Novel and Nosh

A Home Cook’s Honest Review Of The Hidden Vegetable Cookbook

• Courtney

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What if your favorite comfort foods quietly delivered a boost of veggies without the struggle at the table? We dive into Heidi Herman’s Hidden Vegetable Cookbook and share a hands-on review from a busy, family kitchen: what wowed us, what needed tweaks, and how the color-coded system of core prep techniques turns big ideas into simple steps. From roasting and pureeing to freezing and juicing, we break down how to stock your fridge with ready-to-use vegetable building blocks.

You’ll hear how spinach buns won over skeptical kids even after we overdid the greens, why beet-packed beef bourguignon became a stealth-nutrition favorite, and how a clever Salisbury steak flips the script by hiding spinach in the gravy instead of the meat. We also talk through a pumpkin pull-apart loaf adapted for a nut allergy and the cozy charm of butternut squash molasses cookies that bake up soft and cakey with a swipe of cream cheese icing. Along the way, we highlight the nutrition notes contributed by a registered dietitian and explain how those insights help you choose the right vegetable for the right job.

This is a slow-cooking, cozy-living kind of cookbook—perfect for Sundays, batch prep, and anyone who loves building flavor over time. If weeknights are hectic, we share practical ways to make it work: roast and puree on the weekend, freeze portions, and drop them into weeknight sauces, breads, and desserts without changing the taste. By the end, you’ll have a playbook of ideas to fold spinach into gravy, beets into stews, and squash into cookies, raising the nutrient floor of your meals while keeping every bite comforting and familiar.

