Find healthy recipes

Recipes encourage clients to try new foods or to prepare familiar foods in new ways. Recipes that can be prepared in 30 minutes or less are especially popular.

What you can do today

Learn about using "recipe frameworks" or flexible recipes that use ingredients on hand and incorporate more healthy foods: Cooking Matters in Your Food Pantry (pp. 71-80)

• Check out these flexible recipes: Good Food on a Tight Budget Recipes
• Browse recipes that are searchable by ingredient and other categories: Search Recipes

Tips for success

Pair recipes with fresh produce and healthy foods you're currently offering and hand out copies to clients as they enter. Remember to focus on recipes that feature healthy, but common, inexpensive ingredients readily available at your food shelf or at the grocery store.

Offer new recipes frequently so that regular clients can get new ideas for preparing healthy foods.

How Extension can help

Connect with a SNAP-Ed educator or an EFNEP coordinator to set up an on-site cooking or recipe-sampling demonstration to encourage clients to attend cooking classes or classes on healthy eating on a budget: SNAP Education (SNAP-Ed) or Contact EFNEP.

Find out more about promoting healthy eating at food shelves:

• Identify healthy food
• Source healthy food
• Work with local growers
• Ensure safety of healthy food
• Store Healthy Foods Properly
• Work with limited storage space
• Drive selection of healthy foods
• Provide practical information
• Find healthy recipes
• Enlist volunteers' help
• Include healthy foods in your backpack program
• Do cooking demonstrations
• Develop a healthy food policy
• Fund your healthy eating initiatives

Download the complete document: Promoting healthy eating at food shelves (PDF).