Homemade Vegetable Nuggets (AKA How to Get Your Kid to Eat Their Vegetables)

If your kids are anything like my kids, then getting them to eat their vegetables is like pulling teeth. Luckily for me (and for you if you stumbled upon this), these homemade vegetable nuggets are delicious, dippable and kid-approved.

The great thing about these vegetable nuggets is that they are versatile. Kid won't eat carrots? No problem, any other root vegetable will work. Doesn't like Zucchini? Use yellow squash instead.

You will need:

• 3 russet potatoes, medium-sized
• 3 carrots, skin off and ready to roll (can also use parsnip)
• a large crown of broccoli
• 1 large zucchini squash or bell pepper
• Garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper and ground mustard for flavor
• cutting knife and cutting board
• a food processor
• bread crumbs for coating
• 2 eggs for coating
• flour of choice for coating. I used gluten-free flour with great results

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

Now that you have everything gathered, chop up the vegetables. Make sure they are chopped uniform and small enough so they won't take forever to cook when you are roasting them.

Throw them on your cookie sheet with some cooking spray and a pinch of salt and pepper for flavor.

then wash and prick your potatoes with a fork. You are going to be roasting them whole, skins and all.

Place the potatoes on the bottom rack of your oven. Place your cookie sheet of chopped veggies on the top rack of your oven.

Roast them for about 20 minutes, or until a fork goes through them easily.

Once the vegetables are roasted, let them cool a bit.

Once they are cool to the touch, process them a couple times in the food processor. You want them to be in smaller pieces but make sure you leave them big enough to lend some texture to your nuggets.

Add the processed vegetables to a mixing bowl. Don't bother cleaning out your food processor bowl. You will need it in the next step.

Once the potatoes are cooked through and cool, chop them roughly in half and place them in the bowl of your food processor. Make sure to leave the skins on.

Process the potatoes until they are chopped and are starting to look a little like glue. Those sweet starches are going to hold your nuggets together.

Add them to the bowl with the processed vegetables.

Pro tip: wash your food processor bowl now. Gluey potatoes are not something you want sitting around.

Add the following seasoning to your mixture and mix until combined.

• 1 tsp. ground, dried, mustard
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1 tsp. ground onion powder
• 1/2 tsp. garlic powder

You can use a spoon or a cookie scoop to form your mixture into nuggets. You will probably need to dust your hands with flour. The mixture is sticky.

Set out 3 separate bowls

• one with your 2 eggs, beaten.
• one with breadcrumbs (flavored or plain, either-one)
• one with flour

Dip the nuggets one at a time into the flour, shake excess.

Then dip the nuggets into the egg, shake excess

. Finally, dip the nuggets into the breadcrumb mixture.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Bake the nuggets for 10 minutes. Flip nuggets over.

Bake for 10 more minutes, or until golden brown and crispy.

Serve with ranch or ketchup.