When I have no energy to time to cook, or I just want a break, these are the easy toddler meals I turn to. Each idea is nutritious yummy, and requires hardly any cooking at all!
This list is meant to give you a few new ideas for easy kids meals you can pull together in minutes. Each is made with a mix of nutrients and can be adjusted and customized for your own kids.
I love to take the opportunity on busy nights to make quick dinners for kids that are simple and easy. And most of the time the kids appreciate that!
Of course, everyone’s idea of “easy” and “cooking” is different, so there’s a range here. Some of these toddler dinners do require cooking and some are assembly only (and others rely on leftovers being stored away in the freezer), but all are relatively straightforward. Keep this list on hand for those nights when you need to make family dinner, but you need to make your life a little easier.
(You may also like Healthy Toddler Breakfasts, Toddler Lunch Ideas, and recipes for constipated toddlers.)
Table of Contents
- 22 Easy Toddler Meals—No Recipes Required
- Favorite Buttered Noodles
- Mac and Cheese with Peas
- Vegetarian Quesadillas with Beans and Cheese
- Quick Pizza Quesadillas
- Quick English Muffin Pizzas
- 10-Minute Flatbread Pizza
- Quick Lentil Sauce for Pasta
- Easy Snack Dinner
- Best 2-Ingredient Baby Pancakes
- Quick Cottage Cheese Pancakes
- Easy Breakfast Burritos
- Vegetarian Burrito Bowls
- Vegetarian Rice and Bean Burritos
- Tortellini in Broth
- Quick Pasta with Peas
- Easy Taco Roll Ups
- Quick Sandwich Roll Ups
- Easy Turkey Wrap Recipe
- Easy Hummus Wrap
- Yogurt Flatbread
- Favorite Healthy Toddler Smoothie
- Favorite Protein Shakes for Kids
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22 Easy Toddler Meals—No Recipes Required
Favorite Buttered Noodles
I love this since it’s serious comfort food, and it can be topped with all sorts of additional flavor boosters for adults as we like—so we can all happily share the meal.
Mac and Cheese with Peas
This easy recipe is one of our very favorite shortcut toddler meals. It comes together quickly, you’re not actually making anything from scratch, and it’s a complete and satisfying meal.
Vegetarian Quesadillas with Beans and Cheese
Transform beans and cheese into delish Vegetarian Quesadillas in less than 10 minutes for family dinner tonight—or a go-to kids meal for anytime.
Quick Pizza Quesadillas
These are ready in about 6 minutes, have classic pizza flavor with a soft and easy to chew texture, and are almost endlessly versatile!
Quick English Muffin Pizzas
They are so fast to make, and you can reheat them from the fridge or the freezer—so you can assemble them whenever you have the time and serve them up in minutes.
10-Minute Flatbread Pizza
This is the easiest way I know how to make homemade pizza that actually tastes like it’s from scratch—and it’s lightning fast.
Quick Lentil Sauce for Pasta
You need just 2 simple pantry staples, the method takes just a few minutes, and you can store the sauce in the refrigerator or freezer for future easy meals.
Easy Snack Dinner
The next time you just cannot summon the energy to cook a meal…Snack Dinner to the rescue! I love this easy concept because it’s so easy to make one big platter for the whole family to share or individual plates for each kiddo.
Best 2-Ingredient Baby Pancakes
I love recipes for kids that use simple ingredients and are also SUPER quick and easy to make and this method totally fits that bill.
Quick Cottage Cheese Pancakes
They’re an easy toddler breakfast idea that you can make and serve in the moment or reheat on a future morning.
Easy Breakfast Burritos
These easy burritos are so straightforward to make and are one of my favorite make-ahead breakfast options. I love that I can make a pile of them at once and store them in the fridge or freezer to warm up on future days.
Vegetarian Burrito Bowls
These bowls are easy to prep ahead (should you have the time) and easy to serve family-style so everyone can decide exactly how they want their bowl.
Vegetarian Rice and Bean Burritos
With just 5 simple and nutritious ingredients, you can make these Vegetarian Rice and Bean Burritos for family dinner. They’re great to make ahead, too!
Tortellini in Broth
You need only a few ingredients to make this soup recipe for kids (and Italian recipes in general), and you can use a few different options for the broth. From there, it’s easy to add flavor for kids who like that or to enhance your own serving.
Quick Pasta with Peas
It’s rich in vegetarian protein, it’s very fast, and it’s easy for little kids to eat—and for grown-ups to enjoy, too.
