When it comes to Halloween, your kids are expecting a whole bunch of candy and to go trick-or-treating, and that can kind of be disruptive to your nightly routine and dinner time. And with your kids expecting a bunch of candy, they might not want to eat a big dinner before.
But the following recipes are designed to be fun for families so that your kids will want to eat a big meal before they go out trick-or-treating and then get their candy.
1) Mummy Hot Dogs
These are hot dogs wrapped in strips of either pre-made crescent or pizza dough with a gap near the top to resemble a face.
This is a fun idea because if your pizza dough starts to fall off of the hot dog or anything like that, it just looks like part of the mummy decoration. And you could probably easily use some of your dough to make a couple arms as well so it looks like the mummy is walking. You might have better luck with the pizza dough than the crescent roll dough because the crescent roll dough can puff up quite a bit when you’re cooking it.
When you’re baking these, bake them at the temperature that the dough suggests and make sure you’re flipping them pretty often. The extra fat from the hot dog might make them brown a little bit more on one side, or whichever side is down in the oven.
I would probably cook the hot dogs most of the way first separately, however you like to do it. Probably in this case pan fry them instead of boiling them so they’re not too soggy, and then wrap them and finish them in the oven.
2) Jack-o’-Lantern Quesadillas
These are cheese quesadillas with a face cut in the tortilla to resemble a jack-o’-lantern.
Cut your tortilla ahead of time before you assemble your quesadilla, and you’re only doing one so the top of the quesadilla has the opening in it so the orange of the cheese comes through. Make sure you stick with the cheese that’s orange instead of white so you can actually see all your work.
A good way to get a head start on the mouth instead of using a knife is just to fold the tortilla in half and use kitchen scissors to cut a couple notches out for the mouth, and then you can elaborate with a knife after you’ve already got the hole started.
3) Stuffed Jack-o’-Lantern Peppers
These are orange bell peppers with a face cut into the front like a jack-o’-lantern, filled with your typical stuffed pepper filling of rice, ground beef, and tomato, baked in the oven.
This one might cook a little bit different than usual with the holes cut in the pepper, so you could individually wrap each one in foil and then bake it in the oven, and then when you’re done take the foil off to reveal the face.
I think for this version of stuffed peppers you want to cook all of your filling most of the way first. You’re just looking to heat it up and melt the cheese and cook the pepper a little bit, because it’s mostly for how cool it looks.
4) Witch’s Cauldron Chili
This is a slow cooker chili that you eat in between trick-or-treat runs, served with sour cream, chips, and cheese on the side.
You can make your chili extra red color if you add lots of paprika, not smoked, but just regular paprika. That can be kind of a Halloween-y look to it. This recipe is great if you’re running around trying to get everything ready and everyone in costume, and you could just let it go all day in the background and forget it, and then get everyone a nice home-cooked meal right before they go out.
I like to do the canned three bean blend when I make chili, especially just because it’s such a great way to sneak some healthy food in. The beans kind of break down, especially in a slow cooker, and it’s a nice blend of, I think, pinto, black, and white beans.
If you have time, sometimes it’s better to brown your ground beef ahead of time first in a pan and then dump it into the crock pot and build on top of that.
5) Goblin Sloppy Joes
These are typical sloppy joes made extra messy.
This one, to again save time, is recommending making the filling a day ahead of time, which is a great idea. Just make sure that you add a little bit of water or maybe more ketchup when you heat it back up because it tends to drink up some of the liquid sitting overnight.
I like to serve my sloppy joes on buns that have been toasted so they hold up a little bit better to the filling, and I also like to put sliced pickles on them. Not bread and butter pickles but just regular.
6) Graveyard Baked Ziti
This is a one pan ziti in the oven using cheese crackers to mimic headstones.
I always find that you can’t have too much sauce when it comes to a baked ziti, so typically I’ll cook all my pasta off, let it cool, and then heat up one or two jars of sauce and even add some heavy cream to it to make a nice creamy sauce, and then all of my vegetables, and mix it all together and then bake it with plenty of cheese to kind of seal in all the liquid.
