This is more an invitation to share ideas and recipes than an actual question. I’m curious what go-to meals you return to time and time again for your larger family: recipes that can be easily doubled or tripled, easily heated up for leftovers, and that appeal to kids of a wide variety of ages. Ease of planning, cooking and clean-up are a plus, too.
A few of my family’s favorites:
- Beef stew. Doesn’t take much prep work and you can basically throw in whatever you’ve got on hand. I use this basic recipe as a starting point but often change up the ratios, add different veggies, or make it more or less thick depending on my mood. I like that you can spoon up more of the broth for kids who like their stew soupy or use a slotted spoon to dish up meat, potatoes and veggies for the kids who like it that way. Always a hit in our house.
- Roast chicken with roasted potatoes and carrots. Roasting a chicken is about the easiest thing imaginable, and my kids love roasted veggies so much they actually fight over who gets the last carrot. Here’s a basic, super-easy roast chicken recipe that makes an incredibly crispy skin my kids love. A note: I find that most recipes over-estimate the amount of meat each person needs. One roaster feeds all of us with some left over for soup – but I do serve up lots of potatoes and veggies for good measure.
- Build-your-own tacos. I love to make a build-your-own taco buffet that includes black beans, lettuce, sweet peppers, salsa, sour cream, tomatoes and corn in addition to meat and cheese. It allows the kids to personalize their own tacos, and they seem more willing to experiment a little with veggies they might not always be crazy about without when they’re building the tacos themselves. Here’s my basic black bean recipe.
Please share your favorite big-family pleasing meal ideas and recipes in the comments below!
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Homemade pizza – http://youpinspireme.blogspot.com/2012/02/loaded-bbq-chicken-pizza.html – everyone helps to make it, and we load it up with veggies. The recipe makes more than enough for our family of 6.
My simple go to meal that everyone in my house will eat without a fuss is spaghetti and meatballs. I serve it with some steamed veggies and garlic bread. A few don’t like the sauce and or meatballs, and eat the pasta plain which is fine with me. I buy the frozen pre made meatballs my grocery store sells so it’s super easy. I know they are not the healthiest so we only have this once or twice a month. I do some other form of pasta with ground turkey, or turkey sausage, or cheese ravioli on our pasta night on the other weeks.
I’m looking forward to hear what everyone else shares!
Anything “build your own” is a huge win out our house – tacos, hummus/veggie wraps, pizzas.
That and Roast chicken. My kids can’t get enough of it.
Crock pot chicken fajitas – I put a few chicken breasts in the crockpot with a couple of taco seasoning packets and a little water in the morning. At dinner time, saute some mushrooms, onions and peppers, shred the chicken, and serve on tortillas with cheese. Super easy and everyone loves it.
When we’re out of chicken we substitute scrambled eggs for the chicken – tons of protein and they love it.
We also have salad bar night (self-explanatory – with grilled chicken and hard boiled eggs for protein) and baked potato bar night, where they can build their own masterpiece.
Taco soup – makes enough for my family of 6 to eat twice and have some left over for lunches each time too. Pasta salad makes a bunch and we all love it. I serve it with grilled chicken or sandwiches. Stuffed shells – makes enough for two meals and freezes well.
All of those are on my blog and a bunch more too. I specialize in easy, family food
I don’t think I have any special recipes. I just find one I like and double/triple it to get enough for my family and, hopefully, leftovers. Every meal I cook is normally enough for 10-12 people (there are 7 of us). I’ve always done that. Even when it was just me I was cooking for (I’d cook a meal for 4 and eat the leftover the next 3 days). That’s how my family did it when I was growing up so most of the recipes I got from my mom were already for 8 people even though there were only 4 of us growing up.
My go-to recipes are tacos (my base is 3lbs of ground turkey–it lasts 2-3 meals), homemade mac & cheese (made with a regular box of pasta it’s usually enough for 2 meals especially if I add stuff in like onion and smoked sausage or peas and hamburger), barley beef soup in the slow cooker (I follow the recipe on the side of the barley box but triple it, lasts a few days).
And, for the most part, we just eat grilled chicken with veggies and rice or instant potatoes (I’ve been too lazy lately to make real potatoes). I normally cook 7 huge boneless/skinless chicken breasts. The girls tend to only eat half of one each and I end up with 1 or 2 leftover for me for lunch the next day.
i’m fortunate that my kids (5, 2, 2, and 1) eat almost everything i cook (and they’ve ‘trained’ me not to make the things they don’t eat, like rice!)
on the weekends, i usually make a huge pot of chicken chili loaded with every kind of bean and veggie (mostly frozen from my uncle’s summer garden!) i have on hand; baked potato soup with red potatoes and bacon and cheddar cheese; cream of brocoli soup (surprisingly, this is a HUGE hit with all the kids!).
