WIAW #41: Sprucing Up Canned Foods

Oh my, I DID NOT mean to disappear on y'all again!  Things at work picked up, and I just pushed blogging to the back burner again.  Plus, our weekend was much like last weekend (minus the wins for our teams), and I haven't been taking many pictures lately.  Bad, bad blogger.

HOWEVER, I'm back today with one of my favorite traditions in the blogging world....

Brought to you by Peas and Crayons

This week's What I Ate Wednesday post is going to be a little bit different.  Instead of looking at a day's worth of eats, we're going to talk about how to make something I eat rather frequently much more tasty and exciting!  As always, thank you to Jenn for the link-up!  Head over to Peas and Crayons to find out more about WIAW and to check out what other bloggers are eating!

How many of you buy canned vegetables?  How many of you LOVE the taste of them right out of the can?

Not many of you?  Yeah...I don't either.  So today, I wanted to share with you some ways that I use to spruce up canned vegetables to make them taste better (and more them more healthy, too)!

Mix them in to another dish

I've shared this tip before, and it works well for making canned veggies taste better, as well as hiding vegetables from picky kids and/or non-vegetable-loving husbands (like mine!).  Whenever I make a boxed dinner, I'll mix in a can of vegetables to up the nutritional value of the dinner AND mask the taste of the veggies.  It's really a win-win situation!

Season them

This is a pretty obvious one, but I wanted to share some of the things I personally like to do!

One of my favorite things to do is to mix dried chopped onions I found in the spice aisle into the canned vegetables as they are cooking (as seen above).  It makes the canned vegetables actually taste a little more like fresh vegetables, plus I love the flavor of onions.  

Other times, I'll try to match the flavor of the main dish with various spices and seasonings added to the veggies.  Examples of those spices/seasonings: salt, pepper, garlic salt lemon pepper, onion powder, basil, and oregano.  Over time, you'll come to find out which seasonings you prefer on which vegetables.

Mix in some fresh vegetables

I tried this recently, and both Joe and I loved it!  If you have a can of vegetables you plan to use, see if you have a fresh vegetable that you can cook with the can.  

For example, I'd previously seen canned green beans with red peppers mixed in at the store.  One night, I had a can of green beans I was making and a fresh red pepper I needed to use.  So, I sliced up the pepper and sauteed it in a little olive oil.  After doing that, I mixed the pepper pieces in with the can of green beans and let them simmer for a few minutes.  I had a great veggie mixture to serve for dinner after a few minutes!

Other good combinations I thought would be good to try: canned peas with fresh steamed carrots, canned spinach with sauteed peppers or onions, and sauteed onions with canned green beans.

Question for you: What do you do to make your canned veggies taste better?