4 Great Pasta Recipes for Kids
Children can be very fussy eaters sometimes. It can become a real headache for parents to know what to give their kids to eat. However, there are some dishes that all kids like. One of these is pasta. Luckily, there are numerous pasta recipes you can try.
You can take advantage of pasta to create dishes that are both delicious and healthy. Pasta comes in many forms: spaghetti, cannelloni, macaroni, tagliatelle, and many others.
So, it’s time to take advantage of how tasty and versatile pasta is. Today we’ve got 4 great pasta recipes for you, as well as some tips for fussy eaters.
Tips to encourage fussy eaters: pasta recipes
To start, we have 4 ideas that will make any dish, including pasta recipes, a great success:
1. Colors
We all know how much children love bright colors, and that’s also true when it comes to food. Take advantage of this by making pasta recipes with different appealing colors that will really grab their attention.
2. Textures
Including various textures helps eating become a multi-sensory experience for children. When you have creamy and dry textures, as well as liquid ones and grains, there there is no room for boredom.
3. Fantasy
It’s a good option to create pictures with different ingredients. Children create and live in fantasy worlds in which characters of all kinds come into being. Why not use food to open up their imagination too? Food enters through their eyes first!
4. Activities
The above tips to make food attractive and fun can be complemented with games to also help children learn. Depending on the child’s age, you can go over their knowledge of numbers, colors or riddles. You can also teach them through stories, songs and mimes. The only limit is one’s own creativity.
It’s now time to apply these tips and make some fun pasta recipes for children:
Sausages with hair
Ingredients
- Sausages cut into pieces about 1 inch long
- Spaghetti
- Optional: some type of sauce and vegetables such as carrots, peppers and peas
Preparation
- Skewer as many pieces of spaghetti as possible through the sausage pieces, so that they protrude on both sides.
- Cook until the spaghetti is cooked, without overcooking them, taking into account that the sausages require less cooking time.
- Strain and serve. You can serve them on their own, or optionally include pieces of vegetables of different colors and sauces.
Tricolor pasta
Ingredients
- Short or long pasta
- Pesto sauce
- White sauce
- Neapolitan or Bolognese sauce
- Grated cheese for pasta
Preparation
- Cook the pasta according to the package instructions.
- Separate three small portions and stir one of the sauces into each one, so that each one takes on a different color.
- Serve side by side and pour on some salsa and grated cheese.
Another less laborious option that doesn’t require having three sauces is to make pasta that already comes in three different colors. By doing this we only have to add a sauce on top and some grated cheese.
Pasta pancakes
Ingredients
- Freshly cooked pasta or pasta from the previous day
- 1 egg
- ½ cup of milk
- 4 tablespoons of wheat flour
- 2 tablespoons of sugar
- 1 trickle of vanilla
- Frying oil
Preparation
- Mix together the egg, sugar, milk, vanilla and flour until you get a creamy texture.
- Add the pasta and stir so that it is well coated in the mixture.
- Fry portions of this mixture until they turn out like golden pancakes.
- Place on vegetable paper to dry and immediately sprinkle with sugar.
- These pasta pancakes are ideal for a snack or as part of another meal.
Pasta with battered meat and vegetables
Ingredients
- Short or long pasta
- Different types of breaded and fried meat (veal, chicken, fish, seafood)
- Battered and fried vegetables (celery, broccoli, spinach, peppers and others)
- Olive oil
- Parsley, finely chopped
Preparation
- Cook the pasta, strain it and add a little olive oil.
- The battered meat and vegetables should be served over the top of the pasta.
- Sprinkle with parsley and serve immediately.
These pasta recipes for children can be accompanied by natural low sugar fruit juices.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
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- Costa Rodrigues J., Pinho O., Monteiro PRR., Can lycopene be considered an effective protection against cardiovascular disease? Food Chem, 2018. 245: 1148-1153.
