Collection
What to cook for a child aged 1 to 3
How old is your child?
The questionnaire opens with your child already added. The week comes with portions for their age and one shopping list.
Sample week: 1 year1 year 6 mo2 years3 years
116 dishes for a child from one to three, each with a price per serving and an age mark: porridge, soups, steamed meatballs and cutlets, soufflés, casseroles, pancakes, snacks. Ready weeks: at 1, at 1.5, at 2, at 3, breakfasts, no oven, snacks.
- 116recipes
- $0.21–$3.54per portion
- 5 min – 1 h 20 minto cook
- 43–782kcal per portion
One hundred and sixteen dishes for a child from one to three. Each has a price per serving, cooking time and the age from which it is usually given. There are thirty-two breakfasts: milk porridges from oats to the rice-and-millet Druzhba, sugar-free banana pancakes, a steamed cottage cheese soufflé, syrniki with carrot. Forty-two lunches include turkey meatball soup, shchi without frying, a toddler's cod soup, meatballs in sour cream sauce with rice and navy-style pasta. Twenty-six dinners: chicken soufflé, pollock baked in omelette the way Russian kindergartens make it, turkey goulash with mash, carrot patties. And sixteen snacks, such as a baked apple with cottage cheese, berry kissel and sugar-free muffins.
For children under three these dishes have no mushrooms, sausages, seafood, mayonnaise, nuts, honey, chocolate or spice. Meat and fish are boiled, stewed, baked or steamed, never browned. A toddler recipe has at most a gram of salt and five grams of sugar per serving, and most have no sugar at all. Servings are child-sized, 100–300 kcal, so a week costs little: seven lunches for an 18-month-old come to about 330 ₽. Below are ready weeks by age, each with a total and time.
Ready menus
Breakfast 32
Lunch 42
Dinner 26
Snack 16
How to use it
In the quiz, enter the child's age in months and how they eat: from the family table, separately or from jars. For a child under three the planner removes mushrooms, sausages, seafood, mayonnaise, nuts and anything spicy from family dishes. In the cook-separately mode it builds the child their own menu from this collection with age-sized servings.
The age on a dish shows the month from which it is usually given; it is a guide, not a rule, and your paediatrician knows your child better. Introduce new foods, especially fish, eggs and milk, one at a time and at home rather than at a friend's.
Plan a week from this collectionQuestions
What to cook for a one-year-old?
Soft and finely chopped food: milk porridge, turkey meatball soup, steamed meatballs with mash, steamed fish patties, chicken soufflé, pollock baked in omelette, pumpkin purée with chicken. Pieces no bigger than a pea, meat and fish without a crust. The week for a one-year-old above is built from such dishes.
What to cook for an 18-month-old?
At a year and a half a child chews small pieces and the menu starts to look like a kindergarten one: meatballs in sour cream sauce with rice, navy-style pasta with boiled mince, lazy cabbage rolls, toddler plov with turkey, turkey and zucchini patties, chicken soup with dumplings. For breakfast try Druzhba porridge, syrniki with carrot or thin crêpes.
What to cook for a two-year-old?
Fresh cabbage shchi, turkey goulash with mash, potato and mince bake, chicken in sour cream with pasta, carrot patties, a toddler's cod soup. From two, split pea purée soup is fine. Fried food, mushrooms, sausages and mayonnaise still wait.
What to cook for a three-year-old?
Almost everything from the family table except spicy and raw food: chicken rice soup, lazy cabbage rolls, fish cutlets, plov, a pasta bake, potato zrazy, cream soups. Many paediatricians suggest waiting until five with mushrooms and nuts and keeping chocolate and sausages occasional.
What to cook for a child's lunch instead of soup?
A main with a side that fills just as well: meatballs in sour cream sauce with rice, navy-style pasta, steamed fish patties with mash, oven chicken cutlets with buckwheat, lazy cabbage rolls. Soup is not needed every day; what matters is that over the day the child eats vegetables and drinks enough water.
What to cook for a child's dinner?
Something light and familiar: cottage cheese casserole, steamed chicken soufflé, pollock in omelette, zucchini vegetable stew, buckwheat with milk, carrot patties with sour cream, lazy vareniki. Dinner is best an hour and a half to two hours before bed.
What to cook for a child without an oven?
Chicken noodle soup, pasta with cheese, buckwheat with milk, milk noodle soup, meatballs in sour cream sauce, navy-style pasta, lazy vareniki: a pot and a pan are enough. Steamed patties and meatballs can be made in a pot with a colander instead of a steamer.
How much does a week of toddler food cost?
The weeks above show the total for one child: seven lunches and dinners at one year cost about 340 ₽, at 18 months and at two about 320, at three, when the child eats from the family table, about 660, and a week of breakfasts about 250. Toddler servings are small, so cooking separately is cheap: fish and turkey cost the most, porridge and vegetable purées the least.
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