauce on pasta, and I hide stuff in that... Oh, and the mashed potato on fish pie/cottage pie etc. So, things like little bits of carrot, mushroom, other veg get cut up small and made into pasta sauce, the meat sauce in a cottage pie, etc etc.
And I tell myself it's 5 portions of fruit/veg a day, and they don't have to all be veg (or indeed ANY be veg). 5 fruit a day is fine, and one or two veg the next day (with the rest fruit) is fine.
And carrot batons (raw) or cucumber batons sometimes.
Getting her to pick the veg from the fridge and help cut it up sometimes works.
Oh and stir fried rice or noodles work well. Little shreds of pepper/carrot (maybe beansprouts) in with the rice or noodles, all cut so fine they can't be picked out? With shreds of chicken in there and egg fried in at the end..
Also (sometimes) cauli cheese works, or cauli/broccoli pasta cheese (like macaroni cheese with cauli/broccoli thrown in with the cheese sauce and baked with breadcrumbs on top). Etc.

Try getting her to help you make pizza? Jamie Oliver has a simple pizza dough recipe, or you can just top a muffin or pitta bread with some tomato puree and cheese, then try different veg.

Yy veg in pasta sauces and cottage/shepherd's pie. One I picked up from the Sainsbury's Little Ones magazine: mash cauliflower into macaroni cheese, they can't even see it!

We found veg and fruit shapes helped. So bought lots of mini cookie cutters and cut cucumber slices into stars or hearts for example. Same for sliced potato rather than chips. Pinterest has lots of ideas for fun foods - broccoli trees, snails from celery and cucumber, cauliflower sheep etc