The first step to making homemade baby food is cooking the ingredients. Nearly all food requires cooking before being pureed. Even fruit, like apples and peaches, should be cooked first for easier digestion. Cooking also makes food softer so it’s easier to puree.
Cook fruits, vegetables, and grains until they are very tender, and cook all meats until they are well-done. Since foods and appliances vary, use the cooking times in this book as a guideline, and check your food regularly to be sure it’s cooking properly. Let food cool so it’s just slightly warm or room temperature before feeding baby.
For the first month, try cooking single-ingredient purees or cereals, such as apple puree or infant rice cereal. This helps keep the flavors basic and limits food allergies. Feed baby the same food for several meals over several days before introducing him to another food appropriate for his age. Check out the age guide for introducing solid foods on page 246 to help you choose foods appropriate for each age.
Over a period of a few months, introduce baby to a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, meats, and grains. As a general guideline, wait a few days between offering new foods to give you time to spot a food allergy and give baby time to get used to the new food.
Baby food doesn’t have to be bland or boring! Once baby has been introduced to a couple different ingredients on their own, you can start to mix foods for more complex flavors. Try blending foods within the same food category—fruits with other fruits and vegetables with other vegetables. Or try mixing foods of different categories, like meats with vegetables, or fruits with grains.
The recipes in this this book show how easy it is to mix flavors and make delicious tasting baby food. For each ingredient you’ll learn how to prepare and cook a basic puree. You’ll also find recipes for mix-ins to help you make tasty and exciting homemade baby food.
You’ll also learn different methods of cooking—like roasting and grilling—to create flavor. Roasting, the process of cooking at a high temperature in the oven, causes ingredients to brown, caramelizing or creating a crust, which adds more flavor to most foods. Grilling adds a slightly smoky flavor. By branching out and trying different cooking methods, you can introduce baby to new tastes and enhance the flavor of his favorite foods.
Choose steaming, sautéing, roasting, grilling, or broiling over boiling foods whenever possible. Boiling can cause nutrients from the food to leak into the water, making the food less nutritious. If you do choose to boil, save some of the water from the pot and use it as the liquid to thin purees. This will help restore some of the lost nutrients.
Progressing the texture of baby’s food helps him become a confident, skilled eater. Start out by preparing smooth, soupy purees. Once he’s gotten used to that texture, advance to slightly thicker but still smooth purees. As your baby gets better at swallowing and chewing, continue progressing the texture of his food. Move on to soft purees with tiny lumps, like mashed potatoes. Then introduce ground foods, like ground beef. Within just a few months, he’ll graduate from smooth purees to soft, finely chopped finger foods.
The AAP suggests waiting until baby is at least 12 months before adding any salt, sugar, or seasoning to his food. This helps your baby learn what food tastes like naturally, and can contribute to healthy eating preferences later on.
Below are general guidelines to help you progress baby’s food. This chart is particularly helpful when making your own baby food recipes. All of the baby food recipes in this book have age guidelines to help you advance the texture of baby’s food. Use these as general references, modifying the texture as needed for your baby.
6 months old: smooth, soupy, one ingredient puree
7 months old: smooth, soupy, combination ingredient puree
8 months old: smooth, thicker puree
9 months old: soft puree with tiny soft lumps
10 months old: soft, mashed puree with lumps, ground, or finely chopped soft foods
11 months old: finely chopped soft foods, mashed foods
12 months old: baby bitesized pieces of food
By the time baby is 12 months, nearly all foods are safe to eat as long as they are the right texture. Before his first birthday, there are just a few foods to avoid:
The goal of complementary feeding is to help baby learn to eat real food and give him supplemental nutrition. Since babies have such small bellies, giving them any kind of junk food fills them up with empty calories without any of the nutrition your baby needs. Avoid feeding baby high calorie foods like cookies and cakes. Not even one bite! And avoid salty foods like french fries or chips, and sugary drinks like fruit juice or soda.
Breast milk and formula are the healthiest drinks for babies. Wait on cow’s milk until after baby is twelve months old; he won’t be able to process this type of milk any earlier. Cow’s milk can irritate your baby’s intestines or cause a food allergy. And it doesn’t provide the right nutrition for infants.
Other types of dairy, like small amounts of cheese, cottage cheese, or yogurt, are easier to digest, and are okay to feed babies nine months old and up.
Always keep a close eye on baby when he eats. A choking baby may not be able to cry or make a noise, so if you are in the next room or he is in his car seat, it’s possible that baby could choke and you wouldn’t know. Even pureed foods can cause a new eater to choke if he has too much in his mouth or has a tough time swallowing.
When you choose finger foods for baby, make sure they are small and soft. Avoid any potential choking hazards, like meat with bones, big pieces of food, chunks of cheese, raw vegetables, marshmallows, gum, nuts, whole grapes, or anything else that is noticeably tough to chew.
Wait until baby is at least twelve months old to offer honey, as it can sometimes cause infant botulism. Botulism is a potentially fatal gastrointestinal illness caused by bacteria that more mature immune systems can handle.
Avoid feeding baby any kind of shellfish, like lobster, clams, shrimp, mussels, and crab, as it could cause a food allergy. Low-mercury fish, such as salmon and tilapia, however, are safe to introduce to babies six months and up.
You may want to go over this list with all of your baby’s caretakers, including grandparents and babysitters, to help them understand what they can feed baby. It may seem obvious to you as a parent, but to temporary caretakers, a cookie with a cup of milk or fast food fries might seem like a fine snack.
Food allergies occur when the body has an immune response to an ingredient. Identifying food allergies in adults can be tricky because we eat such a wide variety of foods, so it can be tough to pinpoint what’s causing our discomfort. If you introduce new foods slowly and as single ingredients, it should be easier to identify what’s causing a food allergy for an infant.
Cow’s milk, egg whites, peanuts and tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat are the most common allergenic foods for babies.
Traditionally, experts have recommended waiting to feed babies any food that may cause a food allergy. Some recent research, however, has found that introducing babies to allergenic foods early on may actually protect him from ever developing an allergy.24 You may want to talk with your pediatrician before introducing your child to a typically allergenic food.
Symptoms of food allergies—from mild to severe—can present immediately or hours after eating. They may show up every time baby eats the allergenic food, or just if he has a lot of it. Food allergies can also develop over time. A baby is at a higher risk of developing a food allergy if his parents or siblings have the same food-related problem. If you are worried that your baby could have food allergies, talk with your doctor.
You can tell your baby is having a mild allergic reaction if he gets diarrhea or a rash, has a noticeable increase in gas, or is extremely fussy during or after he eats. If your baby has one of these symptoms, stop feeding him solids and try to relieve his symptoms. Offer to nurse if you are breastfeeding. Once baby is feeling better, think about the foods you have fed him in the past few days. Don’t feed him anything that you suspect could be the cause of the allergy, and talk with your doctor.
If your baby gets hives, has facial swelling, or trouble breathing, he may be having a severe allergic reaction. Call 911 or go to the hospital for immediate medical attention.
If your baby has any signs of food allergies, make sure to write it down. We have busy lives and it can be hard to recall exactly what foods have caused allergies or what symptoms developed. Record any suspected food allergies in the food allergy journal on page 249.