How to make your own baby food

Stop spending money on expensive prepackaged baby food and start making your own! Making your own baby food is not only easy and efficient, it is also very economical and best of all, you know exactly what you are feeding your baby.

Buying the best produce for your baby food

Make sure all fruits and vegetables are fresh. Once bought, use them within 2 days. If fresh produce is not available, you can also use frozen products to create some yummy baby food.

Following fruits and vegetables are great to start with:

Fruit: Apples, apricots, bananas, blueberries, mangoes, peaches, pears, plums, and prunes
Vegetables: Asparagus tips, avocados, carrots, peas, potatoes, sweet peppers, sweet potatoes, and winter squash

Prepare your baby food with the right equipment

To start with, everything you will be cooking will be pureed, which actually makes the whole process very easy. You will need a tool to puree or grind the baby food. Here is a list of useful tools that help you make delicious baby food:

  • hand-held blender: ideal for smaller portions of baby food
  • food processor: great if you make bigger portions of baby food to freeze
  • all-in-one baby-food maker: device that steams-cooks and purees baby food
  • normal fork: perfect for mashing bananas, potatoes and avocado
  • ice cube trays: great for freezing extra portions of cooked baby food

Baby Food Hygiene Rules:

Just like any cooking, when you make your own baby food, the first place to start is to develop good habits to ensure that your baby will not be eating any harmful bacteria. The basic rule of thumb is to cook your baby food until the core temperature is 75°C or above. This will ensure that harmful bacteria are destroyed. It is possible to cook baby food at a lower temperature, but the time needed to kill the bacteria increases dramatically. See the table below.

Temperatures and time needed as follows :

• 60°C for a minimum of 45 minutes
• 65°C for a minimum of 10 minutes
• 70°C for a minimum of 2 minutes (recommended)

A note on Eggs: Eggs can carry harmful bacteria inside and on their shells. For this reason, eggs need to be handled carefully. Pasteurised eggs are recommended by most health organisations for babies.

For more information on baby food hygene, try the wikipaedia here.

Cooking your own baby food

The first step is usually to boil vegetables until they are quite soft, then put them in the blender. With meat, it is a similar process, but the meet should be cooked well in the same way you would cook a stew, on a lowish heat for 45 minutes or an hour. If you are interested in a baby food meat dish, the beef puree is a great place to start.

Here are a few other great examples of early baby food recipes:

* Pureed Vegetables
* Prune Puree
* Porridge

Once you have tried a few pureed recipes, you will find it very easy to invent your own flavors and combinations.

Baby Food Serving tips

  • Serve baby food no warmer than body temperature.
  • If you heat up baby food in a microwave make sure you stir it well and let it cool down a bit before serving as microwaves tend to heat up meals unevenly, which means that some parts of the baby food could be really hot and burn your baby's mouth.
  • Only serve the amount of baby food your little angle will eat as you cannot keep any left overs from her plate, due to the baby's saliva which can cause bakteria to grow in the food.
  • Unserved leftovers can be refrigerated in an airtight container and used within 2 days or frozen in ice cube trays (IMPORTANT: Never freeze any food that has already been thawed!!!)