If this review helps, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs veggie inspiration, and leave a quick rating so more home cooks can find us.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Novel and Notch, where books and food come together through cozy and seasonal living. This week I wanted to share with you a cookbook I received from a publisher. This is called Hidden Vegetable Cookbook by Heidi Herman. And I believe you can get it, you can definitely get it from Amazon, and there might be a few other places. It looks like many, there might be some bookstores that sell it, or you can request it from them or go to Amazon. So this is basically what it says. There are 90 tasty recipes for veggie-averse adults. And Heidi explains that she grew up in Iceland and they eat Viking type food. And she did not eat a lot of vegetables. And she understands as she's gotten older the importance of eating vegetables in her diet, but doesn't really like the taste of them. So she is trying to find ways to start to add vegetables into her diet. So she created this cookbook. This cookbook is separated in a way of they have core recipes that tell you how to go about cooking down different vegetables. So she's explaining, I'll give you beets, for example. She provides you the information on how to roast them, how to puree and freeze them, and how to juice them. They also have information in here about the nutrients and benefits that each of these vegetables provide. And that was offered by a registered dietitian who she worked with throughout this book. Rhonda Thornton is her name. So in the beginning, they she has the core recipes, which are all your vegetables and how to cook them, puree them, dice them, all of that information. And those are all color-coded. And then you get into the portion of the cookbook, like your sauces, spreads, and jellies, your appetizers, breads, and throughout this section, within the recipe itself, there will be a color-coded bar. And then, like so this one says shredded zucchini, and there is a green bar, and the words are in green so that you know where to go back to within the cookbook to find out how to cook them down for the recipe. I tried a few different recipes within the book, and I'll explain in a minute as to why I haven't cooked through a lot of the book as of yet, but I wanted to kind of give you information based on what I've already had because I know that it's going to take me a little bit of time to get through this cookbook. So for me, a few of the things that I made, I made spinach buns, which were very good, and my kids enjoyed them as well. I will say that I kind of messed up and made, or I'm sorry, I added too many, too much spinach. Um, looking back, I think I just pressed too much of the spinach into the cup. Uh, and it probably could have used only half of it. So, because when I look at the picture that she provided compared to what I had, mine was like almost completely green. So I think I used too much spinach. But my kids enjoyed it and they thought it was really tasty. So they're, you know, it was not a bad situation. Other than I think it was a little hard, but I like I said, I think that's an issue that I put too much in. So I think that's why they didn't come out perfect for me. Um, I also made beef bourguignon, which this had hidden beet puree within the sauce, which was very good. Um, I thought this was a great concept and I was excited to try it. My family does not like beets. I love beets. Obviously, the nutritional value in beets is amazing. So if I can get my family to eat beets, that's a positive thing. I made this beef gorguignon, and no one was the wiser. I did tell them that beets were in it. I didn't try to keep it secret from them because everybody's old enough to handle this information, and everybody thought it was good, and no one complained that you know they couldn't taste the beets. There was also carrots and onion in the um dish as well. The other thing that I made was the spinach salisbury steak, and this was an interesting way of doing it. So, in my head, when I was looking at this before I looked at the recipe, I was thinking, oh, she's gonna add the spinach to the ground beef, you know, and have it within that. Well, she didn't, she added it to the gravy, which I thought was a great way to, you know, a different way of thinking of it. And it, you know, you couldn't taste it in the gravy. And it's one of those things that I can now add to any gravy that I make to add some more nourishment to the gravy without changing the taste of it. I also tried uh pumpkin loaf, which was pretty good. It wasn't my favorite, um, but I think, you know, for me, it made me think of the monkey bread that we always have. So it's a pumpkin pull apart loaf. And I will say, so I could not make this full recipe because it calls for walnuts and we have a nut allergy. So I do know that that can make a dish taste a little bit heartier and more well-rounded when you add nuts. So I don't want to preface this, it might have been an absolutely amazing dish if I had been able to add the walnuts, but I personally did not. And I would say for me, monkey bread would be my go-to if I were to make something like this again. But obviously, you know, this was adding pumpkin puree into it, so that was um a nice option. And then I also made, thinking of one more thing that I made, was the butternut squash molasses cookies. These were really good. Here again, it was one of the adding the butternut squash puree would be kind of similar to adding like zucchini to a bread or something or to a cookie or a cake. You couldn't really taste the butternut squash. It just made um the cookies moist. Uh, they were very cakey, I would say. They were more like a cakey cookie than a crunchy cookie. And then she did have um like a cream cheese icing on the top, but she didn't put a recipe for that. So I did put a cream cheese icing on myself just to kind of add a little bit more depth to the cookie because they aren't, they weren't the sweetest cookie. They were just a, you know, like a coffee cookie, I would say. Who would I say this is for? This is one of those cookbooks, and uh what I was what I had said at the beginning was I would explain why I haven't made a lot of these recipes. So we are a family that are on the go a lot. Um, you know, I have older kids who are in after-school activities, and therefore I don't have a ton of time when I come home from work to get dinner ready, prepared, and everything for my kids. I do make homemade dinners every night, but these, a lot of these recipes, are going to be more time-consuming recipes. If I look at this cookbook myself, what I would describe it is as a Sunday cooking cookbook. These are your slower meals where you have time to either um let the breads rise, let the sauces cook. You know, you're looking at two and three hours for some of these recipes. So these are slower, cozy living style recipes, which is great. I do not mind that. These are recipes that I would do on a Sunday, which is why I haven't gotten through the cookbook so quickly, because they are going to be more of your Sunday type meals. You're adding an extra layer to cooking the meals because not only am I making so like the beef bourguignon, not only am I making that beef bourguignon, I'm also, if I wanted to roast, which I went and bought um cooked beets already, but if I wanted to do it the way she says to do it, you would then be roasting the beets, cureeing the beets, and then adding the beets to your dish. So that is a very time-consuming recipe, which I am all for. I mean, that is part of what Novel and Nash is about, is cozy seasonal living, taking time for that. But in my season right now, my current season of life, this is a little bit more than I can personally do. So I want to make sure that that's clear. If anybody's interested in looking at this cookbook, please know that it is definitely not one to get dinners on the table quickly. It is going to be more of a slow cooking cookbook. What I love about this cookbook is the ideas it provides. This is definitely one of those that you can look at, look at, and you will get so many ideas for how to add vegetables into your diet more, which I think is a good thing. Um I know that most people aren't getting enough vegetables into their diet on the daily. So any opportunity to add it into your diet without maybe having to taste it is a good thing. I enjoyed this cookbook, but the the cookbook is Hidden Vegetables Cookbook by Heidi Herman.