You know you are supposed to eat more greens, but you don’t want to make two dinners for yourself and your kids. These 22 kid-friendly ideas allow you to only make one meal everyone can enjoy while getting the nutritional boost that greens provide.
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Don’t let the title of this post fool you. I think kale is gross.
That didn’t stop me from planting 15 kale seeds in our garden, having all of them produce an insane amount of leaves, freezing multiple gallon bags, and dehydrating about a half gallon of powdered kale.
Even though you know you are supposed to eat more greens, actually doing it can feel like an exhaustive chore. The kids don’t like them, spouses may grumble, and your efforts to find a recipe that is easy to make, full of flavor, and will be at least tried by your entire family seem futile.
Don’t give up yet!
This post has 22 kid-friendly ideas to include more greens into your dishes so you don’t have to cook two meals, negotiate more “just try it” bribery bites, and can get everyone an extra dose of healthier nutrients.
What are the greens in eat more greens?
As we talk about greens throughout this post, I am referring to the dark leafy ones: spinach, swiss chard, mustard greens, bok choy, arugula, and kale. Some of the ideas here also refer to broccoli and romaine lettuce as they are some of the healthiest green vegetables.
22 Kid-Friendly Ideas To Eat More Greens
Rob often jokes with me that I cannot just have one vegetable on the side of the plate. Instead, I am constantly adding as many veggies to the plate as I can.
This means I am always throwing multiple vegetables into a sauce, loading up a salad, or tossing everything I can find into a quiche. Getting those leafy greens in there is no different!
There are many easy ways to eat more greens that even the kids will approve of (mostly because they won’t even know they are there).
Meal Plan Ahead
Meal planning is pretty essential to our lifestyle around here. From limiting food waste, saving money at the grocery store, and eating more nutritious meals, a weekly meal plan is created every week. Knowing what you want to add to the menu for the week means you can plan to have more greens on your plates.
Truly, don’t wing it when it comes to your meals. If your goal is to eat healthier, even in some small way, making that meal plan is going to be a serious ticket to achieving that goal.
Grow Your Own Greens
I rarely buy kale in the store. Since I know none of us really like it, I won’t go the extra mile to buy it and find something more palatable to do with it.
However, if I grow kale in the garden myself, I am going to find a way to eat it. Whether that means it gets frozen for smoothies, dehydrated into powder for soups and muffins, or chopped small and wilted into a soup, you can be sure I will get in on the plate.
Kale is a hearty plant and can take a frost. Perfect for the cold weather, short growing season climates.
Buy Greens In Bulk
For whatever green you enjoy eating the most, buy it in bulk. Spinach and kale freeze extremely well with minimal to no prep work. When you see it on sale, or for a great price in bulk, don’t be afraid to load up. Then you know you have them on hand for when prices potentially go up.
Freeze Your Greens
You don’t have to worry about eating your greens before they go bad anymore. Freeze them instead!
Spinach and kale freeze very easily; put the whole bag of kale or spinach into the freezer as is. Simple! Alternatively you could blend your spinach and kale with a little water and freeze into ice trays. Pop them out and store in an airtight plastic bag.
With frozen greens, I like to add them to smoothies or soups for an extra nutrition boost.
Dehydrate Your Greens
My mom gifted me this dehydrator one summer and I just love it. I started dehydrating things our home garden gave us an abundance of like kale and zucchini. Hooray for shelf stable greens!
Kale is so simple to dehydrate in just 5 hours with my particular dehydrator. From there, I put the dry leaves into a blender to make a powder. I store the powder in mason jars and put a scoop into smoothies, soups, pasta sauces, and baked goods throughout the winter season.
Add Greens To a Salad of Your Favorites
I simply adore a fridge clean out salad. It means I get a little bit of everything into the bowl.
No matter what I am putting into one of these salads, I typically start it on a bed of greens. Chopping up some spinach or tossing in some arugula all make a perfect start to a salad of your favorite things. You can even massage a handful of kale in oil as your salad bed, but you already know how I personally feel about that.
For the kids, we often eat big salads for dinner, but I only add the items they like: peppers, tomatoes, corn, apple slices, and cucumbers. I often put a small piece or two of greens in there, but they usually pick around it.
Put Greens In Smoothies
This is my favorite way to get the kids to eat more greens. Anytime I pull out the blender, I have three little faces waiting patiently at my side for it to be done.
Smoothie recipes are so versatile and you can sneak in a ton of veggies. Toss in a bit of fruit and you get a sweet tasty smoothie the kids will devour.
My 3 go to smoothie recipes are:
Add Greens To Soups
Personally, I am not a huge soup fan, but I know I am in the minority there. Same with drinking coffee; I don’t like it.
However, the rest of the family enjoys soup quite a bit, so we make it a few times throughout the winter months. Soup is a quick way to eat more greens, especially with kids. You can chop in some spinach, kale, and bok choy to just about any soup recipe.
Minestrone, tomato, and chicken noodle soups are fan favorites around here and simple to toss in some finely food processed greens.
Bake With The Greens
One of my weekly meal prep activities is to make muffins or snack bars for the kids’ snacks. Sneaking in some greens into these is easy and doesn’t take away from the taste or excitement they get eating it.
