Getting dental implants means you will have to allow your gums time to heal, whether it’s over the implant, around a healing abutment, or even around a temporary prosthetic (false tooth). While this is happening, you have to eat a soft food diet to avoid damaging the gum tissue. This isn’t usually very long, but it can seem like a long time, especially if you have to eat the same three meals over and over again.
Fortunately, there are many good soft food recipes that you can try to help you enjoy your recovery period.
Creamy Tomato Basil Soup with Parmesan
There are so many great soup recipes out there that you could probably live your whole life on nothing but soup for the rest of your life and never get bored. There are a lot of good soup recipes out there, but one of our favorites is this creamy tomato basil soup with parmesan.
What makes it great–in addition to its wonderfully strong flavor–is that it’s a very substantial soup with no chunks. And the cream increases the calories, fat, and protein in the meal, making it a very filling dish.
Bourbon Meatballs
It can be hard to find good meat dishes that are really soft food compatible, but meatballs and meatloaf are two common ones. Meatballs are great because they’re flexible. You can toss them in your pasta, or you can cook them separately, in their own sauce. One delicious slowcooker sauce is a bourbon sauce, which easy to make. You can either use frozen meatballs as the recipe says, or make meatballs from scratch.
Quiche
Quiche is another great, flexible dish. You can make it with virtually any flavors you desire. It’s high in protein and easy to make as well as easy to eat. Crustless quiche is good if you’re trying to avoid gluten or if you are finding your mouth is very tender and you don’t want a crispy crust. Two good crustless quiches are this ham and cheese quiche or this spinach quiche.
Crockpot Mac and Cheese
Pasta is one of the things that you can enjoy on a soft foods diet, including the delicious comfort food mac and cheese. But ditch the stuff in the blue box for a hearty homemade mac and cheese. Baked mac and cheese can get a little chewy–try this crockpot mac and cheese for a delicious, easy option. Just remember that it takes a little while longer to cook than the stuff in the box.
Rainbow Jello
Jello is a popular dessert for people on a soft diet, but it can get a little bland, especially because your fruit inclusions are pretty much limited to banana (though you should try ripe mango, too). But you can spruce it up a lot with a rainbow jello recipe. The addition of milk helps to make it a little more substantial and gives it a different texture.
Recovery Is Easy
Don’t let fear of recovery keep you from getting dental implants. The recovery is easy, and, as you can see, even a limited diet has lots of options for delicious dinners.
If you would like to talk about your dental implants in Orange County, please call (949) 551-5902 for an appointment with an implant dentist at Rice Dentistry in Irvine.
