Homemade Baby Food

Jesse and I want to find a good food processor so we can make our own baby food. Has anyone had any luck doing this? Any recommendations on what kind we should buy or works the best for making baby food?

This entry was posted by Jaxon on August 14, 2007 at 3:32 pm, and is filed under Seeking Advice, Useful Info, Year 01. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

5 comments

Lesley (17 years)
I have two friends who did most of their foods. They both used a regular blender and then put the stuff into ice cube trays. I don’t recommend using, spinach, carrots or beets because they are super high in nitrates which aren’t good for your baby. I have one I ordered from babycenter.com. It is the crank kind and it worked pretty good to grate up food for when the baby is young and older. Here is what came from the babycenter website below:

You’ll need a tool to grind or puree the food. A blender or food processor will work, but a hand-turned food mill with stainless steel blades for different textures of food is best. You’ll also need storage containers or ice cube trays for refrigerating or freezing leftovers.

Food to buy

Choose the freshest fruits and vegetables and try to use them within a day or two. When fresh isn’t available, frozen is fine. Good fruits to start with include apples, apricots, bananas, blueberries, mango, peaches, pears, plums, prunes, and raspberries. (Some experts suggest waiting to introduce berries until your baby is 10 months old because he’ll be better able to digest them then.) Good vegetable choices include asparagus tips, avocados, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, peas, potatoes, sweet peppers, sweet potatoes, and winter squash. (Some babies find corn hard to digest, and a few are even allergic to it.)

Caution: Some vegetables (even if they’re organic) â€” particularly beets and spinach, but also turnips, carrots, and collard greens â€” can be high in nitrates. Babies who ingest a high level of these chemicals can develop a type of anemia. The level of nitrates in your vegetables depends on the soil and water in which the vegetables were grown. Well water, in particular, can be especially high in nitrates because of chemical fertilizer runoff. To be on the safe side, you may not want to use any of the vegetables mentioned above when making your own baby food, or you may choose to use them sparingly as your baby gets bigger. If you do serve them occasionally, don’t save any for leftovers because the nitrate level can increase during storage. (Baby food companies test commercial baby food for these chemicals, so store-bought baby food should be free of nitrates.)

How to prepare

First, wash your hands, the produce, and all the bowls and utensils. Peel and pit the fruit if necessary. All vegetables â€” and some fruits like apples and prunes that need to be softened â€” should be cooked before pureeing or grinding. To preserve vitamins and minerals, bake, broil, or steam the produce until soft. If you boil the food, use as little liquid as possible and add some of the leftover liquid when mashing the food (or add it to the family’s soup stock).

To puree or mash fruits or vegetables, simply add a little liquid (breast milk, formula, or cooking water) to the produce as you blend or grind, until the consistency is soupy. As your baby adapts to solid foods, you can add less liquid. If the fruit has seeds, strain before serving.

To prepare meat and poultry, remove the skin and trim the fat after cooking. Then puree the cooked meat in a blender or grind up with a little liquid. For older babies you can simply chop the meat into small pieces.

â€“from the YWCA Momâ€™s Group
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Tess (17 years)

I had a very small blender. I would blend up whatever we were eating and give it to baby. One of the best books is SUPER BABY FOOD. It is a very good resource for organic home made baby food. I recommend it for everyone.

–from the YWCA Mom’s Group

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Shanna (17 years)

We made most of J’s food. When we didn’t we would buy the organic jar foods for times when it wasn’t feasible to take ours with us. I would use a processor (I don’t know what kind I have, I can look) and grind/puree her food. Sometimes I would use the blender, depending on how watery the food would become. Then we would put the food in either ice cube trays or small zip lock bags and put them in the freezer. When we would feed her, we would put however much either in the microwave or boiling water on the stove (depending on if it were bagged or cubed) until cooked into a mushy enough form to feed to her. We used carrots, cucumber (real watery), melon, fruits, broccoli, and much more. There is now big debates over the plastic and how long things should be if at all stored in them, b/c of the chemicals and toxins in the plastic molds, but I have not delved into that yet. Hope this helps. Also here is the link to one of the moms groups I belong to. They are a brilliant resource.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gbcmoms/

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Miriam (17 years)

You can use a full immersion blender–so much easier to clean! They look like wands, and you only have to remove the end with the blade and wash the blade area off. It’s a lot faster if you’re making a variety of foods at once. I freeze the food in ice cube trays covered with saran wrap, then store the cubes in labeled ziploc bags. You can mix things up for variety.

In terms of veggies, avoid the little carrots as they have too many nitrates. Anything else, just cook until soft, add a little water (no salt) and blend to a puree. You can always add water and cereal when you are serving it.

BTW, we use regular UNSWEETENED applesauce for a fruit to mix in with cereal. It’s much cheaper this way and my pediatrician OK’d it.

â€“from the YWCA Momâ€™s Group

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Kristian (17 years)

yeah don’t buy the hand grinder, it falls apart easily. but is good for foods that have some chunks in it.

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