Chintal's Tinned Vegetable Salad

Chintal’s Tinned Vegetable Salad

Dr Chintal Patel

Featuring:

Pulses

Sweetcorn

photo of Chintal's tinned vegetable salad on a plate

Effort:

Complexity:

Cost:

In season now

Serves: 2-4

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: No cook

Ingredients:

1 tin sweetcorn

1 tin potatoes

1 tin kidney beans/chickpeas

1 small onion

1 -2 tbsp lemon juice

1-2 cloves of garlic

Handful fresh coriander (optional)

Salt & pepper, to taste

It’s not always easy to get to the shops regularly and to ensure you have fresh fruits and vegetables to hand daily. So here is an idea for a quick and easy store cupboard salad with protein and fibre to keep you full until your next meal. Serve as a side salad or a light main meal.

Method:

Open and drain all the tins and rinse well. Chop the potatoes in halves or quarters to desired size. Finely chop the garlic and onion.

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl with the lemon juice. Add salt & pepper to taste. Serve right away.

Engaging Kids

Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.

Kids in the kitchen

The eventual aim, if possible, is to get kids in the kitchen. Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to mean they are with you from start-to-end creating mess and rising stress levels! It can be as simple as giving them one small job (stirring, measuring, pouring, grating, chopping…) ideally involving veg. They can come in to do their little bit, and have fun with you for a few minutes. Getting them involved, making it playful and praising them plenty for their involvement, perhaps even serving it as dinner they “made”, makes it much more likely they will eat the food offered, not to mention teaching them important life skills. Find ideas, safety tips, videos and even a free chart in our Kids in the Kitchen section here.

Activities

While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.

Sensory

Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.

Serving

The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.

Dr Chintal Patel

Chintal is an NHS GP with over 20 years of clinical experience and an award-winning food content creator. With a passion for nutrition and lifestyle medicine, she helps families cook wholesome, affordable and accessible meals. Chintal is also a cookbook author, recipe developer and regular contributor to publications including Good Food. She runs cookery classes and health education workshops for adults and children, sharing practical advice on family nutrition and feeding picky eaters.

drchintalskitchen.com/