Making your baby’s food at home is more convenient, cheaper, and healthier compared to buying ready-made ones in grocery stores. This way, you will be sure that the food your baby will eat is fresh and there are no preservatives added to it. One of the easiest ways in making baby food at home is by using a blender. Since babies are not able to chew hard foods yet, you will need to dissolve fruits and vegetables for them to take it in. If you are thinking of making baby food using your blender, here are some tips which might help you.
Choose Fresh Ingredients
When you make food for a baby, it’s important to use fresh fruits, vegetables, and grains. Avoid buying canned fruits and veggies because most of them have added preservatives. Aside from being fresh, they should be easy to digest as well. Make sure to clean the foods thoroughly as well before putting them in the blender.
Avoid Sugar
Fresh fruits, yogurt, or grains already contains sugar that is enough for your baby. Therefore, the need to add sugar is unnecessary. But if you think the blended food is not sweet enough, or your baby doesn’t eat it, you can make it sweeter by adding natural sweeteners like honey. However, when buying honey, you might want to choose those produced from other countries because most of the honey produced in the United States has the chance to cause botulism to babies.
The Blending Process
Making baby foods using a blender is simple and there is no need to stress yourself for it. There are two types of baby food you can make which are, raw baby foods, and steamed baby foods.
Some of the fruits you can serve to your baby raw are banana, avocado, mango, peaches, papaya, apricot, plum, and spinach. Here are some steps to make raw baby foods.
- Step 1: Peel the fruit. This is important because it’s hard for babies to digest fruit peels.
- Step 2: Add the desired fruit or vegetable to the blender.
- Step 3: Blend in a medium speed until it becomes smooth and chunk free.
- Step 4: Divide the purees into jars which you can keep refrigerated.
When serving it, especially when it’s your baby’s first time to eat, you can add a little formula or breast milk to make it slightly runny.
Fruits are more fibrous and difficult to digest for babies who are still developing their digestive systems, therefore, steaming foods before blending them can be beneficial for them. Some of the foods you can steam first are apples, carrots, green beans, pears, sweet potato, peas, pumpkin, winter squash, and summer squash. Here are some steps on how to make steamed baby foods.
- Step 1: Peel the fruit or vegetable.
- Step 2: Slice the fruit or vegetable then put it in the steaming basket over boiling water. Let it be steamed until you can stab it with a fork easily.
- Step 3: Remove the steamed fruit or vegetable from the steaming basket and let it cool for at least 10 minutes before blending.
- Step 4: Add the ingredients to the blender and blend it on a medium speed until it becomes smooth and free of chunks.
- Step 5: Divide the purees into containers and let them cool before covering them and placing in the refrigerator.
As your baby grows, smaller chunks in their food may be okay. However, if your baby is younger than six months, pureed food is best. When you blend foods, sometimes it still comes out too chunky. If this happens, you can blend it a little longer. You can also increase the blending speed, or maybe add a little water. This will make it easier for the blender to chop up the food and mix it well. Liquid allows the food in the blender to flow easily and it helps in the entire process.
You may start with making purees out of a single fruit or vegetable first. Then after a few times of making food for your baby, you can experiment on mixing different fruits and vegetables and blending them together. Don’t be afraid to tryout different combinations and you’ll sure get better at it in time.