Spaghetti Bolognese
Spaghetti Bolognese is one of our nation’s favourite dishes. If you love this meal but want to know if there are ways to make it a little healthier, tastier and add more veg without upping the cost, this is the place for you.
Why is Spaghetti Bolognese great?
Spaghetti Bolognese is one of the UK’s favourite meals. As most children like it, spag bol is a simple dinner option for families.
Spag bol recipes vary wildly. Typing “Spaghetti Bolognese recipe” into Google gives you over 40 million results, ranging from a handful of simple ingredients to long complicated lists and steps.
But Spaghetti Bolognese at its most basic is just some meat (or veggie alternative) and sauce mixed with spaghetti. It’s a balanced meal with carbs (pasta), protein (such as meat or plant proteins) and veg. It’s a pretty great choice for dinner, and is an easy one to adapt to make ever better!
No matter what your starting point is we have suggestions for simple steps to add more veg and perhaps a little less meat. This will make your favourite spag bol recipe a little healthier, tastier and more affordable over time.
How are your Spaghetti Bolognese skills?
Getting
started
I’m just starting out.
Next
Level
I’m ready to take it to the next level.
Engaging
Kids
How can I get my kids involved and interested?
Getting Started
Spaghetti Bolognese recipes vary wildly.
Typing “Spaghetti Bolognese recipe” into Google gives you over 40 million results, ranging from a handful of simple ingredients to long complicated lists and steps.
But Spaghetti Bolognese at its most basic is just some meat (or veggie alternative) and sauce mixed with spaghetti. It’s a balanced meal with carbs (pasta), protein (such as meat or plant proteins) and veg. It’s a pretty great choice for dinner, and is an easy one to adapt to make ever better!
Here is a simple recipe for Spaghetti Bolognese which you can use as a base and build on over time…
Simple Spaghetti Bolognese
Claire Wright
Ingredients:
Beef (or pork/chicken/turkey) mince – approx 400g for a family of 4 – or veggie alternative
1 jar of bolognese sauce
300g dried spaghetti
Method:
Set a frying pan over medium heat, and pop a saucepan of water with a pinch of salt on another burner to bring to the boil while you make the sauce.
Add 1 tbsp oil to the frying pan and heat for a minute until it is hot, then add the mince and cook for about 3-5 mins, stirring frequently to break up the meat, until it is browned all over.
Is your saucepan of water bubbling now? When it is, add your spaghetti (if it’s too long for the pan, just snap in half first). Check the packet for how long this should cook, but it’s usually about 8-10 mins.
Carefully add the sauce to the frying pan with the meat (it may spit slightly as the pan and oil will be hot, so pour carefully from the side and turn the heat right down for a moment if you feel it needs it).
Heat until you start to get little bubbles in the sauce, then turn down the heat to low and let it simmer to cook and heat everything through, about 5 mins.
Once your pasta is cooked, drain the water (or use tongs to just pick the spaghetti out) and mix with the sauce and meat.
There is no need to go any further with this recipe until you are confident with it and feel up for the next step.
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
You could get the kids to help with browning the mince, or getting the spaghetti ready.
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.
NEXT LEVEL
I Want To Improve My Spaghetti Bolognese
If you are feeling confident with your favourite spag bol recipe, but you’re wondering if there are some small tweaks you could make for the better, this is for you.
We’ve outlined some simple stages for continually improving on a basic Spaghetti Bolognese recipe to get you from good to great. Find where you feel your current recipe sits and see if the next step is something you could aim for. You don’t have to go any further, but if you choose to, make sure you are feeling confident with this new stage before you try the next one.
And remember, the MOST important thing is that the family enjoys the meal! These changes and swaps can take as long as is needed if your family isn’t ready for big changes all in one go. Small simple improvements over time may not even be noticed!
And remember, the MOST important thing is that the family enjoys the meal! These changes and swaps can take as long as is needed if your family isn’t ready for big changes all in one go. Small simple improvements over time may not even be noticed.
Better Sauce
Read the labels on jars of sauce and make changes as slowly as needed for your family, gently moving them towards lower sugar, salt and fat options and ingredients you recognise.
Swapping a ready-made bolognese sauce for a homemade sauce can often help the budget as well as the salt and sugar content. If making your own sauce is 20 mins you can’t spare, using a tin of chopped tomatoes or passata is an easy, cheaper, instant way to a healthier sauce. Add flavour with a pinch of seasoning, sugar and dried mixed herbs.
If you have a little time to make and store a big batch of homemade sauce for a few meals, why not try our rainbow veg sauce? Rainbow veg sauce is perfect for when you’re busy, as it’s a super quick way to get an excellent mix of veg into your kids and helps to produce tasty meals in a flash!
