Sneaky Ways to Add Good Nutrition to Family Favorites

If you’re like most home cooks today, you want to feed your family wholesome and nutritious dinners but know the kids might balk at anything deemed “healthy” (ie, “yucky”). The good news is that if your family loves the comfort of homemade favorites like meat loaf, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy, and spaghetti and meatballs, you can serve them without guilt by sneaking in healthy ingredients filled with fiber, vitamins and other nutrients. Sit back and enjoy the smiles of satisfaction --  but don’t ruin the trick by revealing your sneaky secret ingredients!

Ground Meat Magic

We don’t know a kid who doesn’t love hearty dishes made with ground beef, pork and veal, and luckily it’s easy to infuse healthy additives like shredded vegetables among tiny pieces of meat. So try adding a handful of cooked and shredded broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, spinach or zucchini to meat loaf, meatballs, meat-based casseroles, chili and burgers to secretly improve their health quotient. Grandpa's Favorite Meat Loaf already has a bit of shredded zucchini in the mix; add a bit more, or maybe some shredded carrot, to up the nutritional value. The filling in Stuffed Green Peppersis another place you can add some vegetable goodness—in addition to the nutrition powerhouse of the peppers!

Call on Cauliflower

OK, so cauliflower isn’t the prettiest vegetable and it can be a hard sell to little ones (and even bigger ones). But its white color makes it easy to hide in colorful foods including cheese and tomato sauces. Steam it until it’s soft enough to pulverize with an electric hand mixer or blender and stir the puree into Grandma’s Macaroni and Cheese (and maybe cut down a bit on the bacon if you want to make dinner all the more healthy). And go ahead and stir that cauliflower puree into store-bought or homemade pasta sauce; even Grandma’s Big Batch Spaghetti Sauce could use a last-minute addition of healthy cauliflower.  Your family loves mashed spuds?  Substitute half the potatoes with pureed cauliflower in your next batch of Garlic Mashed Potatoes.

Groovy Gravy

Gravy is like bacon: Everything is better with it. Make it a healthier topping for potatoes, rolls or biscuits by using pureed lentils as a thickener instead of the conventional drippings mixed with flour. If calling upon lentils is going a bit too far for you, stick to the traditional gravy recipe (like the one in Classic Pot Roast), but substitute whole grain pastry flour for all-purpose flour. It not only adds nutrients and fiber to the dish, its lighter texture blends more smoothly than the alternatives.

Buried in Bread

If quick breads and muffins are treats your family goes for, they can be spiked with nutritious ingredients that hide between the chocolate chips and other not-so-great add-ins. Start with recipes already including nuts—nutritional powerhouses that add lots of flavor—like the walnuts in Spiced Plum Muffins and Strawberry Walnut Bread. (Don’t forget to toast the nuts first, for even more flavor.) Or take it a step further and finely shred cooked carrots or zucchini to fold into the dough or batter right before baking. Date Nut Bread and Harvest Tea Loaf would take well to that treatment.