Easy Taco Roll Ups
This is a fun yet easy way to vary up how we serve the basic ingredients of a quesadilla and refried beans—or smashed pinto beans. Both options hold the tortilla together, which is nice here.
Quick Sandwich Roll Ups
Transform a basic sandwich into a super fun Sandwich Roll-Up with a simple method anyone can do. This works with a variety of fillings and can be served at home or packed for school lunch.
Easy Turkey Wrap Recipe
The idea is so simple, but we have found a few tips that make it tastier, have a better texture, and hold together well enough for little kids to pick up.
Easy Hummus Wrap
This no-cook meal is an easy lunch for school or for work or home for you. And you can make it in less than 5 minutes!
Yogurt Flatbread
You can mix together this bread dough and have the whole thing ready to eat under 20 minutes. There’s no waiting for it to rise or rest, and no need for yeast. It’s similar to naan bread in flavor and texture and can be used in similar ways.
Favorite Healthy Toddler Smoothie
It’s a perfect smoothie for kids since it’s naturally sweet, loaded with nutrition from fruit and veggies, and tastes great!
Favorite Protein Shakes for Kids
With simple ingredients, naturally sweet flavor, and about a third of your kiddo’s protein needs for the day, these are a great breakfast or snack option.
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I’d love to hear your go-to easy meals, so chime in below in the comments!
This page is super useful, thank you! My son is just going from baby to toddler, and I’m struggling to come up with a variety of easy meals.
And I have no idea if this will help anyone since as people said every kid is different and maybe I just got lucky with mine being tolerant of veggies… But something I’ve found is that the way I cook the food and season it will make or break whether my son will eat it. He would not eat the plain scrambled eggs I made for him. Spit them out multiple times. But he really likes having eggs the way I make them for myself – sunny side up in olive oil, with salt and pepper, on a buttered wheat English muffin. He doesn’t like steamed or microwaved vegetables, but if they are sautéed with pepper he will eat them with gusto and cry when there’s no more! He loves curry chicken and veggies, and will eat even veggies he doesn’t really like in it (green peppers), or in a burrito.
Awesome perspective, thanks for sharing!
I do a smoothie with washed raw collard greens, dried peanut butter powder, bananas, whole milk or almond milk, pecans and almonds. I blend it on my smoothie setting. If there are still chunks i blend it again. I usually freeze the bananas so that it makes it a thicker. My 12 month old loves this. He is getting a full serving of Greens. You can substitute spinach as well. I have even thrown his salmon in there because he didn’t want to eat it. The bananas hide the flavor.
Wow, salmon?!
Thanks for the ideas. Not to sound silly, but for the comment about hiding vegetables and parent child trust, gotta be from someone with one child. I have 8, and I can tell you for sure, that every kid is different. If they are picky, they will grow out of it. Hide it, don’t hide it. Do we tell them the truth about Santa? Do what’s best for your own child, chances are if you hide a vegetable or let them eat a cookie, they’ll probably still grow up perfectly fine. Enjoy the toddler years, it’s the teenage years you have to worry about lol just wait
So true!
I think it’s not just a parent with one child coz I have only one with one on the way I think it’s also just how picky their child is. If they’ve never had to deal with a child who is a picky eater then it’ll be very difficult to understand the plight of a parent with a picky eater(even if it’s just one child) . I come from a large family with many picky eaters as kids, they all seem to grow out of it but while they’re in that phase it can be really tough. My nephew decided one weekend that he only ate Kelloggs cornflakes and refused to eat anything else. It didn’t last too long but the point is people don’t always understand what they haven’t been exposed to.
Thanks amy
Thank you for sharing this. Toddlers can be so fussy and it’s hard to think of healthy food ideas.
My little guy has had a ton of feeding issues since day one and as a result developed oral aversion and required intervention by speech therapy. Once we finally advanced past him eating only crunchy textures, his favorite foods include: sun butter roll ups, crackers, or sandwiches, egg bites (copycat sous vide from Starbucks), and meatloaf (without sauce). For the egg bites and meatloaf, I meal prep and freeze so that I always have them on hand. And for the meatloaf, I use my food processor to chop/ nearly puree all the veggies (usually onion, celery, and carrots) to make sure he’s getting some veggies and form them into meatballs.
Hi, can you share the meat loaf recipe? How did you get your sun to eat other foods besides crunchy stuff? Going through the same thing!