This one you’re going to want to do a day or two before. It sets up really well in the fridge, makes it easier to slice, and it also develops a little bit more flavor. Just reheat it in the entire pan in the oven, or cut pieces out and heat it up in the microwave.
You can use whatever kind of crackers you have laying around for fun different styles of headstones, because some are rectangular and some are round, so mix it up. Just add them after you bake the ziti.
7) Graveyard Shepherd’s Pie
This is a pie of either lamb or beef with veggies mixed in, mashed potatoes on top and then cheese.
In this instance you will use, probably I’d guess, crackers again, or just shape the potatoes to make it look like a graveyard.
When you’re filling your baking vessel, what you want to do is cook all your meat filling and have your mashed potatoes made, and then put the meat filling in after it’s cooled a little bit and then put your mashed potatoes on top. If the mashed potatoes are a little bit warmer that’s fine, it makes it a little bit easier to work with, and you just want to make sure to seal them all the way around the edges of the dish so that when you’re baking your pie all of the gravy doesn’t bubble out from that one little hole in the side.
8) Chicken Pot Pie
This is a flaky pie crust typically with a filling of diced chicken and vegetables in a thickened broth. For this recipe the recommendation is to cut bat or ghost shapes from either extra crust that you have or in the top of the pie for a nice Halloween look.
I think you could probably get away with doing a jack-o’-lantern too as long as the mouth and the eyes weren’t too big, like make small triangle eyes and then a slit for a mouth.
When I do chicken pot pie I just take either a whole chicken that I’ve roasted in the oven or a rotisserie chicken and shred it up, and then I’ll do onions and carrots and peas and potatoes. What you do is you cook all your veggies and then you add some flour and butter to the pan and make a roux around all your vegetables, and then add your stock and cook it until it incorporates all of the roux and starts to bubble and thicken up. You don’t have to thicken it all the way because it is going to thicken more in the pie, but you want it pretty close to the consistency you’re looking for at the end.
If you have a small Halloween themed cookie cutter, take some extra pie crust and punch out six or eight little bats or ghosts or something like that and put them in a circle around the pie, so that when you cut it every piece has one on top for each kid, making it more fun to eat.
9) Monster Mac and Cheese
This is mac and cheese that’s been turned green with peas or a swirl of spinach.
This is a trick that I used to like to do when my firstborn came along because we were really trying to sneak a lot of healthy food in to everything they ate. I would take something like spinach and cook it down with just a little bit of salt and pepper and butter until it’s mostly wilted, and then put it into a pot like a small stock pot with a splash of milk, just enough to make it blendable, and then either use an immersion blender or pour it into a blender and puree it until it is super smooth and bright green. And then this is just the milk you use in the mac and cheese recipe.
Peas are a great addition too. Sometimes kids won’t eat the green mac and cheese or they can taste the spinach too much, so throwing a handful of peas in when you’re just about done with the mac and cheese, whether you’re making it from scratch or the box recipe, the peas at the end give a really great flavor and texture and kids tend to love them.
10) Spiderweb Pizza
This is a pizza that kids have helped to make, and then at the end you use a squeeze bottle to make thin lines of either ranch or some sort of white sauce to make it look like a spiderweb.
This is a fun idea, you could do all sorts of things with this. You could make little flies out of black olives or cut little spiders out of pepperoni. It’s a really fun idea to have your kids help. Just get a bunch of, I think they’re six or eight ounce squeeze bottles, from your local food supply store. They come with pretty small tips on them, so just leave the tips on and give everyone their own bottle to go to town decorating.
I bet you could also make a pizza and when you’re putting the cheese on intentionally leave out jack-o’-lantern shapes like eyes and a mouth, and then when you bake it in the oven it might look super spooky.
11) Spooky Taco Bar
This is meat that’s been made in a slow cooker and held warm, left out with all the toppings for tacos so everyone can eat at different times.
If you like crunchy tacos like my family does, you could get the blue corn shells. They’re about the same as the yellow corn ones, but the dark color might be a little bit fun for Halloween.
If everyone’s rushing around getting ready for the night, this one’s great to just set up on the kitchen island or the counter somewhere we have space to put the crockpot on low and leave all the supplies out, and just have everyone come through and eat standing around the counter as they have time.
