When I’m cooking up meals for clients I often hear, “no broccoli, mushrooms, spinach or anything else weird… my kids won’t eat it”. It drives me nuts as a chef because I know how great those things taste and it drives me nuts as a parent because I know how much our kids need those vegetables. So my first suggestion to parents of children who won’t eat vegetables is to organize a tasting party.
A tasting party can be led by a professional chef, farmer or you can recruit someone your kids love and trust, but it’s best if it is not you leading the party. Let your kids invite a few friends or cousins over, then go shopping. If you have a Chinese supermarket or farmers market in your area, hit it up for the weirdest looking, strangest sounding vegetables and fruits you can find. Head home and have the kids help you prepare the feast.
I usually prepare the vegetables 3 ways, raw, blanched and sautéed, to get a wide variety of tastes. When the tasting is ready to begin, I make the kids a list of promises:
1. I will NOT give you anything that will hurt you.
2. I will NOT make you eat anything that’s super disgusting.
3. If you really, truly don’t like it, you can spit it out into my hand.
And the kids promise me:
1. I will try at least one bite of everything.
2. I will not say something is gross before giving it a fair shot.
Then we proceed to look at each vegetable. We talk about the colour, the smell and the texture. We discuss what we think it will taste like (but the words yucky, gross and disgusting are banned). We compare it to other vegetables we do like. Then we taste. The world’s smallest nibbles are exhibited; with kids taking bites so microscopic their taste buds will never detect them. Often I find, the raw vegetables are losers, the sautéed vegetables are losers but the blanched vegetables are the stars. When you blanch a piece of broccoli for about 2 minutes, it softens slightly, turns a brilliant green, and it starts to taste sweet. It still has the crunch of the raw broccoli but tastes a hundred times better.
At the end of a tasting party, I’ve usually caught about 10 pieces of half-chewed vegetable in 
my hand, which IS gross, but in the process I’ve opened some eyes. The kids enjoy tasting without pressure. There is no clean your plate or else attitude; we’re just having fun together.
There is still a long way to go after the tasting, just because someone likes a vegetable doesn’t mean they’ll eat it all the time. Preparation is key, and as parents, we must continually find new ways with food to excite our kids. Carrots cooked in ginger ale make them super sweet, a little melted cheese is never a bad thing and using dips like low sodium soy sauce, hummus and artichoke dip will all help your children enjoy their vegetables more.
Continually taste and experiment together, buy weird things at the store and try them together and get your kids in the kitchen, they’re always more willing to try things when they’re had a part in preparing it themselves.
Image Credits: Christine Reid Photography
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