How to Choose and Prepare Common Fruits and Vegetables to Make Homemade Baby Food

The day is here, your baby is ready to start eating solid food (See related article, How to Determine if Your Baby is Ready for Solid Food if you're not sure.) You've perused the little jars of baby food at the grocery store and been appalled at how expensive they are, and you've heard horror stories about the added sugar and salt companies can put in. So you are considering making your own homemade baby food. Do! It's not hard, fairly convenient, much cheaper, and better for the baby. You will be forming your child's taste palate with a wide variety of the best food available that you choose, and you can easily customize how fine or coarse the food is as your baby grows. So the only question is what food to choose and how to prepare it.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Food processor
• Source of good, preferably cheap, produce. Go organic if cost is no object.
• ice cube trays
• foil or plastic wrap
• Usual kitchen gear, spoons, spatulas, bowls etc.

1. First, I assume most of you do not have commercial grade food processors. So there will be some foods that simply won't puree down for you as far as the baby food companies can in their huge machines. These foods should be avoided when first starting out but can be added in a few weeks or months when the baby has more teeth and needs a little culinary challenge. Also, the foods I'm going to talk about are just a starting point, ones that I used that worked well. Use your imagination! Tomatoes? Sweet peppers? Delicious. Go wild!

2. For beginning foods, the first obvious food is the humble banana. Nothing could be easier to prepare. Just peel and puree. It will oxidize and darken though, so you may want to get the batch into tupperware or the freezer very quickly. Along these lines, pears are also good but will need to be peeled and cored.

3. Peaches are a great first fruit. The peeling can be a little tricky. The easiest way to do it is to cut it in half and remove the pit. Then, cut into quarters. If the peach is perfectly ripe you will be able to pick at a corner and separate the skin from the peach. Pull. It should come off in a sheet. If it tears, find the remaining end with your fingernails and pull again. Use a knife as a last resort.

4. For vegetables, butternut squash is fantastic for your beginning eater. See related article, How to Cook Butternut Squash for specifics on preparation (link in Resources).

5. Avocadoes are also great. As with peaches, you will be able to peel off the outside with your fingers in a ripe avocado. Ripe avocadoes will be soft to the touch. If it is firm, it needs to sit for a few days. You probably will not be able to use them the same day you buy them. Avocadoes oxidize VERY quickly and turn an unappetizing black, so I would recommending adding a teaspoon or so of lemon juice. In a big batch it won't affect the taste and will keep it green a lot longer.

6. For the next round in a few weeks, consider fruit and vegetables that might be a little thick for a beginning eater. Your baby, naturally, is fast becoming a pro. Sweet potatoes are good. These, you scrub, throw on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven for an hour at 375 degrees. Make custom mashed potatoes with formula or breast milk, bake the potatoes in the oven at 450 for an hour (large, 50 minutes medium) then slice in half and scoop out the middle from the peel. (And the rest of the family eats potato skins while watching the game that afternoon. Yum!)

7. Peas are a positive choice, and easy. Since most of us don't have access to fresh peas, frozen is okay. Either thaw the frozen peas or pour the package out in a bowl with a lid. Add a few tablespoons of water at the bottom and microwave for 1 minute. Stir and add additional minutes if needed until thawed. Then puree. Be warned though, some frozen peas have added sugar and salt. Check the ingredients before you buy.

8. Carrots are also a good food. The easiest way to prepare them are in your microwave. I have a microwave steamer basket, but if you don't a microwave safe ceramic dish with a cover will work just fine. Fill the bottom with an inch of water, your peeled and coarsely cut carrots and microwave for about 5 minutes. (Depending on the quantity, you may have to play around with the time.) When the carrots are tender, into your food processor they go, adding additional water from the bowl or steam bottom if you need it. Green beans and asparagus can also be cooked like this, but these foods remain chunky even in a puree so they are only for the veteran eater.

9. So the next graduation level of food include things like green beans, corn, asparagus, and beets. These foods all have some texture in the puree, even when blended well. For beets, I just boil mine. For 40 minutes or until tender (beets boil over easily and the mess in the microwave is unbelievable). You scrub them, then put them in the water skin and all. When done, the skin will slip right off. Corn, I have to admit I also boil. To do this you drop the corn in a pot of boiling water. Let it come to a boil again, then remove from heat and let the pot sit for 5 minutes. The corn is now done. You can also roll the shucked corn in waxed paper (no corn peeping out, it needs to contain the moisture) and stick it in the microwave. Try 3 minutes, and go up from there as needed.

10. Well-cut up fried egg can also be appreciated by your seasoned eater, though he may happily eat the yolk and balk at the whites. (Some discourage offering the whites for choking reasons, I would say if you're there and your baby is eating it without a problem, it's okay. If he seems to be struggling, just go with the yolk.) Keep it on medium low heat and don't get distracted doing something else or you'll overcook the egg. Cheese may be a fun alternative also, and plain, whole milk yogurt. I would caution you against flavored fruit yogurt; the amount of sugar per container is crazy. Baby yogurt is expensive, and your baby will enjoy plain just fine. My pediatrician said great to yogurt and cheese prior to 12 months--the recommended age to start whole cows milk--because of the process the dairy goes through. You may want to check with yours to be sure.