Making meals go further
With food budgets being stretched, meat can be expensive. Using veg and pulses can help a meal go further without noticeably altering the taste and texture. This not only saves you money, it also helps you get a little closer to 5-a-day! Go at your pace and work through the stages to build up to 50% meat and 50% pulses/veg over time if you can.
For a spaghetti Bolognese, try a tin of cooked lentils, drained, rinsed and added for the last couple of mins of cooking. If you think it will be turned down, try starting with just half a tin and perhaps even blending it into the sauce and just reduce the meat while adding more lentils slowly each time you make the meal. No need to waste the rest of the lentils (or meat if you had to buy extra) – just freeze for the next time.
For something even less noticeable, you could try a mug of red lentils added to the sauce and cooked for 20-30 mins until soft, since they break up in the sauce and aren’t at all obvious!
Add veg
Aim for 2 handfuls of veg per person in the long-run, but it’s better to go slowly and get there eventually than to rush to the finish line and find no one is ready to get there with you.
- Start frozen peas, sweetcorn, mixed veg, chargrilled veg, squash/sweet potato chunks, sliced peppers, sliced mushrooms.
- If using fresh veg, make sure it is added at the start and allow time for it to soften in a little oil before adding the protein, and sauce. Try finely diced fresh carrots, onions/leeks, fennel and/or celery, sliced peppers or mushrooms, or diced courgette or aubergine.
- While most veg will work in a spag bol, ones that may not do quite so well are: cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, sprouts, parsnips, beetroot, asparagus, sugar snap peas, and salad leaves.
Don’t forget that the MOST important thing is that the family enjoys the meal! There’s no rush, and no pressure in not getting to 2 portions per serve.
Batch cooking
Not sure if batch cooking is for you? People often think batch cooking means you have to have a big freezer and a slow cooker. But while those things can be helpful, they’re definitely not essential. Find out more about how to start small with batch cooking in our guide.
engaging kids
Play is essential!
Think of children helping in the kitchen as a role play game with plenty of fun for maximum effect. One of the best ways to develop a love of veg in kids is to get them involved in the prep of the veg. Not only is cooking an essential life skill for kids to learn, but it’s a great, fun way to get them engaging with healthy foods!
Cooking with kids
One of the best ways to develop a love of veg in kids is to get them involved in the prep of the veg. Not only is cooking an essential life skill for kids to learn, but it’s a great, fun way to get them engaging with healthy foods! They don’t have to be involved in the whole process especially when they are very young (let’s keep the mess to a minimum!), just give them 1-2 smaller jobs they can own with some supervision.
If you are making a Spaghetti Bolognese, why not get younger kids stirring the sauce into the pasta, putting the kettle on for spaghetti, sprinkling cheese over the dinner, and chucking a couple of handfuls of your chosen veg into the pan.
Older kids might be ready to learn how to chop some fresh veg to add at the start of the meal, stir everything together in the pan, and grating cheese to serve!
See if they can tick off our Kitchen Ninja skills over time as you all get used to the recipe.
Arts & crafts
While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging veg-based arts & crafts can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory.
Use these arts & crafts as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. While you make your spag bol tomato sauce, why not set them up with our tomato face masks?
Games & puzzles
Like arts & crafts, games & puzzles are a very safe way to get veggies to become more familiar and takes any pressure off eating or engaging their senses around veg for now.
A great place to start with Spaghetti Bolognese might be our Squash ‘Em tomato game!
Sensory
Sensory engagement with veg is possibly the best way to get children to slowly become more familiar with a veg. Take away the pressure to taste for now (and remember that ‘tasting’ could be expanded to include sniffing, licking and smelling) and instead encourage exploring a veg with a sense of smell, hearing, touch or sight.
Why not start with a spoonful of frozen peas and get them to describe what they see – maybe a pile of tiny green pebbles, alien poo, or ogre’s teeth! See if they want to chuck some into the bolognese sauce after having engaged with them.
Serving
If your kids aren’t ready to be in the kitchen helping with part of the prep or cooking process, why not give them a job around the serving that could help them feel involved in the meal?
A crafty kid may like to design a beautiful menu, one who likes to help can lay the table. One may like to help you plate up the food, another may love to give the meal a theme! If you can (and we know it’s not always possible), try to eat with the kids, as they are much more likely to eat healthier food if they see it being eaten (and enjoyed!) by their families.
Why not ask a creative child to design some name cards for the table and a “Spaghetti Bolognese” menu card for dinner tonight?
DO you have a question you’d like one of our experts to help you with?
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