How to get my child to eat fish – Food For Kids Podcast episode 83

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies.

This episode is for you if your child really isn't keen on fish and you're looking for ways to encourage them to explore and maybe accept more fish in their diet. I've called the episode How to get my child to eat fish because that's a question that gets searched a lot online, but I need to start the episode by putting in two caveats.

First of all, we don't get our kids to eat anything. Pressure to eat, sneaking foods in without permission and trickery and bribery all are proven to have the opposite effect long term. What we can do is provide opportunities for our kids to safely explore or come into contact with foods they're not sure about so they can build their familiarity and comfort. So most of these ideas are going to be ways to put fish in front of your child in non-pressured ways to build up their confidence. But we do have to remember that it's okay if they don't eat the fish. The end goal is not in fact the bite of fish, but instead the feeling of safety and curiosity when fish is on the table.

The second caveat is that no one has to eat fish. Vegetarians and vegans, as well as omnivores who don't eat fish, can all have incredibly healthy, well-balanced diets with no fish in them. I'll link in the show notes to a couple of episodes about plant-based eating and about supplements for children, which goes into that in more detail. But your child can get all the nutrients they need from other foods if you're thoughtful about it. So if your child never decides they like fish, or they have a genuine and lasting aversion to it, or your family doesn't eat much of it, you don't have to force this issue and you can make up for it in other ways. Nothing should ever be forced or pressured.

Having said all of that, this episode is assuming that you are a household that eats fish and you want to find some ways to give your child chances to try fish so that they can join in with more fishy family meals. So on that basis, here are some ideas. I will link some recipes in the show notes too, of some of these examples, but they're more ideas to help you think about starting points so you can meet your child wherever they are at right now.

As a food, fish has two things going against it for children who are a bit hesitant or fussy. The texture can be off putting for some children and the strong smell and flavour can put off others. So for the texture issue, need to find ways to introduce that texture alongside other textures that offsets it. And for that, we'll have some suggestions of meals which use a small amount of fish alongside either smooth textures or very crunchy textures. And then on the taste and smell issue, we're looking to introduce those strong smells and flavours in small and gradually increasing ways so that it doesn't overpower their senses. For this, a technique called food chaining is definitely your best friend.

I won't go into great detail about what food chaining is as we have a whole episode on how it works back in episode 75 with dietitian Emma Shafqat so I'll link to that in the show notes.

So go back and listen to that episode, but in this one, I'm going to give some suggestions of ways to food chain fish recipes over time to make them easier for kids who are not keen on fish.

So first let's look at helping your child to like fairly plain white fish. If your child already likes fish fingers but not regular white fish, then we've got a good starting point and we'll start there.

If your child doesn't already like fish fingers, then I would suggest starting by having fish fingers or crispy fish nuggets available alongside chicken nuggets, fries or other crunchy foods and with a favourite dip or sauce until they feel happy to try some. They can just nibble the breading at first and it doesn't matter if they don't eat the fish part the first few times. Don't try to trick them into eating them, just have them there alongside other beige crispy foods and sauces that they like.

But if they already like fish fingers, then you can food chain them to white fish by very small changes. You can serve fish fingers as usual, but have an extra one or even half a one with the breading removed and put the breading and the bare fish next to the other ones on the plate. So there's still a fish finger there, it's just in two pieces. They might ignore the fish, they might wrap the breading back around the fish before they eat it. You can tell them that's okay. They're interacting with the food and seeing how both parts make up that food. If they're curious, you can serve them an extra fish finger and tell them that that one is just for taking apart. They don't even have to eat it. And you can let them use their fingers to pull the breading off. This builds familiarity too. If they like sauces to dip, you can see if they want to dip the two parts separately and see how they think each bit compares to a complete fish finger in that dip. But you can see that this encourages them to look at a complete uniform beige crispy food and then explore what makes it up.

If and when they accept eating some of the fish finger without the breading, you can then try adding a small piece of cooked white fish of a similar texture alongside their fish fingers, not instead of. So if the rest of the family are having a piece of white fish, they can have their fish fingers with a small piece of white fish on their plate or even a nearby side plate. No pressure to try it.

