When you can take a tortilla and turn it into about a dozen different food items, you've got a pretty handy way to make any kind of dinner. Kids love Mexican food because it has some of their favorite things like cheese, rice, flour tortillas, meat and more cheese. There are several different types of Mexican kid-friendly recipes out there whether they like it mild, extra spicy or just plain sweet. One of the great things that you can do with Mexican dishes is hide vegetables to get picky eaters to eat up their peppers, lettuce, tomatoes and even carrots. For all these reasons and much more, kids will love you for making Mexican tonight.
1. Quick and Easy Tacos
The most common Mexican dish has to be tacos. Whether you like them soft or crunchy, you can stuff just about anything into a taco shell, drizzle it with cheese, add a little salsa and you're good to go. You can also combine traditional taco recipes with some of kids' other favorites like spaghetti or even macaroni and cheese. For example, with spaghetti tacos, you just cook the spaghetti, diced tomatoes, a little chili powder, ground beef, onion, peppers, cheddar cheese and sour cream for a deliciously stuffed taco that kids adore.
2. Homestyle Burrito Bar
Kids love Mexican food because it gives them options. When you want kids to get more involved in meal preparation, you can create a homestyle burrito bar with all of their favorites plus a few of the healthy things you'd like them to munch on too. Building burritos are also pretty fun and easy. Some basic fillings to provide include black or pinto beans, shredded cheese, corn salsa, white or brown rice, chopped tomatoes, guacamole, salsa, sour cream, beef or chicken strips, lettuce, grilled veggies and even pineapple. You can show kids how to arrange food onto a burrito and fold it up to eat restaurant-style.
3. Cheese Enchilada Lunches
On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, cheese enchiladas make an excellent sit-down lunch for kiddies. For one, they can be filled with any type of ingredients from chopped chicken to pulled pork to grilled veggies. Enchiladas are meant to be extra cheesy on the outside and crispy on the inside. It's everything you love about the burrito only inside out. The best part is that you can stuff enchiladas with some hidden vegetables that get lost in the cheese and meat, which helps if you have a particularly picky eater.
4. Heavenly Snacks
Since you can pretty much fold or cook a tortilla any which way, there are a ton of different recipes to choose from. If you have younger kids who prefer to eat smaller portions or you want to make some delicious snacks for your munchkins, kids absolutely love getting bite-size morsels of flour tortillas and cheese. One idea is the mini-tostada. With a cookie-cutter and 8-inch tortillas, cut circles into each tortilla and coat with cooking spray. Just like cookies or potato chips, place these little guys on a baking sheet and stick in the oven until crispy or about 4 minutes. You can put any kind of Mexican topping on these delicious round tostados such as corn salsa, fajita beef and sour cream, chicken cubes and black beans or another variation that your kids particularly love.
5. Try New Things
Culturally, Mexican food has so many different variations depending on where you come from. It's always fun to try new things and get kids involved in cooking some traditional dishes that have all of their favorite ingredients just mixed up a different way. For example, you can cook tamalas, picadillo, chiles rellenoes, chile verde, menudo or pibil pollo just to mix it up. Chiles rellenos is probably one of the better traditional recipes to cook for kids because it's simple, doesn't skimp on the cheese and gets them to eat something interesting. Chiles rellenos is traditionally cooked with roasted poblano chiles stuffed with cheese and fried golden brown on the outside. You can also make smaller versions just for younger kids to try.
6. A Different Burger
By trying new things, kids also develop different tastes. Most kids love a cheeseburger, but have they ever tried a torta burger? A Mexican torta burger is a little different than your average burger, but it has a little flavor. You can make smaller torta sliders just for kids. You can use King's Hawaiian sweet dinner roles for the buns with fajita style veggies and beef or you can do a cilantro chicken torta. Tortas usually have a mixture of meat, grilled onions, guacamole, salsa, tomatoes, queso and peppers.
Kids love Mexican food because there are simply so many ways to devour deliciously cheese tortillas. They get a lot of protein, some great vegetable variations and some healthy carbs too. There are plenty of ways to make lighter Mexican dishes that focus more on corn, salsa, lettuce, cilantro, avocados, beans and rice if you don't want kids to have a lot of meat and cheese.
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