You can easily add a scoop of the dehydrated kale powder to your baked good recipe without harm. Also, check out The Lean Green Bean for tons of nutritious baking ideas.
Juice Your Greens
I really do love a juice. When I was just a few months postpartum with Hazel, having a juice full of kale, carrots, apples, cucumbers, and ginger was a delicious treat that I craved.
If you opt to make them yourself in your own juicer, juices are simple to add tons of greens into. You are still getting lots of nutritional benefits if you drink juices, so have fun making some of your own.
Put Greens in Spaghetti Sauce
Much like a fridge clean out salad, I am notorious for making fridge clean out pasta sauces. I feel like tomato sauce is just the starting point for all kinds of nutritious add ons like kale, spinach, mushrooms, peppers, zucchini, onions, broccoli, carrots, and green beans.
The kids love pasta with sauce so much that if I chop everything small enough, they have no choice but to eat it up as they can’t pick around the vegetables and greens.
Add Greens To Pesto
Have you tried pesto with spinach yet? It is completely delicious, super simple to make, and doesn’t really take anything extra.
You can also make a kale pesto that is divine.
Make A Boosted Dip With Greens
When you are trying to eat more greens, you have to get creative about different places you can add them to. One of those places is with hummus and dips.
If you are making your own hummus, you can toss a handful of spinach into your mix for the blender. If you buy it premade, you can add a handful of spinach to the store bought version and toss it in the food processor until combined.
Guacamole is such an easy way to add more greens because avocado is already green! Toss your avocado and half a zucchini and a half handful of spinach to the blender and away you go.
Chop The Greens Into Lasagna
Chewy noodles, cheesy sauce, seasoned meat, and a perfect accomplice to hide some vegetables.
Layer your lasagna up with some greens like spinach or kale. No one will know the difference and you get everyone that extra boost of health.
Snag a freezer friendly lasgna recipe. inmy ebook, Freeer Feasts. It contains 40 freeer recipes that are ideal for families, all day eats, and postpartum life.
Blend Greens Into Pancakes
There are lots of green monster pancake recipes out there to choose from, but I highly enjoy this one from Nourish Move Love. The kids get completely ticked when they see these green pancakes too that they can’t help but eat them.
I also like to chop up some spinach, very fine, and toss a bit into some super simple banana egg pancakes. With the sweet taste from the bananas, the kids hardly notice they are also eating some greens.
Don’t forget your two burner griddle!
Chop Greens Into Egg Pie
You could call this meal quiche, but our 4 year old refuses to eat anything with that name. As such, you have egg pie.
With a buttery pie crust (I go store bought over here), I can toss in just about any veggies I can find in the fridge (are you sensing a theme?), and the kids will eat it up. Just cut the spinach or kale up small to add to the vegetables in the pie pan so they work in one smooth fork full.
I use this same recipe just with pie crust.
Chop Greens Into Your Breakfast Eggs
Nope, I cannot let eggs just be eggs. I have to add the vegetables.
Spinach works wonders in an omelet and again, if you cut it up small, the kids cannot pick around it too much. Don’t forget the cheese!
Make Your Greens Goofy
Our kids actually really enjoy broccoli. It started years ago when we were trying to convince Zoey to try a bite of her broccoli by telling her if she put it in her mouth, we would see what animal came out of the tree.
Now, we spend entire dinners calling out different animals coming out of these broccoli trees of all three little mouths getting it in faster than we can think of animals.
When getting the kids to eat lettuce, we encourage them to show us their bunny teeth. Suddenly, entire leaves of lettuce are being devoured in tiny, fast bites.
Top a Sandwich With Greens
Top a sandwich with some spinach or arugula.
This one may not work so well for your kids if they like to pick out the parts of the sandwich they like best, but at least you offered it. That is half the battle sometimes.
Add Greens To Meatballs, Burgers, Meatloaf
Rob likes to joke with me that I cannot keep something as is, but always have to add in some vegetables.
He’s not wrong.
When I am making meatballs, burgers, or a meatloaf, I love to chop up some kale or spinach and add it to the meat mix. The greens get cooked all together and everyone gets an added boost of nutrition they truly cannot pick out.
Plus, ketchup gets kids to eat almost anything. Even if there was some hesitation from them about a small green bit inside their meatball, the ketchup trumps all protest.
Turn Your Greens Into a Snack
These iron-packed spinach balls are made in quadrupled batches around here. I started making them during my postpartum freezer cooking sprees and continue to make them now to have on hand for healthier snacks.
Toss Together Creative Stir Frys
Since the kids refuse to touch rice, our stir frys have to get a bit more creative. This Udon Bok Choy Stir Fry is one the kids love as they can suck in the thick noodles and pretend they are worms.
Doesn’t dinner at our house sound like fun?
Deciding to eat more greens can feel a bit overwhelming at first. Making the greens recipes taste good and avoiding cooking two dinners is key. These 22 kid-friendly meals are sure to be crowd pleasers while giving you the health benefits of adding more greens to your diet.
I’m Brooke Selb, a Personal Trainer and Health Coach specializing in helping busy moms and moms to be to easily juggle mom life with family friendly recipes, and easy exercise routines to help you achieve your fitness goals that fit in with your already busy life with sound nutritional advice.
