Do you struggle to get enough vegetables into your child? Today’s post combines two solutions to help out with that problem – these two easy tricks always help me enormously when I think my boys could do with a boost of extra vegetables in their diet. The first part of my cunning plan is to serve up soup. For some reason, both of my children have always loved soup, and when I was childminding I found that all the children I looked after were the same too – they all loved a bowl of thick vegetable soup! Stew can be a bit touch and go – something about the very visible vegetable chunks seem to be a little off-putting to a fussy eater, but puree it up into a thick creamy soup, and you’re on to a winner!
The second trick is to get kids involved as much as possible in creating their meal. In my experience, there seems to be a direct correlation between the amount of involvement a child has in preparing a healthy meal and how much they are willing to eat of it – the more involved they are, the more enthusiastic about eating their food they seem to be, so I’ve created a whole series of recipes aimed at children, including today’s yummy carrot and parsnip soup.
You’ll find the recipe sheet for this delicious soup recipe at the end of this post. This soup is very child friendly – it’s lovely and sweet with just a hint of curry flavour, and most importantly it’s packed full of healthy vegetables!
Carrot & Parsnip Soup
Ingredients:
- 1 large onion
- 500g carrots
- 500g parsnips
- 1 leek
- 1 tbs olive oil
- 1 tbs mild curry powder
- 2 chicken or vegetable stock cubes *
- 100g red lentils
Method:
Peel and roughly chop the onion, carrots, parsnips and leek.
Heat the oil in a large saucepan, then gently fry the onion for 2 minutes until starting to soften. Add the chopped carrots, parsnips and leek to the saucepan.
Sprinkle over the curry powder and red lentils and stir to mix in. Crumble the stock cubes into the saucepan and add 1 litre of hot water, then stir well until the stock cubes have completely dissolved.
Put a lid on the saucepan and cook for 20 minutes until the vegetables are cooked through and soft.
Once cooked, take the lid off, let the soup cool a little then whizz until smooth with a stick blender.
Serve with a sprinkling of coriander leaves and cheese on toast if wanted – I cut ours into stars using mini cutters and popped a few on top to decorate the soup, the boys loved them!
*NOTE: Vegetable stock cubes work just as well if you want to keep the recipe vegetarian or vegan.
If you’d like to print off a child-friendly copy of this recipe for yourself, click on the photo below to download the PDF file, or click here if that doesn’t work for any reason. Do comment and let me know how it goes down with the kids if you try it!
You’ll find lots more of really simple healthy recipes like this in the easy recipes for kids section here on the Eats Amazing blog, all with free printable child friendly recipe sheets to help your child cook a meal from start to finish, with minimal help from you! You could also pop over and follow my Cooking with Kids Pinterest board too, for lots more ideas from all over the web!
Grace
Carrot & Parsnip Soup
Ingredients
- 1 large onion
- 500 g carrots
- 500 g parsnips
- 1 leek
- 1 tbs olive oil
- 1 tbs mild curry powder
- 2 chicken or vegetable stock cubes *
- 100 g red lentils
Instructions
- Peel and roughly chop the onion, carrots, parsnips and leek.
- Heat the oil in a large saucepan, then gently fry the onion for 2 minutes until starting to soften. Add the chopped carrots, parsnips and leek to the saucepan.
- Sprinkle over the curry powder and red lentils and stir to mix in. Crumble the stock cubes into the saucepan and add 1 litre of hot water, then stir well until the stock cubes have completely dissolved.
- Put a lid on the saucepan and cook for 20 minutes until the vegetables are cooked through and soft.
- Once cooked, take the lid off, let the soup cool a little then whizz until smooth with a stick blender.
- Serve with a sprinkling of coriander leaves and cheese on toast if wanted.
Notes
I hope you will want to try this yummy recipe, please pin it if you do! For more great recipes for cooking with children, check out the Easy Recipes for Kids section here on the Eats Amazing blog or pop over and follow my Cooking with Kids Pinterest board for fresh and seasonal inspiration all the year around!
Corina says
I love soups like this! Unfortunately I have 2 picky eaters and I never know if it’s going to be a soup day or not. I try to involve them in the cooking when I can and it’s great to read posts like this as it always encourages me to keep trying and keep getting them involved as one day they probably will happily eat a bowl of whatever I give them!
Grace says
Oh do hang on in there, it’s amazing what time and a lot of perseverance can do!
Stacey Kemeys says
Yum, And love the addition of lentils to make it really filling!