Another way to food chain from fish fingers to plain white fish is by going via bigger pieces of battered fish of the same texture, you can give them a mini fish and call it a huge fish finger, especially if you try and get one with a similar breading to the fish fingers they're used to. Then you can move from that to trying different types of coating, different breadcrumbs or batter. If they're accepting larger pieces of fish with the same coatings on, they will inevitably end up having some bites which are only white fish because the ratio of coating to the inside fish is smaller and that can help the transition.

If your child likes fish finger sandwiches then you can also do the same gradual mix of breaded and unbreaded in those to build the ratio of fish to breading over time. Burger buns are great for adding larger pieces of battered fish or fish burgers so there's more white fish to coating. If your child likes salad or slaw in burgers, that can make up for the lost crunch of some of the breading.

Other ways to use battered or breaded fish to transition to meals which can later be used with plain fish is in tacos or wraps, using fish fingers initially with other fillings they like such as lettuce or cucumber or coleslaw. Or obviously you can use more traditional fillings like guac, peppers or onions if they already like tacos, but just not the fish version. Once that becomes an accepted meal, you can have a mix of breaded and non-breaded fish over time and build to plain fish only. You can also make sweeter fish wraps using something more Caribbean like mango alongside the white fish. And some children can really like this combo as the fruit has a strong flavour. This can work really nice with sweet chilli sauce.

Leaving the breaded versions behind now, there are some ways to include white fish in other meals. You can mix white fish with mashed potato to make fish cakes or fish burgers or fish nuggets. And again, you can start off with only 10 to 20 % fish with lots of potato and cheese if they like that and build up over time. You can get kids involved with making them so they can see how it's only a little bit of fish in the cakes. And if they're very hesitant, they can make a couple with just potato and cheese and they can just have a fish one on the plate to explore with their cutlery and fingers even if they only eat the cheese ones. You can also get your child to cut fish and potato cakes into fun shapes with a cookie cutter. Bonus points if you can find a fish one. You can also add tinned or frozen peas or sweetcorn into fish cakes to give a bit of texture too.

White fish can also fit nicely into pasta sauces because it's not strongly flavoured, so it works really well with creamy or cheesy sauces on pasta, so like a mildly fishy mac and cheese. It can help to have peas or sweetcorn or broccoli in the sauce if your child likes those because they can provide a break in texture which can stop your child trying to notice the fish flakes in the otherwise smooth sauce. For this reason, can also work really well with tomatoey sauces that have a little texture in them. But again don't sneak the fish in, it should all be above board. And if they're really not keen to eat it, you can always cook the fish separately and then you can take a spoon of the cooked sauce for your child's pasta and then add the cooked fish into everybody else's sauce. So they can still eat their tomato sauce, but they can have a little spoon of the fish sauce on a plate nearby, or just look at it in the middle of the table, seeing other people enjoying it.

And also on the texture front, if your child likes rice or fried rice, then small flakes of white fish were really well mixed into rice with vegetables too.

And finally, white fish lends itself really well to fish pies, either with puff pastry tops or with mashed potato. And again, especially if there's a creamy sauce and a little texture from some kind of vegetable in the sauce underneath, corn, broccoli, peas work really well. Pies are harder to have two versions of for exploring, but you can scoop a spoon of the mash topping off to one side and then put some of the fishy filling separately so children can choose how to tackle the two things. If you're doing pastry, you can just put a little bit of pastry onto a baking tray alongside the pie and then they can have a spoon of the filling and a puff pastry piece separately too. Again, this is about giving them chances to choose and explore in their own way.

So that's white fish, the easier gateway to fishiness for kids. A lot of the suggestions above will also work for stronger and oilier fishes too, so pasta sauces can also carry tuna or salmon.

So tacos work brilliantly with tuna or salmon and pasta sauces can definitely carry tuna or salmon and school kitchens across the land will attest to this as they often serve tuna and salmon pasta bakes with or without crunchy crumbs on top in order to meet their food standard requirements for oily fish. Fish pies can also work great with a mix of white and oily fish, and traditional fish pies often contain seafood too, so you can take a very bland, basic recipe and then over time you can build up the variety of fish that's included. Fish cakes are particularly good for making oily fish palatable, so the idea I gave with making fish cakes or burgers together works super well with tuna or salmon too, either fresh or tinned.

Bear in mind that tinned tuna and salmon can be an easier texture for some kids because they have less chew. But if you have a child that really likes meaty textures, they may actually prefer a piece of fresh cooked salmon or tuna as it has more density and chew.

