Nutrition experts have unveiled a new initiative called 12 Before 12 – 12 food skills that kids must know before they turn age 12, which has also been turned into a cookbook. See here.

Sanitarium has partnered with nutrition experts, Themis Chryssidis and Masterchef fan favourite Callum Hann from Sprout Cooking School, to create these kid-friendly recipes to help get the kids more involved in the kitchen and learn essential skills that support life-long health and wellbeing.

Steamed Vegetarian Dumplings
Making dumplings is the perfect way to get nimble fingers moving! Challenge yourself by filling and folding your own dumplings to share with the whole family.

Serves: 4
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

For the dumplings:
400g button mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 carrot, grated
4 spring onions, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely grated
½ thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely grated
½ bunch of chives, finely chopped
¼ bunch of coriander, leaves and stems finely chopped

1 tbs reduced-salt soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
30 small square dumpling wrappers

For the dipping sauce:
2 tbs reduced-salt soy sauce
1 tbs rice wine vinegar
1 tsp chilli sauce

Method:
1. Heat olive oil in a large frypan over medium-high heat. Cook mushrooms for 3-4 minutes or until golden brown. Add carrot and spring onion and cook for 1-2 minutes or until softened. Stir through garlic and ginger and cook for a further minute or until fragrant. Remove from heat and stir through chives, coriander, soy sauce and sesame oil. Set aside to cool.
2. Place dumpling wrappers on a flat surface. Spoon two tsp of mushroom mixture onto one half of a wrapper. Brush edges with cold water before folding over. Press edges together to seal. Hold dumpling in your hand, middle point of the triangle pointing upwards. Placing your thumb in the middle and fold the other points over the top. Press to seal points together. Repeat with remaining wrappers and mushroom mixture.
3. Place a steamer lined with baking paper over simmering water. Cook dumplings in batches for 15 minutes or until wrappers are tender and filling inside is warm.
4. Meanwhile, make the dipping sauce. Stir together soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and chilli sauce in a small bowl.
5. Serve dumplings with dipping sauce.

Discussing the benefits of the recipes and skills, Themis Chryssidis from Sprout said: "Somewhere along the way, the healthy eating message has got so complex. We've become overly focussed on looking at food through the lens of nutrients or kilojoules - the micro detail of what we're eating - that we've lost sight of the bigger picture behaviours that make healthy eating intuitive. Food has become over-thought, and it's not doing us any good.

12 before 12's simpler message is: Eat mostly whole plant-based foods, drink mostly water, cook more at home – and for kids, find ways to sprinkle in some fun"