Hide all of your veggies in this kid-friendly Vitamix recipe for bolognese sauce

Sometimes you’ve got a picky eater in the house.

And most of the time, that person does not like vegetables.

But they do like pasta!

This pasta sauce is an excellent way to hide nutrition and none will be the wiser.

Let’s get sneaky with some pasta sauce.

Quick note: This recipe isn’t a magical method of making plant-based meat crumbles. We added store-bought crumbles to homemade (veggie-laden) sauce. Cool? Okay.

It's all about appearances

As long as it looks “normal” it has a better chance of being accepted.

A picky eater is not going to eat sauce with giant chunks of vegetables. But what if their sauce just looks like regular old Prego?

We made a basic base for your sauce that you can sneakily add vegetables into when no one is looking.

It’s flavorful, but inoffensive. Plus it’s really easy to make.

Get this base together and then add some of our favorites:

• Squash
• Eggplant
• Mushrooms
• Zucchini
• Sweet potato

It’s all getting blended in, so you don’t even know it’s in there! You could even add lentils!

We would normally tell you to keep the skins on almost all veggies. That’s where a lot of the nutrition can be found. But in this case, you’ll want to remove skins if it will make the sauce brown (so anything green).

Make sure you’re making dinner while everyone else is distracted.

And see how much you can pack in there before someone at the table notices.

We used rotini, but any noodle would work. You can do gluten-free noodles, rice noodles, etc. At our house we use this sauce on zoodles (zucchini noodles)… but those definitely won’t trick your picky eater!

Veggie crumbles are subbing for ground beef in this recipe. They taste great and are a really good way to lower your meat intake.

Get some extra nutrition into your family tonight and then celebrate with some black forest ice cream!

Recipe

Bolognese Sauce

Print RecipePin Recipe

• Yield: 2 cups
• You're needed for: 15 minutes
• Until it's done: 45 minutes
• Shalva Gale

Ingredients:

• olive oil - 1 Tbsp.
• onion (chopped) - whole
• garlic (chopped) - 2 cloves
• veggie crumbles - 1 lb.
• celery - 3 ribs
• carrot - 2 whole
• roma tomatoes - 4 whole
• tomato paste - 1 can
• salt & pepper - to taste

Instructions:

1. Heat olive oil on large skillet (that has a lid)
2. Add onions and garlic to hot oil
3. Saute for 5-8 minutes until onions are clear
4. Dump the sauteed mix into your Vitamix container
5. Put the skillet back on the burner and add your veggie meat
6. Saute while you blend the rest of the sauce
7. Add the celery, carrots, tomatoes and any other veggies to the container
8. Blend on high for 60 seconds
9. Blend on low for 20 seconds to remove air bubbles
10. Pour mixture into skillet with veggie meat
11. Add tomato paste, salt & pepper
12. Cover
13. Cook on low for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours
14. Snap a pic and tag #lifeisNOYOKE
15. Enjoy!

Useful tips for Bolognese Sauce

SUPPORT = 💚

Life is NOYOKE takes us hundreds of hours every month to create and maintain.

If you appreciate what we do, please consider supporting our work by using our referral links to make purchases. It’s free for you and every bit helps.