Bobby Flay's Favorite 'Cheat' To Get Guests To Eat Their Vegetables

In 2015, an estimated one in every 10 adults ate the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables each day, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The ideal daily amount for an adult woman is one and a half cups of fruit and two and a half cups of vegetables, while the daily amount for an adult man is two cups of fruit and three and a half cups of vegetables. Getting enough fruits and veggies really does great things for your body. For example, people who consumed five servings of fruits and vegetables each day lowered their risk of death by 13%, lowered their risk of death from cancer by 10%, and lowered their risk of death from respiratory diseases by 35%, per Harvard Medical School.

There are a lot of ways to add more fruits and vegetables to your diet to make sure you're consuming the recommended daily amount. You could add some fruit to breakfast cereal or oatmeal, add vegetables to scrambled eggs, have a smoothie for breakfast or a salad for lunch, build a meal around vegetables for dinner, and enjoy fresh fruit for dessert. Chef Bobby Flay has other techniques for making sure his guests enjoy and eat their vegetables. Here's his advice for home cooks.

In an interview with Bon Appétit, Bobby Flay revealed that to get guests to eat their vegetables, he seasons them just like he would season a steak or other cut of meat. His ideal form of seasoning for vegetables is a spice rub because "rubbing spices into anything gives it a far greater flavor impact," says Flay. He also says that spice rubs don't need to be left for hours as marinades do, so it's a lot more convenient and less time-consuming. Additionally, Flay says that spice rubs add an extra level and texture to vegetables by "form[ing] a crust."

For his spice-crusted carrots with harissa yogurt recipe, Flay prefers to "marble" the yogurt dip to give it dimension, and home chefs can use the same technique when serving veggies with any kind of dip. Flay uses countless different rubs, but he typically uses coriander and paprika as the bases for the rub. Of course, salt and pepper are also necessary, and Flay also likes to use cumin and mustard powder, as seen in his spice-crusted carrots recipe and his spice-roasted delicata squash salad recipe, which features a spice rub made of pepper, salt, cumin, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, and dry mustard, per Bobby Flay. Flay's ultimate "cheat" for an easy spice rub is using Harissa because it's a unique seasoning that has a lot of complex flavors, including different spices from Northern Africa, chiles, and olive oil.