When I do taco filling in the crockpot I’d probably like to do beef more often than not, with just taco seasoning and either onions or maybe peppers if I have it, probably just onions, and I do like to throw in a can of sweet corn as well.
12) Sheet-Pan Sausage and Peppers
This is sliced smoked sausage and peppers baked in the oven until golden brown and crispy.
For this one I like to mix onions with my peppers, yellow sweet onions and bell peppers cut up to pretty large slices. You don’t want them to be chunks, but you want it to be like strips, and you can go pretty big on this because they hold up better to baking in the oven if they’re bigger.
This one you could use the slices of sausage to make them look like eyes on a plate and make a mouth or spooky teeth or something with your roasted veg if you wanted to try to be fun with it. When I do something like this, anything with smoked sausage, I just get every type of mustard out of the fridge that I have and leave it on the counter for everyone to help themselves and pick their favorite.
13) Dino Chicken Nuggets
These are store-bought chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs baked in the oven.
Chicken nuggets, not necessarily the dino ones but something like this, is a go-to in our house. When you don’t have an idea or someone needs something to eat, these are super useful.
You can utilize them in anything. I mean, make them for the kids and then make a little caesar salad and chop it up and throw them on there for you. Make a wrap. You could make a buffalo chicken wrap.
If you’ve got a squeeze bottle of ranch like from the pizza recipe earlier, you could probably take it yourself as the parent and make a spider web on the plate for your kid before you put the chicken nuggets down on it too for something fun.
14) Sunday Pot Roast
This is one for when Halloween falls on a weekend. Chuck roast or chuck steak, carrots and potatoes cooked low all afternoon.
You can do this one in the crock pot or you can do this one in the oven. It’s really up to you. If you’re going to be home I’d recommend the oven. It just tends to have better overall flavor.
Cut your chuck into nice big fat cubes. Season with salt and pepper first and then some flour afterwards. I find if I mix the salt and pepper in the flour you don’t get as much seasoning on the beef, and beef really does well with extra salt. You can really take a lot of it to really give you a nice flavor.
Sear all the pieces on all sides till you get a nice golden brown on them, and then from there, with the middle still raw, you would put them in your pot or your baking dish with your veggies and your stock and your seasoning and just cook it low and slow. You’ll get all that charred flavor off of the meat into your broth.
I always do gold potatoes for this and I cut them really big because of the long cook time. They’ll be plenty soft after the first hour, but if they’re too small they’ll just disintegrate. Take some of the liquid out of your roasting dish or your crock pot and pour it through a fine mesh strainer into a saucepan, and then bring it up to a boil and reduce it to a simmer to make yourself a nice pan sauce to go over your pot roast.
15) Chicken Tortilla Soup
This is another great one for people to come and go as the day goes and everyone’s busy. Typically this is a tomato spicy red broth soup with chicken and vegetables in it and tortilla chips or strips served on top.
I like to do a rotisserie chicken from the store and shred it up and throw it right in there. Canned tomatoes, peppers and onions, canned corn, maybe a little bit of chicken or vegetable stock, plenty of chili powder and seasoning, and then just let it go on low. Only takes a couple hours.
Tortilla strips can be a pain, so I find that crushed up tortilla chips or even whole tortilla chips work perfectly fine. Sometimes you can just add lots of cheese to a bowl of this and almost eat it like a dip.
Diced fire roasted green chilies are really good in here. Just make sure you get the medium or the mild and not the hot because they can be pretty hot.
16) Bacon-Wrapped Pork with Yellow Rice
This is a pork tenderloin baked in the oven that has been wrapped in bacon until the bacon is crispy, served with yellow rice.
For this one bacon wrapping can be complicated because you get the outside nice and crispy and the inside completely raw, but in this case it’s a pretty good addition because pork tends to be pretty dry and low in fat content, so the bacon is a welcome addition. I would probably lay the bacon out on a sheet pan first and give it five minutes in the oven at 375°F just to start the cooking process on one side, then flip that bacon over.