11. Add an element of finger food to your child's diet at this point. Start with a Cheerio. Put it on the tray and watch. If your baby reaches for it and pops it in her mouth no problem, you may want to try other foods. Don't worry, these dissolve if your baby can't handle it.

12. Some great finger foods are cut up peaches, cut up papaya, and cut up kiwi. To prepare these you need a rimmed baking sheet and waxed paper. Line the sheet with waxed paper. Peel, deseed the papayas and remove the pits from the peaches, then cut up the fruit into baby-sized bites. These should be small but not so small the baby can't grasp them. Spread the food on the lined baking sheet and pop into the freezer. Freeze until rock solid, 4 hours or so. Then, remove the sheet and break off small-sized chunks which you store in a labelled freezer bag. Babies love serving themselves finger foods and it saves you from having to be there with a spoon all the time. You might actually get to eat your own lunch for a change.

13. After you have the puree, pour some into tupperware to keep in the fridge for immediate use. The rest you pour into your ice cube containers. Cover with foil or Saran wrap. Freeze for about 4 hours or until solid. Store the ice cubes in labelled plastic zip loc freezer bags. The cubes are good for about 3 months, 6 months in a deep freeze. With this method, each ice cube is a baby portion size and you can offer little meals with a cube of fruit, vegetable, and starch if you wish AND you only have to make food once every few weeks. I used to take a Saturday (when my husband was home) and do all the food at naptime. If everything is done at once, you just have to rinse off your food processor and dishes between batches (assuming you are only doing fruits and veggies). If you run out of ice cube trays, pour your batch into tupperware and refrigerate until one set is done and you can transfer out. Make sure your batches are big to make the most of your effort.

14. Enjoy this time spent as you and your baby discover the wonder of food together. It will pass quickly enough.

Tips & Warnings

• You want to make sure your hands and prep area are very clean when you start cooking.
• Baby food is more recreation than nutrition until he gets to be much older, and solid food is a messy and time consuming process. You may start out offering solid food once a day, then move to twice or three times later on. Breast milk or formula will still be the staple for a long time.
• Wait until your baby is 6 months old to introduce solid food no matter what your mother says. The thrusting reflex will have diminished then, and to introduce earlier may set your child up for unhealthy weight gain, the onset of food allergies and possible intestinal problems.
• One great thing about making your own food is you can control how fine the puree is. As your child gets more teeth, a coarse chop may be more interesting for her to eat. And if she struggles, just put it away and keep it in the freezer for a few more weeks before you try again.
• Most articles on homemade baby food will be a little alarmist about leftovers in my opinion. You get the impression that if the baby takes one bite of food from a container for breakfast and you offer it again for lunch, she will FALL GRAVELY ILL. Come on. We all eat leftovers; if you don't you waste a lot of food and most of us like having money for other things. You have to do whatever your level of comfort dictates, but I say as long as it is promptly refrigerated (don't let it sit at room temp more than a couple of hours) and gets used within a few days it's fine. If your child is raised in a germ-free bubble, you're going to have serious problems when she goes to preschool. Or daycare. Or school.
• For maximum nutrition retention, you want to steam, bake, or microwave your vegetables that require cooking if possible. Most of the time you will need to add some water during the pureeing process for baby food, so go ahead and use the water in the bottom of the steam bath or microwave dish. Only use as much as you need, though. Thin soup is hard to feed a baby.
• When steaming in the microwave you want a dish with a lid that also allows some steam to escape. Corning ware works well.
• For on the go baby food, little cylinder tupperware or packages of Glad containers are perfect. Make sure it is a food that the baby doesn't mind eating cold. Throw it in an insulated lunch bag, add a cold pack if you're going to be out long or it is very hot outside. Otherwise you want it to thaw so the baby can eat it.
• An alternative to ice cube trays are tablespoons of food on a waxed paper lined cookie sheet, then to the freezer. Once frozen, these go in the zip loc bags.
• Add no more than one new food per feeding. If your baby exhibits an allergic reaction to anything, you need to know what caused it. Another recommendation is that you wait 4 days before starting something new, but unless you have horrible food allergies that run in the family I find this a little extreme.
• Never leave your child unattended while eating.
• There is no need to "season" your homemade baby food with sugar, salt, or butter. Let your baby revel in the true flavors of the food. You may be surprised yourself!

Resources

• How to Determine Whether Your Baby is Ready for Solid Food
• How to Cook Butternut Squash
• How to Make Low Sugar Yogurt with Fruit for You and Your Child
• More articles by Bookmom

[Sounique]

on 12/23/2008 Great article and tips! :)

[newmama]

on 12/4/2008 My baby is still exclusively on breastmilk...but my husband and I are considering making our own babyfood when it's time. Thanks for the tips. I'll be back again, for advice!

[QABumper]

on 10/18/2008 Great article. I'll reserve this for use when I have my own baby ~ 5*

[djvaughn2]

on 10/18/2008 Our children should eat more hand picked veggies. The processed Gerber we all buy in the stores has to many additives. Pure and healthy is the best, thanks!!! Great article!!!! 5*****

[PajamaMommy]

on 10/1/2008 Excellent advice!