Cooking Carrots For Toddlers: A Salad Your Kid Will Actually Eat
"Put it on a cracker" is not a particularly elegant solution to neophobia, we confess–especially when it comes by way of a Ritz (or worse). It doesn’t have the courage and resilience of serving the same leafy green 20+ times until it connects; it doesn’t have the playfulness or collaboration that comes with imagining a vegetable as something more fun (e.g., an airplane). Sorry to say, you’re not going to feel like a Parent of the Year for doing this.
But it does work. For zucchini. Beets. Carrots, in more ways than you can imagine. Eggplant. Cauliflower. We could go on—and have, dozens of times. (See links!) Chips, breads, tortillas–just slather on carbs and you’re good.
Now, we should be honest here and admit we do “cheat”: a lot of times these vegetables come in a creamy and spreadable form—think hummus, dips, sauces, et al. But, as this post’s recipe shows, it’s also possible to stick whole vegetables on top of something creamy–on top of something crackery–and still get a small child to down several pieces, both willingly and gleefully. Basically, the cheat code is this: the closer you bring a vegetable to the taste and texture of yogurt or guacamole, the more likely your child is going to eat it.
In a way, the following recipe brings carrots closer to both yogurt and guacamole, not the least because avocado is involved. Here, we skew Moroccan flavor-wise—honey, cumin, citrus in and on everything—but the architecture of the dish is straight out of the contemporary restaurant playbook: a vegetable deeply roasted to bring out its sweetness + a creamy element + crunchy stuff for contrast. The spread is a not-quite hummus: there’s no tahini, but a bit of the chickpeas’ aquafaba and half an avocado provide a similarly whipped texture. Our kid insists it’s guacamole; we haven’t the heart to tell him otherwise, especially not when he eats it so readily.
(Note: as there are two components to the dish, the recipe instructions below are organized by each component.)
Ingredients
Carrots
Chickpea Spread
Instructions
Carrots
- Preheat oven to 400.
- Peel the carrots and discard the stem and top. Cut the carrots lengthwise to produce two long halves; if carrots are especially big, cut twice lengthwise to produce three pieces.
- In a shallow or flat container, drizzle olive oil over carrot slices; toss to coat. Remove carrots from container, then add the cumin, garlic powder, a pinch of salt, a splash of orange juice, and a generous drizzle of honey; blend. Soak both sides of the carrot pieces in this marinating liquid.
- Lay the carrot slices down on a baking pan covered with parchment. Cook for seven minutes, then remove pan from oven, run carrot pieces through marinating liquid again, and place back on pan, this time having the side of the carrots previously turned up be resting on the pan. Cook until soft and burnished all over, another 6-8 minutes.
- Soak in marinating liquid until ready to serve.
Chickpea Spread
- Rinse and drain chickpeas. Boil chickpeas in water with the baking soda for six minutes; remove from heat and drain. Allow to cool.
- In your blender, add the leftover liquid from the chickpea can, the juice from the lemon, the avocado, the cumin, a lot of cilantro and parsley, and a pinch of black pepper; add in chickpeas last. Blend until smooth. (If thick or chunky, or if you do not have the aquafaba, add in one small glug of olive oil and process again; continue to add olive oil until the consistency is smooth.
- Taste the spread; add a pinch of salt or two as needed. Then spoon and fan the spread all over the bottom of the plate; place carrot pieces on top, adding herbs or additional honey as desired.
Serve
We typically serve a Ritz cracker topped with the chickpea-avocado spread, with a piece of carrot placed in the center of the cracker. If your child is skeptical about the orange root vegetable on the cracker, hold firm: it’s soft and sweet–he/she will like it. After serving on a few occasions, try eliminating the cracker and serving the spread on top of a carrot piece.
Adapt
Virtually all the components here are interchangeable. You could swap carrots for beets or sweet potatoes; you could use maple syrup instead of honey. Use yogurt instead of whipped chickpeas, especially if/when pressed for time; use other herbs instead of parsley or cilantro (say, dill).
