Garden Vegetable Recipes to Use Your Homegrown Produce

Here are some of our favorite garden vegetable recipes to use up your garden produce!

Find healthy yellow squash and zucchini recipes, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower recipes, and more!

Whether you’re pulling from your winter, spring, fall, or summer garden, you’ll find yummy bites even picky eaters will love!

Plus, we share some sneaky ways to get your loved ones (or yourself) to enjoy vegetables even if they’re not your favorite!

Everyone knows we should be eating more vegetables. No matter what diet you are following, what your gym tells you, or what your grandma taught you.

So, try these 5 easy ways to eat more vegetables that anyone can use, plus some of our favorite vegetable garden foods!

Healthy Garden Vegetable Recipes To Try:

Crispy zucchini fritters on a gray serving plate over a red and white checkered cloth.

Homemade squash tots on a plate and being dunked into a small bowl of dipping sauce.

Zucchini carpaccio salad with tomatoes and shaved cheese on top.

Honey butter skillet corn with cream cheese and green garnish on top.

Cauliflower nuggets on a plate in a circle around a bowl of dipping sauce.

Crispy corn fritters on a white plate with a bowl of white dipping sauce.

5 Easy Ways to Eat More Vegetables (Even when you hate them!)

Try new ways to cook them, try ones you haven’t had in 15 years, make a promise to yourself that you’ll just do it because you know you should, kinda like brushing your teeth. Or read these 5 easy ways to add vegetables to your diet, even when you hate them!

And you may be wondering if this is even possible. Yes – it is. I’m married to a veggie hating husband. Or at least he used to be. But guess what? He’s a veggie lover (to a degree) now. You can, in fact, be changed.

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Pinterest graphic with text that reads \"5 Easy Ways to Add Veggies Even When You Hate Them\" and several different kinds of produce in the background.

First of all, it’s not easy. If you hate something, you hate it. I hate onions. And mayonnaise. In fact, mayo is at the top of my list of foods I hate the most. But. The good news for me is that mayo pretty much sucks nutritionally speaking. No one needs mayo. And it’s loaded with fat. So good for me that I don’t have to learn to like it. Because it ain’t happening. Ever.

But. Unfortunately for those that don’t like veggies, they don’t fall into the nutritional suckfest like mayo. I don’t know many veggies (or any for that matter) that can go in this category. The health benefits of garden vegetables and their recipes are ridiculous. Vitamins, minerals, fiber – you name it. Veggies have it. Some are better than others, but if you pick a veggie over a cracker, you’ve won already.

So how do you keep winning? Small steps. Don’t all of a sudden declare that you are a vegetarian if you know you hate vegetables. You’ll be running for the nearest fast food joint in three hours sinking your teeth into the biggest, juiciest burger loaded with mayo in no time. So here you go. Get your peelers and cutting boards ready. I promise if you just try, there is some way you can find at least a few veggies you like.

1. Start with the Water-Packed Veggies

Water packed veggies like cucumbers are an easy start. Now cucumbers aren’t the most nutritious veggie. But, they pack a punch with water. Eat cukes for a snack = get full quicker. Find a low cal dressing you love and dip them. They’re crunchy, which if you pretend super hard, you can get that feeling of eating a cracker or a chip. Crunch is good. And they’re cheap! Really cheap. You can buy a week’s worth of cucumber snacks for less than 2 days of cracker snacks. A win for your bod, win for your wallet. More water-packed garden vegetables:

lettuce
celery
tomatoes
green bell peppers
asparagus
radish
zucchini

2. Try a New Way to Cook Vegetables

Example: I never liked asparagus growing up. In fact, we never had it I think? My grandma had a massive garden and when she outgrew that one, she planted two more. Huge gardens. Enormous. But, I don’t remember her ever planting asparagus. Maybe it was right up there with mayo for her, who knows? I didn’t start eating asparagus until my late 20s. And I found the perfect recipe for cooking it. The key to yummy garden vegetable recipes is flavor and lots of it. And if I didn’t cook it this certain way, it just wouldn’t be the same.

3. Add Plenty of Flavorings

Here’s a trick I learned from my days of watching 30 Minute Meals from Racheal Ray. She made spinach with prosciutto. What??? I can add a little hint of bacon to my veggies?? Yes, please. Turns out, there are lots of garden vegetables that pair well with bacon and tons of great recipes out there. So I tried it. And we devoured it. Spinach is a nutritional powerhouse. And if it’s cooked down and wilted, I promise it’s different than crunching on spinach in your salad.

Grab a bag of spinach from the store, add a tiny bit of olive oil to a skillet and start throwing in handfuls of spinach. When it starts to wilt, add some prosciutto for flavor. (I get the packaged prosciutto from the deli section of the store and cut it into little slices). Add salt and pepper or your favorite seasoning and it’s an amazing side dish of veggies that your heart will love. Literally. Spinach contains magnesium which is essential to heart health.

Check out this article for more details on this superfood. Another easy way to add some of this superfood is to throw a few handfuls into your cooked pasta. It’ll wilt down, you’ll barely know it’s there, and you get some veggies!

4. Start Small

You don’t need to all of a sudden become a vegetarian to get the benefits of veggies. Commit to one small change at a time. If you eat virtually no veggies, start with adding at least one cup to your diet every day. You’ll be surprised how little that really is. Cut up a red pepper into strips, mix up some olive oil and balsamic vinegar and dip away. One cup of pepper strips is not that much.

5. Add Another Ingredient You Already Love

Example: I don’t love yellow squash. But I do love cheese. So, in order to get a pretty large side dish of veggies on my plate, I slice up yellow squash pretty thin, spritz a baking sheet with cooking spray, use a tiny amount of spray butter on the squash, add some Trader Joe’s seasoning, and bake it in the oven at 375 for about 20 minutes. When it’s almost done, I add a small amount of shredded parmesan cheese, throw it back in the oven for just a few minutes and done!

Now I have a hefty serving of squash that I love. If it were by itself, not so much. Add a few hints of flavor with the seasoning and the cheese and it’s amazing. This works wonders with zucchini too!