This is a list of soft foods by meal type, which might be helpful if your teeth hurt from braces and you’re just searching for ideas about what you can eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Breakfast
- Scrambled eggs. Add cheese for more protein.
- Frozen cheese blintzes (available in some grocery stores)
- Hot cereal (oatmeal, cream of wheat, etc)
- Cold cereal that has gotten mushy with milk
- Pancakes
- Soggy waffles
- Muffins without nuts or chunks
- Matzo brie – soak a piece of matzo in water until soft, drain water, mix mushy matzo with one or two eggs, fry in butter or cooking spray until mixture is cooked. Serve plain or with cinnamon sugar.
- Breakfast grits made with milk, butter and cheese
- Protein shakes
- High-protein yogurt
Lunch
- Macaroni and cheese
- Avocado, Guacamole
- Ramen noodles, chopped up
- Spaghetti, chopped up. Canned varieties are usually very soft.
- Tuna or chicken salad
- Egg salad
- Cottage cheese
- Various soups: Miso, egg drop, chicken, etc.
- Thinly sliced lunch meat, broken into bits
- Noodle side-dishes (Lipton makes one, for example)
- Bean and cheese Mexican dishes (burritos, enchiladas, etc) You can find some frozen ones in your grocery store.
- When eating out, look for dishes that obviously have soft foods, and no nuts or hard-to-chew chunks.
- Quiche
Dinner
- Meatloaf
- Shepard’s pie
- Soft cooked fish – steamed or simmered is usually best. Or fish cakes/croquettes.
- Bean and cheese enchiladas or burritos
- Chili (mash it up if necessary)
- Sloppy Joes. Try making them with various sauces for more variety, such as bottled Indian sauces, Creole sauces, or your favorite marinating sauce. Substitute ground chicken or turkey for variety. A great BBQ chicken sloppy joe uses boneless chicken thighs. Mince in a food processor until they are a gooey mess, then fry it in a pan until it looks like ground chicken. Add BBQ sauce and cook down — on soft bread they are easily eaten by semi-chewers. Non-chewers can cut it up with a fork into small bites.
- Cooked steak, shredded in a food processor. Top with caramelized onions and/or shredded cheese (or a dipping sauce – BBQ, Teriyaki, etc.) and it becomes a shredded hot salad.
- Pasta, ravioli
- Asian fried rice or noodles with tiny bits of meat and soft veggies
- Lasagna
- Enchilada Pie (layers of corn tortillas, beans, cheese, and sauce. Add bits of meat if desired)