That partially cooked spot now being the inside, wrap your pork from there. You can let it cool for a few minutes first, but this will make sure that it’s evenly cooked on the inside and the outside once you take it out of the oven.
You’re going to want to keep an eye on your cook time for the pork tenderloin just based on the size and the thickness. Err on the side of caution because it can overcook pretty quick, and there can be a pretty big variation in the size of pork tenderloins. You will be looking for pink in the middle though, so don’t be alarmed if that’s what you see at the end.
17) Chicken Fried Rice
Who doesn’t love fried rice, especially in my house? This is day-old cold rice that has been fried in a pan with vegetables and typically eggs and sometimes chicken or shrimp.
If you don’t have day-old rice your best bet is to make rice as early as you can and then spread it out on a half sheet pan and put it in the refrigerator to cool off as much as possible before making the fried rice.
When I do this I do the eggs first, probably three or four whisked together with soy sauce and a little sesame oil in a bowl, and then dump them in a really hot wok with a little oil in it and stir them continuously. This gets you really long thin strands of egg.
Then I’ll fry my rice in the same wok after I take the egg out, and I’ll add just a cup or two of the frozen mixed veggies out of my freezer, and then once those are thawed and hot and the rice is looking crispy, add the egg back in and a little bit of sauce and you’re done.
18) Chicken Stir-Fry
This is chicken and vegetables cooked in a stir-fry sauce in a pan.
Cut your veggies fairly large for this so they can cook about the same time as the chicken. I love to add snap peas or snow peas to mine, and I’ll add them in the last five, six minutes of the cooking time right in there once the sauce is already in. That’s all it takes to cook them, even from frozen.
This one’s great over rice or rice noodles, or really any sort of Asian noodle that you have.
19) Black Bean Nachos
This is a single sheet pan nacho bake with black beans instead of meat.
I like to do fresh veggies like onion, bell pepper, fresh jalapeno, cut up pretty small dice and sprinkled on top with the cheese. They get enough cook time in the oven while the cheese is melting.
At my house we like to make refried beans out of canned black beans, actually. So fry an onion in some oil or butter and then add your black beans rinsed and drained, and then smash a few of them up. Maybe half a cup of chicken stock, any kind of liquid like that, to get some liquid cooking in the beans, and then you let it go until the liquid cooks out. Add a little bit more, let it cook out, and you get that nice spreadable Mexican restaurant refried bean consistency.
20) Glazed Pork Chops
These are bone-in pork chops that have been seared hard and then glazed at the end so the sugars in the glaze don’t burn.
For your glaze with this you can do anything like honey or maple syrup. Something sweet and something acidic is typically what you want to go with. It could be pineapple juice and maple syrup, it could be vinegar and honey, mustard, vinegar, maple syrup, you name it. Just whisk it all together until it’s smooth and then brush it onto your pork chops at the end of the cooking time.
Bone-in pork chops are more forgiving than bone out because they tend not to dry out as much and they have more flavor that’s imparted from the bone, but you still want to keep an eye on the overall cook time so you don’t dry them out.
21) Chicken Thighs with Rice and Broccoli
These are chicken thighs cooked in an Asian sauce in a skillet, served with rice and broccoli.
For this one I would probably cook the broccoli in with the chicken thighs. Cut your chicken thighs up and marinate them in some sort of Asian dressing, either sesame oil or soy sauce, and then pan fry them until they’re mostly cooked and then add your broccoli. When that’s getting nice and fork tender, add your sauce to the pan. The rice is separate, just serve it over the rice.
You can make all of this ahead of time too and just heat it up.
22) Meat and Potato Stew
This is meat that has been browned in batches and then cooked into a stew with potatoes and stock.
Whatever meat you’re using, cut it evenly in the same size, season it, flour it, and then when you’re frying it in the pan or pot make sure you don’t put too many pieces in at once or it’ll steam and you’ll end up with gray colored meat as opposed to a nice browning on all sides.
Don’t discard any of the fat that you get out of your meat when you sear it. Once it’s done searing, set it aside and leave all the fat that you’ve rendered out in the pan. Then you’re going to fry your aromatics like your onions, celery, carrots, garlic, leeks, anything like that. I feel like leeks go pretty well with potatoes.
