9 Easy, Healthy, AND Kid-Friendly Recipes

After eating, drinking, and being merry over the holidays, I’m ready to refocus on providing my family with healthy dinners. However, anyone with young kids knows it’s difficult to provide a healthy meal that they won’t turn their noses up to, so we’ve been seeking out new recipes that appeal to the adults and preschooler in the family.

Our checklist includes four criteria:

1. Kid friendly (not too spicy or eccentric)

2. Healthy (we are personally trying to minimize carbs and sugar, but there are plenty of other healthy eating plans)

3. Easy to prepare (not too many steps or too long of a cooking time)

4. Minimal ingredients (to reduce waste and the size of the grocery bill)

I thought these criteria would be relatively easy to meet, but it turns out they are not. A lot of healthy, low-carb recipes aren’t kid friendly. A lot of kid friendly food–popcorn shrimp, mac and cheese, chicken nuggets–isn’t healthy. And a lot of recipes claim they are easy to prepare but are not. If it’s a crockpot recipe that starts with having to sauté ingredients or stop halfway through for a step, then NO. And if it’s a sheet pan recipe but needs 10 ingredients for a sauce, then NOPE.

After much searching, here are 9 options that work for my family. Now, all recipes have to meet the above criteria for me to print them out, and also be ENJOYABLE, otherwise we’ll just be tempted to order pizza!

anyone with young kids knows it’s difficult to provide a healthy meal that they won’t turn their noses up to, so we’ve been seeking out new recipes that appeal to the adults and preschooler in the family.

Kid-Friendly, Healthy, Easy Recipes

Shrimp Fried Cauliflower Rice Bowl

Sheet Pan Sausage and Peppers with Parmesan Garlic Cauliflower Rice

Grilled Caprese Chicken

Sheet Pan Chicken Fajitas   I love this one because everyone can customize theirs. My husband adds jalapenos, I skip the tortilla.

Paleo Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry

Famous F Factor Pizza I also love this one because everyone can customize their pizza.

Baked Honey Mustard Chicken Bonus side dish idea: Crispy Air Fryer Sweet Potato Fries

Shakshuka Baked Eggs

Meat Crust Pizza

What recipes do you keep on hand to please everyone at home? Link below in the comments!

 

Brigette
Brigette lives in North Liberty with her husband Brian, energetic daughter Kate (October 2014) and their two cats, Penny and Olive. Originally from the Chicago suburbs, Brigette came to Iowa City to attend the journalism school at the University of Iowa, fell in love with the area, and decided she couldn’t leave. After meeting Brian while working at the same Iowa City restaurant in college, they got married in August 2015 in the heart of downtown. She works full time in project management and as an employee of the Core Fitness Kids Club while finishing her MBA at Upper Iowa University. In her free time, she drags Kate out garage sale-ing, tries to keep up with her reading list and runs, lives for Hawkeye football season, enjoys a good meal on a patio, runs her Bachelor/Bachelorette bracket with her family and friends, and of course, chases her daughter around the pool and the park.

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