Oftentimes, mass-produced baby foods sit for long periods of time. They’re filled with preservatives in order to make sure they can last. This also helps the manufacturer protect its profits. It’s understood if you’d like to skip the grocery store route and prepare your food at home. Making baby food doesn’t have to be a really arduous task. By incorporating these simple processes and tools, you can make your own baby food at home.
1. Blender
The blender is one of the ideal investments for the food-making process. This is primarily because blenders allow you to quickly create nutritious purees. It’s really easy to throw a mixture of fruits and vegetables into a blender, mix them up for a couple of minutes and get a consistency that’s safe for your baby. Plus, blenders make it easy to make purees in large batches. Whatever you don’t use, within a few days, can be placed in a baby food freezer tray and frozen for another time.
2. Stovetop
If your baby is closer to toddler years, chances are they’ll be able to eat more than simply fruits and vegetables. Use the stovetop to boil vegetables like peas for a pea puree. Prepare various types of meat and heavier starches on the stovetop. Even if you choose to give your baby eggs, simply prepare a really soft scramble.
3. Slow Cooker
The slow cooker is an extremely delightful tool when you’re making fruit sauces such as applesauce, pear sauce, and berry compote. The key is to peel all of the necessary skins off. Make sure no seeds get into the slow cooker either. Once you’ve peeled and deseeded your fruit, place them in the slow cooker. It doesn’t matter if they’re whole or chopped.
Add your seasonings such as cinnamon and nutmeg. Pour in a little bit of a sweetener like maple syrup. Add water, and cover your slow cooker. Put it on a low setting for the day. After eight hours, come back to a cooked, sweet-smelling sauce that your baby can enjoy for days to come.
Before you serve it, make sure that it’s completely cooled down. If you did not chop the fruit before putting them in the slow cooker, use an immersion blender or the regular blender to turn them into the consistency of a puree so that your baby doesn’t choke.
4. Knife & Fork
Avocados are known for their healthy fat content. Avocados also contain a whole lot of healthy nutrients that your baby can benefit from. To prepare an avocado puree, you don’t need more than a knife and a fork. Granted, if the avocado isn’t quite right yet, simply wait for it to ripen up for a few more days.
Once it’s perfectly ripe, it’s typically soft enough that simple manpower can get it down to the consistency of a puree. If you’d like to add vegetable purees to the avocado mixture, this can increase the nutritional value. However, a knife and fork can do wonders in mashing up ingredients well.
5. Steaming
Even for adults, there are a lot of vegetables that are intensely rich in fiber. Because the fiber is so intense, the body doesn’t extract all the nutrients that it could. This is why if you want to get the most nutritional value out of certain vegetables, it’s best to steam them.
Steaming also works beautifully for babies when you’re preparing their purees. For vegetables like carrots, broccoli, and kale, use a steamer to soften them first. Once they are soft, put them in the blender or food processor in order to turn the solid vegetables into vegetable puree.
6. Baking
If your baby has teeth, chances are they’ll be ready for food like mashed potatoes. If you want to maintain a lot of flavor in a quicker turnaround time, there’s nothing like the flavor of a baked potato. Bake certain vegetables like squash, pumpkin, and sweet potatoes to cook them thoroughly. Once they’re fully baked, remove the skins, place them in the blender and blend until they’re crushed down to the consistency that a baby can handle.
Conclusion
One of the easier components of preparing baby food is that it’s very straightforward. You don’t really have to worry about measurements of salt, sugar, or pepper. In fact, you can opt to leave those seasonings out of the picture altogether. The nutrients found in fruits and vegetables are satiating enough for a baby’s digestive system. However, a dash of cinnamon doesn’t hurt a baby. Just use these processes and tools in order to quickly provide healthy, nutritious meals for your growing baby.
