5 Minute Hidden Veg Sauce

A very easy and quick hidden veg sauce with 5 different types of vegetable secretly blended into it. So yummy and the kids will never know how healthy it is… shhh!

The ‘Perfect’ Sauce!

This sauce really is the absolute perfect combination of healthy, delicious and kid friendly, and it takes only 5 minutes to make! It packs a fantastic 5 different types of colourful veg into a result that looks remarkably like plain tomato sauce, so that ‘fussy eater’ in your household can easily be ‘fooled’ into thinking they’re eating only that. (But we know the truth, don’t we??)

As a bonus, it doesn’t even need to be cooked meaning it really is so quick to make, and also, you get the maximum amount of nutrients that are often damaged by the cooking process – especially vitamin C.

This quick hidden veg sauce is also incredibly versatile! It can be stirred though freshly cooked pasta for an incredibly quick and healthy dinner but it has so many other possible uses too. Jazz up a spag bol with it, spread it across a pizza base before sprinkling your cheese on, heat it up with some stock and seasoning to make a delicious soup, the possibilities are endless!

This sauce can be used in place of passata (sieved, strained tomatoes) for virtually any recipe that calls for tomato sauce. With this hidden veg sauce, you add so much more goodness than plain tomatoes can give and a much more interesting and rich flavour to boot. For this reason, I always keep a stash of it on standby in my freezer to pop into a huge range of different dishes.

This 5 minute hidden veg sauce is also the perfect recipe to get your kids helping! It’s so quick and easy that my 5 year old can make it with minimal supervision. It really is true that when kids help you with cooking in the kitchen, they are much more likely to eat the resulting meal so do get them involved if you can. My daughter has given this sauce her official thumbs up which means it MUST be good as that doesn’t happen very often!

I absolutely love using my food processor for a whole range of different quick recipes, such as my 5 minute roasted red pepper hummus, to name just one. If you don’t have a food processor yet I’d thoroughly recommend investing in one to make your cooking, and your life, so much quicker and easier.

Simple, Clean Ingredients

As with so many of my recipes, simplicity is key! Using only simple, fresh and whole ingredients is the key to creating such a delicious and versatile quick sauce. There are many different vegetables that could be used to make a quick hidden veg sauce but here, I’ve focussed on using ones that are easily available to buy, that have a delicious natural sweet flavour (to keep the kids happy!) and that won’t cause the sauce to be an odd colour or smell.

To help encourage fussy kids to eat this super-healthy sauce, the aim is to make it appear as close as possible to plain and simple tomato sauce. This is why – for example – a veg like beetroot can’t be used. (Beetroot is naturally sweet and delicious but creates a purple sauce which would be off putting to some diners.) The addition of spinach, for example, also creates a delicious sauce but one that has a brownish colour to it and quite frankly it looks like… well, ya know. So needless to say, I’ve avoided spinach in this recipe!

The vegetables used in this recipe tick all the right boxes – tomatoes, sweetcorn, red pepper, carrot and celery. All blend together harmoniously to created a super-yummy finished sauce. To really enhance the tomatoey colour and flavour, a decent squirt of tomato paste is used. One crumbled stock cube provides some extra flavour and seasoning (so no need to add extra salt) and finally, a little bit of minced garlic rounds the flavours off nicely.

Most kids seem to go wild for garlic as it just has such a yummy, moreish flavour which is why I’ve included it here. As with so many of my recipes, I strongly recommend using pre-minced garlic that is easy to buy in jars and squeezy tubes. Nobody hands our prizes for crushing and finely chopping your own garlic, so why spend your precious time doing this?

5 Minute Hidden Veg Sauce- STEP-BY-STEP

Now lets have a look at a handy step by step guide to making this super quick hidden veg sauce, with photos and tips along the way to make it all the more easy for you.

STEP 1

Start by grabbing a food processor or blender. It’s important to use one that is decent quality and up to the job of finely pureeing all these lovely vegetables. If your food processor is a bit old and has a blunt blade for example you may end up with a few little fibrous bits in your sauce. This isn’t a big deal of course, but it may be a tad off-putting for the most fussy of diners.

Take 1 medium sized red bell pepper, remove the stalk and seeds, then chop it into a few large chunks. Put it into your food processor. Then take 1 medium stick of celery, chop off and discard the ends and chop it into a few large chunks also. Place these into the food processor. Then grab 1 medium carrot (no need to peel, as long as it’s clean). Chop off and discard the ends then chop into a few large chunks too. Place this in the food processor.

STEP 2

Next, to the food processor add 3 tablespoons of tinned sweetcorn, one 400g (14 oz) tin of tomatoes (undrained), 4 tablespoons olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic, 1 tablespoon tomato paste and finally, one vegetable stock cube that you’ve crumbled up.

STEP 3

Now blend everything up for 1-2 minutes until fully combined and liquid. That’s it! You’re done. The sauce can immediately be stirred into freshly cooked pasta – that’s right, the sauce doesn’t need any cooking at all – or you can use it however else you want. It also freezes really well. YUM!