Tips For Cooking Meals The Whole Family Will Love

Do you ever wish you were one of those parents who has it all together? The ones who know how to cook meals that everyone loves with organic ingredients, on time everyday. If you’re not a domestic goddess when it comes to cooking, don’t worry.

Cooking family meals and keeping everyone happy doesn’t have to be as terrifying as it seems. If you want to turn chaotic dinner times into a family bonding over a delicious meal every night, here are some top tips.

Plan For The Week Ahead

The only way you can cook the meals your family will love is if you have the ingredients you need to hand. If you don’t have the time to visit the store everyday, you’ll need to plan your meals in advance. Buy what you need for the week by planning what to cook for each day of the week. 

For many families this also saves money and saves waste. If you know what you’re cooking and when, you’re less likely to have food going past its use by date. 

Know Everyone’s Likes and Dislikes

To start coming up with your meal plans, it’s important to know everyones likes and dislikes. 

However, there’s a difference between long-term dislikes and fleeting dislikes. For instance, a toddler will refuse to eat cucumber one week and love eating it the next. Don’t take healthy ingredients out of your meal plans just because someone in the family doesn’t like it this week.

For the most part, the more you offer healthy foods that family members dislike, the more likely they are to try it. If there are ingredients you know your family will never enjoy or someone has allergies to certain foods, keep those off your shopping lists.

Have Fun

Kids tend to look at eating like a chore so it can help to have fun with food. Firstly, get them involved with some of the cooking. Choose some easy recipes that your kids can help you with. For instance, this simple butterscotch pudding recipe or even helping to prepare vegetables as a side for one of your main dishes. 

This will help your children work up an appetite and give them some control over what goes on their plates. In addition, you could use some of the ingredients to make funny faces in your kid’s food to make eating more fun.

Admit You’re Not a Chef

It’s okay to admit that you’re not a chef. Overcomplicating meals could just lead to culinary disasters that no-one will want to eat. Stick to simple home cooking that you know you can make a success of. Most children just want to eat nuggets and fries so stick with tried and tested meals but get creative.

If you’re offering up nuggets, burgers, and other family favorites, make sure you’re also adding healthy accompaniments. For instance, a side of broccoli or asparagus is ideal with chicken.

Hide Ingredients

The great thing about cooking at home is that you have total control over what you’re eating. There are so many ways to hide healthy ingredients in meals you know your family will eat. For instance, you can add fresh tomato and spinach to spaghetti bolognese and no-one will be able to tell the difference.

If your kids like chicken nuggets, try swapping some of their chicken nuggets for vegetable nuggets instead. Odds are, they won’t even notice. Try making your kids a green smoothie and telling them its dinosaur juice that will make them big and strong.

Read Up

If you’re really determined to get better at cooking, one of the best things you can do is read through some recipe books. Opt for family friendly recipe books and read through the instructions and why the chef does things in certain ways. There are also tons of cooking channels to choose from that will give you demonstrations on how to prepare and cook meals properly.

It’s worth asking older relatives if you have any family recipes too. Recipes that have been passed down through generations are often some of the best.

Relax

As a parent, it’s normal to put pressure on yourself to deliver home cooked, healthy meals but the truth is, everyone falls short sometimes. If there are evenings where you need to order pizza, don’t feel guilty about that. Your kids won’t remember where the meal came from but they will remember your presence around the dinner table every evening.

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