Additionally, they’re beneficial for weight management due to their low calorie content.
Health authorities around the world recommend that adults consume several servings of vegetables each day, but this can be difficult for some people.
Some find it inconvenient to eat vegetables, while others are simply unsure how to prepare them in an appetizing way.
We’ll cover some unique ways you can incorporate vegetables into your eating plan, so that you never get sick of eating them.
1. Make veggie-based soups
Soups are an excellent way to consume multiple servings of vegetables at once.
You can make veggies the “base” by pureeing them and adding spices, such as in this broccoli spinach quinoa soup.
Furthermore, it’s simple to cook veggies into broth- or cream-based soups.
Adding even a small number of extra veggies, such as broccoli, to soups is a great way to increase your intake of fiber, vitamins, and minerals.
Here are a few other veggie-based soup recipes for you to try:
- Ribollita
- Kitchen sink soup
- Green papaya fish soup
- Kale, tomato, and white bean soup
- Pho packed with spinach and bok choy
2. Try zucchini lasagna
Another creative way to eat more veggies is by making pasta-free zucchini lasagna.
Traditional lasagna is a pasta-based dish made by layering lasagna noodles with sauce, cheese, and meat. It’s tasty, but it’s also typically very high in carbs and doesn’t come with veggies automatically.
A great way to prepare this delicious dish so that it has a lower carb content and more nutrients is to replace the lasagna noodles with strips of zucchini.
Zucchini is a rich source of B vitamins and vitamin C, in addition to trace minerals and fiber.
Take your favorite lasagna recipe and replace those noodles with strips of zucchini sliced with a vegetable peeler. Tip: Salt the zucchini, let it sit for 15 minutes, and pat it dry with a paper towel to draw out the extra water.
3. Experiment with veggie noodles
Veggie noodles are easy to make, and a great way to get more veggies in your eating plan. They’re also an excellent low carb substitute for high carb foods, such as pasta.
They’re made by inserting vegetables into a spiralizer, which processes them into noodle-like shapes. You can also:
- shred them
- slice them with a mandoline
- just cut them up as you please
You can use a spiralizer for almost any type of vegetable. They’re commonly used for zucchini, carrots, spaghetti squash, and sweet potatoes, all of which come packed with extra nutrients.
Once the “noodles” are made, they can be consumed just like pasta and combined with sauces, other vegetables, or meat.
Here are some veggie noodle recipes for you to try:
- Spaghetti squash in white wine and mushroom sauce
- Zoodles with lentil bolognese
- Peanut-chicken zoodles
4. Add veggies to sauces
Adding extra vegetables to your sauces and dressings is a sneaky way to increase your veggie intake, especially if you have picky kids.
While you’re cooking sauces, such as marinara sauce, simply add some veggies and herbs of your choice to the mix, such as chopped onions, carrots, bell peppers, and leafy greens like spinach.
Pureeing roasted root vegetables can make for rich sauces with an Alfredo-like feel. Think carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, turnips, purple yam, beets, and kohlrabi.
Try making pesto with roasted beets for the most vibrant dish ever.
5. Make a cauliflower pizza crust
Cauliflower is extremely versatile. You can rice it, roast it, stick it in a stew, puree it for silky goodness, and make it into a pizza crust.
Replacing a regular, flour-based pizza crust with a cauliflower crust is as easy as combining finely chopped and drained cauliflower with eggs, almond flour, and some seasonings.
You can then add your own toppings, such as fresh veggies, tomato sauce, and cheese.
A cup (100 grams) of cauliflower contains only about 5 grams of carbs and 26 calories, in addition to lots of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants
6. Blend into smoothies
Smoothies make for a refreshing breakfast or snack. Green smoothies in particular are very popular for hiding loads of leafy greens in fruity packages.
Typically, they’re made by combining fruit with ice, milk, or water in a blender. However, you can also add veggies to smoothies without compromising the flavor.
Fresh, leafy greens are common smoothie additions, such as in this recipe, which combines kale with blueberries, bananas, and cucumber.
Just 1 loosely packed cup (25 grams) of spinach contains more than a full day’s recommended amount of vitamin K and half of the recommended amount of vitamin A.
The same serving of kale also provides high amounts of vitamin A, vitamin C, and lots of vitamin K