Thanks Amy!
Sometimes in a pinch I do the frozen chicken nuggets and minute rice with frozen veggies. Usually i’ll cook the veggies in with the rice so it all boils together! Easy, quick chicken and rice.
Love that idea!
Just wanted to suggest that you can chop up spinach or dark salad greens very finely and add them to many of these things (tacos, burritos, pizza, sandwiches) to give it a bit of a healthy kick. If it’s chopped small at least my kids tend to not notice it’s there!
Great idea!
Hiding veggies in kids meals is a breach of trust between parent and child. How would you feel if you’d find out that someone you trust hides certain foods in your foods because “it’s good for you” ?
I follow “ family.snack.nutritionist” on instagram and she has some great advice on how to expose your kids to veggies and work on that parent-child trust relationship.
I always recommend that you show and tell the kid what’s inside a recipe and instead of thinking of it as “sneaking”, think of it as adding a range of foods to help add flavor, texture, and color. If you can let food be food and don’t let veggies be the most important thing, that can help too.
Sometimes young children need veggies hidden. My son fortunately loves veggies and I do not have to hide them. A very close friend struggles to get their child to eat anything other than plain cheese pizza. Their child is constantly sick with issues. These are situations that for now, its better to try and hide veggies just so the child can be healthy and grow and as the child grows and understands more, to show them veggies are good. Not everyone’s situation is the same and as a parent, you do what you can to give your children the best possible chance.
I’d say thank you because they care enough about me to make sure that I get the nutrients I need. I’m all about open and honest with my daughter but I’m also the adult. I don’t ask her opinion on needed medical procedures and I don’t rely on her getting everything she needs from her food by choice .We teach and talk about nutrition and what healthy food does for the body but she’s a toddler. She’s doesn’t know everything, even if she says she does.
I have to disagree to be honest. You must have a very easy kid, because my kid just wont eat vegetables put in front of him (almost every meal has different vegetables on a plate in front of him) and he hardly ever touches it.
Camouflaging the vegetables is the only way some parents can get the micro nutrients into their kids.
I think its a bit dramatic to say you are breaching trust by making food in a way they may not recognise what they are eating. It’s ridiculous. We all want our kids to eat healthy foods and if thats the way you have to do it, then respect how parents provide it to their children each child is different.
My son is three and very very picky, he will eat somethings one day and the next acts as if he never tried it LOL. whats been working for me is waiting until he tells me hes hungry and he will tell me what he wants as well. This list of meals really helped me prepare a grocery list for him (yes his own list smh) i would buy the 6 or 7 things he regularly eat then all of a sudden he doesn’t eat them anymore, 50 dollars almost wasted. Guess we just have to take it one day at a time.
It can be really hard at this age, especially the unpredictability. You could also decide to be more in charge and let him pick from two choices that you think he may eat—it could cut down on waste. But I realize that may make you worry he won’t eat anything. This approach may help: https://www.yummytoddlerfood.com/the-division-of-responsibility/
What do you suggest for a 2 year old that is very picky? I have difficulties getting my kid to eat anything. He likes mac and cheese, corn dogs, hot pockets, pea’s, and pbjs. That really sums it up lol.
My six years old eats only plain pasta (no sauce or anything on it), toats with butter, plain tortilla wraps, popcorn and a pumpkin soup. That’s pretty much it. She doesn’t even like chocolate. The only good thing is that she likes cucumbers, apples and sometimes banana.
I got tired of trying to convince my kids to eat their greens and certain other foods so I made a smoothie one day, frozen tropical fruit (can get it at walmart/Sam’s Club/costco), yogurt and kale. And they love it. You can add a ripe banana for sweetness.
Thank you for the list of food
Will try them
really helpful, thank you
Thank you for this list. Unfortunately, nut butter n jelly sandwiches are not option for bringing to daycare. Daycare says it’s not a meal! Will try some of the other recipes n see. Wish me luck! Lol
That’s interesting to know! I hope the other ideas are helpful!
How is nut butter and jelly sandwich not a meal?! It’s a complete protein, a complex carb (assuming whole grain bread), and a healthy fat.
Day cares do not allow nut butters as some kids are allergic. Use soy butter jnstead.
Great list! Thank you for compiling it.
Absolutely, I hope it’s helpful!
My husband is out of town, and he usually watches our kiddo while I cook full meals. It was not happening by myself. This list saved me. Thank you!
I’m so glad that this was helpful!