Looking for a way to get more vegetables into your family’s diet without a struggle from the kids (or even maybe from some of the adults)?! Try packing your pasta sauce full of them. The appearance and taste of the sauce is still great, so no one has to know! 🙂 This sauce is super healthy, chock-full of veggies & nutrients! Check out what we started with:
Ok, so maybe that top photo doesn’t look so appetizing. But, that’s just to show you how full of veggies this sauce is! In addition to the obvious tomatoes, this veggie packed marinara also has onion, spinach, carrots, and mushrooms! No one batted an eye. It just looks like normal sauce. I LOVED that the boys were consuming such a variety of nutrients! 
When I make things like this, I tend to make a lot so I have some to freeze. So, this recipe definitely makes a pot-full. But, whatever you don’t use can be frozen and stored for whenever you need it. It’d would be great with meat added in too.
Healthy Hidden Veggie Marinara Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 T butter or olive oil
- 1 C chopped onion
- 1.5 C spinach puree
- 1 C carrot puree
- 1 8 oz pkg mushrooms finely chopped
- 2 24oz jars of your favorite pasta sauce
Instructions
- Add butter/oil and onion to a large pot over medium high heat. While the chopped onion browns, prepare the spinach puree.
- For the puree, I used approximately 3 cups of spinach and about 1/2C of water. Use a high powered blender or food processor to get a puree. This yielded about 1.5 cups for me.
- Pour the spinach puree into the pot and let it simmer with the onions. Then, prep the carrots.
- Cook 3-4 carrots (I just used the microwave) until soft. Place in blender/food processor with a little water and blend until pureed. Yields about 1 cup.
- While the carrots cook, you can chop up the mushrooms (either pulse in the processor/blender or finely chop by hand).
- Add carrot puree and mushrooms to the pan.
- Then, stir in the 2 jars of marinara sauce.
- Let simmer for about 20 minutes (to let some of the excess water cook off) and serve or freeze for later!
Serve the sauce over spaghetti or use it in any recipes that call for pasta sauce. You could add in garlic (if the jarred sauce doesn’t have it), parmesan cheese, or meat! This sauce a great way to consume more vegetables! Use it in my gluten-free cheesy zucchini bake and you really have a veggie-rich meal! 🙂