This one I would probably try to make a red wine gravy in the pan too, so deglaze after you fry your veg with red wine and then add some butter and flour. Cook it until the roux is cooked and then add your beef stock from there.
23) Spider Spaghetti
This is spaghetti that’s been twirled into a nest in each bowl, with olives and cheese spiders for young kids.
Take a cheese like cheddar or mozzarella, or anything that you can cut little sticks out of, and use that to make your spider legs, and then your black olives. Use the whole olive to make the body and then your six or eight little matchsticks of cheese.
For more of a spider web effect, you could just do your spaghetti on a small plate for kids.
24) Mummy Cheese Sticks
These are mozzarella sticks that are wrapped in dough strips with a gap for the eyes to resemble a mummy, frozen before baking so the cheese doesn’t melt.
For this one, I’d probably use something like a crescent roll dough because it does puff up a little bit and you want it to seal all those gaps while the cheese is heating up in the oven. Serve this one with marinara.
When you wrap these and you’re leaving a little gap for the eyes, make sure that you bake them with that gap facing up so all the cheese doesn’t run out.
25) Butternut Squash Soup
This is butternut squash that has been roasted and then pureed smooth into a soup.
I like to do my butternut squash with salt and pepper and a little bit of chili powder and smoked paprika because I feel those smoky sort of spicy notes stand up really well to the overwhelming sweetness of the squash once you roast it. And then I will cook onions and leeks and carrots in a pot, add my squash, add my stock, puree it all, and then add heavy cream.
Finish this one with some homemade croutons for a really nice crunch. And because the soup is orange, if you have a squeeze bottle, you can fill it with sour cream or Greek yogurt with a little bit of milk mixed in. Shake it up so it comes out of the bottle tip and then you can draw jack-o’-lantern faces on your bowls of soup.
26) Cheesy Chicken Bake
This is a casserole made in the afternoon of chicken and cheese.
This one’s begging for something like bread crumbs, or carrots and onions and celery mixed in, or even noodles. You could do shredded chicken and cheese and noodles, a little bit of heavy cream, and make a really nice creamy dish.
Go with mild or medium cheddars or goudas for this one, or mozzarella or Monterey Jack. Just nothing sharp or aged over a year because it won’t melt very well.
27) Chicken Noodle Soup
This is the classic, meant to be cooked all day. Chicken, onion, carrot, celery in a chicken broth with noodles, typically served on the side.
I make my noodles in a separate container all together. Once they’re cooked, in a strainer I rinse them off with cold water to stop the cooking process and then put them right in Tupperware. Your hot soup is enough to warm up egg noodles. You just put the cold noodles in the bottom of the bowl and pour the hot soup over top per each order.
Serve your soup in coffee mugs to make it easy for your kids who are running around getting dressed for Halloween to sip it as they go.
I like to do shredded chicken instead of cubed diced chicken. What I’ll do is take the chicken breasts, season them and sear them on all sides, and then build my soup around them. And then once the liquid’s been bubbling for a while, take the chicken breasts out, make sure they’re cooked all the way through. I typically use a digital thermometer. You’re looking for 165°F, and then shred them up and add them back in. This will help to thicken the soup up as well.
28) Chicken Caesar Wraps
This is a tortilla wrapped around romaine lettuce that has been tossed with parmesan cheese and Caesar dressing and shredded chicken.
I like to mix the lettuce and the dressing and the cheese together with the chicken and then just put it all right in the tortilla, as opposed to putting the sauce down in the tortilla and then stacking everything on top of it. I found out it eats better that way.
A fun trick I like to do for a chicken Caesar wrap, because you don’t really want to put croutons in there since they don’t eat that great out of a wrap, is I’ll take a parchment lined baking sheet and put grated parmesan or shredded parmesan on it and bake it in the oven at 375°F for five to six minutes to make a frico, which is kind of like a cheese crisp. You might need to flip it about halfway through.
Keep an eye on it. They’re all going to brown differently depending on your oven. Let that set and cool and then crumble it up and put it in your wrap, and then you’ve still got the cheese flavor but you have the crunch that you’re missing.