Tinned tuna is obviously great with mayonnaise, in sandwiches, on jacket potatoes or mixed with cheese in a grilled cheese sandwich. It works great with either sweet corn or peas, so for kids who like either of those, you can have a vegetable and mayo heavy filling with only a little bit of tuna and build up the ratio. Tuna and cheese sauce is also great in a quesadilla and you can play around with the recipes. Children often like making those because of the browning of the wrap and the flipping, so that's a good way to build their familiarity, even if they only make the fish ones for other people and stick to cheese for their own.

As for the more traditional oily fish like mackerel and pilchards, they're obviously a lot stronger in taste. taste, packets of smoked mackerel can be flaked into some of the recipes I suggested earlier for tuna or salmon, but you can also use canned mackerel to your advantage alongside pasta. My own kids built their acceptance of mackerel by having their regular tomato pasta and then on the side a little portion of pasta with a tiny bit of mackerel and tomato sauce stirred through it, literally a teaspoon. They mostly ate their tomato pasta, but over time they gradually tried a few mouthfuls then eventually they were happy to have a little bit stirred into their tomato pasta. And by the time they were in their teens, they were happy with a tin of mackerel in tomato sauce stirred on its own into their pasta with lots of cheese on top. We found that pilchards were too hard to get all the bony bits out and our kids have issues with textures, so crunchy bones were a no-go. So mackerel is a better way to go.

And on more interesting seafood, prawns or shrimp are a good gateway in. Children often enjoy cheap and cheerful frozen battered scampi with chips, sometimes stealing one or two off a parent while they're having nuggets or fish fingers, and usually they're pleasantly surprised to find out that scampi is just small soft prawns and in fact they didn't know they could like small prawns. Children can often be fascinated by prawns too because they're such a weird shape and they're so bright pink. So having some meals with them on the table or in a mixed meal that they like, but where you or they can pick them out or you can put theirs on the side, can build up their familiarity. They can also quite enjoy to see how they turn from grey to pink when cooking. If they like slightly gruesome things, they may enjoy peeling or deadheading whole prawns, even if they do them for the adults and don't eat them themselves. I can remember my own entry to prawns as a child was a pint of unpeeled prawns on holiday. And of course prawns go really well with mayonnaise heavy sauces which can be appealing to kids, or you can dip the pink prawns in mayo or tartare sauce or Thousand Island dressing or sweet chilli. In fact, all types of firm fish can be dipped brilliantly. And dips are a great way to help kids to be a little adventurous. If there's dips on the table, it's always tempting to dip something, even if they mostly stick to their fish finger and watch other people dipping prawns or crab sticks.

So there's some suggestions for ways to have fish available to kids to explore or see on the table or the plate. But don't forget that building familiarity can happen away from the table too. Read books about fish or the ocean, read cookbooks with fish recipes in them, or find a cookery show on TV or on YouTube where people cook or taste unusual fish on holidays. Take your child to look at the fish counter in the supermarket, even if you aren't buying any that week, so they can see what it looks like. And if you're lucky enough to live near a fishmonger,

they're usually happy to encourage children so your child can point something out, find out what it is and then find out more about it when they get home.

And you can of course always get your child involved in cooking even if they don't eat the fish, such as the fish cakes and burgers I described earlier, or rolling pieces of white fish into egg wash and breadcrumbs for the grownups on a meal where they're having the fish fingers. All of these build their confidence that fish is a safe food that people in their family enjoy, as well as all over the world.

I hope that will have given you some ideas no matter where your child is starting from. Remember that it's all incremental and your child will eat literally thousands of meals with you before they leave home, so there is lots of time to build their comfort with fish. And as I said at the beginning, if they never really love fish but they just accept it, then they will still be able to have a balanced diet and know that fish is a thing that people enjoy eating. Low pressure exploration and food chaining are definitely the key with such a distinctive flavoured food. I'll link in the show notes to the episodes I mentioned about food chaining and vegetarian diets, as well as to a few ideas for child-friendly recipes to get you started.

Coming up, we'll have a similar episode to this, but all about pulses, so beans, lentils and peas of all kinds. So that's one to look forward to. But before then, I hope to see you on the next episode. And in the meantime, happy eating.