Makin' Baby Food

We have made most of Nora's baby food, and I've had many people ask me how we do it.  So, I thought I'd write a little how-to post on the process.  Though it does take time, it's not hard and it's saved us A LOT of money, so I recommend it.

First, I highly recommend buying a steamer basket. You can boil or bake the produce instead, but steaming is fast, makes it easier to puree, and allows more nutrients to stay in the food. We borrowed our steamer basket from my MIL, but I've seen them for sale at Kohl's and Bed Bath and Beyond as well. Looks like this:

The circle part is flexible and you put it inside a pot filled with a couple of inches of water.

Here's the step by step process:
1. Go to the grocery/market/garden and buy whatever fruits or veggies you want to make for your baby. When we first started with Nora, she ate a ton of sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, apples, bananas, avocados, and pears.

2. Pick one fruit or veggie to start with.  If it has a peel, peel it.

3. Chop it roughly into bite-size pieces (this is just so they steam faster...eventually you'll puree them, so it doesn't matter if they're any exact size).

These are pears. Also, I don't know why this picture is sideways.  It's not like that when I upload it.

4. Fill your pot with a couple of inches of water, enough so that it touches the bottom of the steamer basket but doesn't actually fill into it. When you put the steamer basket in the pot, you shouldn't be able to see the water.

5. Put the steamer basket in the pot, put it on the stove, and turn the heat to medium or medium-high.

6. Put your fruit or veggie pieces in the basket, cover the pot, and let them steam away in their little sauna. I usually leave them in about 15-20 minutes, but it depends on what you're making. I poke them with a knife to see if they're soft...once they're soft (not at all crunchy), they're done. Your kitchen is going to smell DELICIOUS!



In da pot.
(What's in the crock pot on the left? Just some delicious, healthy, and super duper EASY Crock Pot Chicken Fajitas.)

7. Lift the steamer basket out of the water and set it in the sink or on a towel (it might drip) to cool for awhile.  Don't drain the water in the pot!! You'll want it later. Just leave it in there.

8. Once they're mostly cool (it's okay if they're still a little bit warm), put the produce in your blender, food processor, or fancypants baby food maker.  My mom got us a Baby Bullet for Christmas when I was pregnant, and it's pretty fantastic, but a regular blender or a food processor will do the trick.

• Don't overfill your blender/processor. You will probably have to do 2 or 3 rounds of blending to puree all of the steamed produce, depending on how much you make. 

9. PUREE! Until it's smooth.  Add in the water from the pot as necessary - if it's difficult to get it to puree, then add water until it's easier.  You'll probably have to stop a few times to settle it back down in the blender with a spatula or my very professional shake-the-blender-until-it's-all-in-the-bottom trick. If you're making fruit, you probably won't have to add much water; veggies you will have to add some. Fun Fact: When you steam the produce, some of the nutrients are absorbed into the water; so, you want to use the leftover water from the pot to add while blending so some of those nutrients go back into the food. Cool beans.

• You may not use all of the water from the pot, and that's okay. Just a little bit of the nutrients came out, but not all of them - much less than if you had boiled them IN the water. If you need more water, just use regular water.

10. Once it's smooth and there's not any chunks in it (use a spatula to make sure), spoon it into ice cube trays.  We like these, though some other baby-food-maker-aficionados prefer to put it in special baby food cups.


This would've been a better picture if the whole tray was full. Bummer.

11. Cover them with saran wrap and freeze.

12. When they're frozen, pop them out of the trays and take a moment to admire how pretty they are. Then, put them in a labeled ziploc bag and toss them in the freezer. Whenever you're ready to use them, take out 1-3 cubes (depending on how much your little dude eats) and put them in the microwave for 20-30 seconds. Stir them up, make sure they're not too hot, and serve!

Sweet Potaters. Aren't they pretty!? These look a little frosty because I made them about a week ago, so they've been in the freezer, but I just wanted to take a picture and not wait for the pears to freeze.

Special Notes:
1. Bananas and Avocados: you don't have to cook these.  Just peel the banana or take the inside out of the avocado shell (take out the pit...duh), and mash them with a fork until smooth. If you wanted a very smooth puree (if your baby just started eating solid foods or doesn't do well with chunky purees), you could use the blender/processor.
2. Peaches and Plums: You also don't have to cook these; just peel them and put them directly into the blender. You might need to add a little bit of water, but not much!  Nora went through a phase where she didn't like peaches, and I told her that if she wasn't going to eat them I was going to use them to make peach margaritas. They smelled amazing.
3. Prunes: A delicious way to combat constipation! (One of the many joys of parenting.)  Anyway, I actually cooked these in water to rehydrate them a bit. Then I blended them using lots of added water.

Other Thoughts:
1. I recommend buying a how-to-make-baby-food reference book. I borrowed my friend's copy of Top 100 Baby Food Purees by Annabelle Karmel, and it was very helpful when we were figuring everything out at first. (MW, remind me to give this back to you so you can use it for NewBabyW.) There are also lots of good blogs and websites out there with instructions.
1.5 You can make mixtures of different baby foods to help them get accustomed to different tastes - the book I used gave lots of great suggestions/recipes for this.
2. I don't know the science behind it, but this is very healthy. I don't know if it's considerably healthier than buying the pre-made stuff, but I will say this (TMI): diaper changes were a lot stinkier when we bought the pre-made stuff than they were when she was eating all homemade.
3. The homemade food does travel relatively easily on short trips. If you're travelling by car, just put it in a cooler with some ice packs so it's still frozen when you arrive at your destination. If you're travelling by plane, you could use a soft-sided freezer bag...but I'd recommend just buying the pre-made stuff. It's not worth lugging around all the extra weight.
4. You can feasibly accomplish all of this during one good naptime. Or, if the little one wakes up early, like mine did, you might get a cute little helper.

Good luck! Let me know if you have questions or other suggestions!