during the week, i go for the easy and quick prep/cook recipes like meatloaf; pasta & costco frozen meatballs; costco frozen cheese pizza with the kid’s choice of toppings (pineapple & ham are their favorites); pasta carbonara (i probably didn’t spell that correctly) with smoked kielbasa, bacon, and frozen mixed veggies with heavy whipping cream and parmesan cheese; and an old polish family recipe – ‘sausage and potatoes’ which is smoked kielbasa, bacon, onion, and red potatoes all cooked up together. i’ve tried different variations on chicken but nuggets always win out.
my ‘rule’ is that week-day prep AND cook time can’t exceed 20-25 minutes since i’m exhausted and the kids are starving from the minute we walk in the door from daycare/work. i have a list of about 50 go-to recipes that i can make quickly when the kids are starving and with ingredients i typically keep on hand.
if anyone is interested in them, please let me know and i’ll gladly share. no promises that they are low fat, though!
We fill a crockpot with chicken legs and thighs, 1 cup to 1 1/2 cup honey and salt then leave for the day. Rice with veggies and we have a favorite meal!
The 3 you mentioned are on our menu almost weekly! A couple more:
- Stir fry. I buy those huge bags of frozen stir fry veggies, add a little thin sliced steak, soy sauce, cook up a ton of rice and there’s dinner. Fridge to plate in 20 minutes.
- Baked potato bar. Cook up a mess of baked potatoes (a large slow cooker is great for this), then put on the table with bowls of sour cream, cheese, cooked broccoli, diced bacon, leftover chili.
One super easy meal that my whole family eats is crock-pot chicken and pasta. Place frozen chicken in crock-pot and cover with spaghetti sauce. Let cook all day. When close to time to eat, cook pasta according to package directions. I usually put a scoop of pasta on each place and then top with chicken and sauce. It’s a big hit.
My 5 all LOVE potato soup and spinach noodles (aka noodles florentine). We have some very particular eaters in the bunch – including the hubs – so I try to please a percentage rather than the majority when I prepare meals. I LOVE trying new recipes and offering variations on favorites. I try to prepare meals that can be built for each as well – tacos, pizza, baked potatoes, even just noodles with various sauces. But the above two meals are one’s I know once prepared and on the table – there will only be happy silence and soon 7 full bellies and requests for more dinner are heard rather than requests for dessert or snack 10 minutes later.
This one’s a classic in Utah, a land filled with large families: hawaiian haystacks. Cook up a big pot of rice. Put together some chicken-filled creamy gravy (either from scratch or “cream of” condensed soup). Gather all the toppings you have on hand (common ones include grated cheese, crunchy chow mein noodles, chopped celery, onions, olives, tomatoes, shredded coconut, and pineapple). Put a pile of rice on your plate, top with gravy, follow with desired toppings. Instant casserole-like goodness. Kind of like baked potato bar but for rice.
Stir-fries are great. A huge rice-cooker of rice and some combination of meat and vegetables, sauteed with soy sauce, and everyone’s happy and healthy. Homemade breads are delicious and can really stuff a gut (or 6) fast. Since they are from scratch, I control how healthy the ingredients are. But I gotta say, a little white flour and yeast goes a long way! We do beans a lot, too. I mix a LARGE can of pinto beans with a small can of diced tomatoes with chilis (mild), add salt and cumin, and a handful of cilantro. Five minutes later, it tastes pretty close to Charro beans that would have taken all day. I buy a bunch of cilantro at the start of each month, and chop it all up that same day. I put it into 4 ziplocs. One goes in the fridge, and 3 into the freezer. I have fresh cilantro all month this way. This works great with all herbs. Another trick is the herb cube. You can puree fresh herbs and freeze them in ice cube trays. Pop them out and store them in a labeled ziploc in the freezer until you need them. Another big hit with my family is pasta, really of any kind. I experiment with the sauce, meat, vegetables, all of it. But it seems like I can’t go wrong with some kind of pasta dish. Burgers are great. Build your own burger night is my husband’s favorite. Tacos are pretty much the easiest and fastest meal I make. I buy fresh homemade flour tortillas once a month at my ‘big shop’, and then (you guessed it) freeze some of them. The others go in the fridge. Some kind of meat, some kind of cheese (which I also buy in bulk, and… ahem… freeze until I need), and a grilled tortilla make everyone happy. Of course, great seasonal, fresh vegetables help, too. If there is no meat thawed, because with all this freezing, sometimes I forget, egg and cheese tacos are sensational, as are potato and egg. Keep some salsas on hand for pizzazz toward the end of the month when you’re down to a few lonely mystery cans in the cupboard. Y’all know how that can be. Well, I could go on and on with this topic. Oops, perhaps I already did. Cooking easy, inexpensive, healthy food to feed a full quiver is kinda my passion.